Twitter Influence and Top 10 Tweets

Posted on by Paul Dwyer

At the beginning of the semester, I began my #NHsmc journey with 438 Twitter followers.  A mere 3 months later and I am up to 450 followers.  The net increase is 12 followers, or about 3%.  Now this seems like not that much (and is not that much relative to some fellow classmates), but I think some key factors played into that increase.

First of all, the strategy that worked the most for me was using the hashtag #socialmedia in my tweets.  I of course give all the credit to Professor Grygiel (@jmgrygiel) for suggesting it in a class early on – it really works.  Whether it was getting a couple more favorites, a follow, or being added to a list, it felt as if #socialmedia was always a great way to get content out there.

My potential follower increase was severely hurt by balancing the new followers I was getting with some unfollows.  I don’t think I can accurately access the reason why these followers left me with complete certainty, but I do think the idea Professor Grygiel mentioned in class that some old followers aren’t used to your new tweeting habits and may not like it is a good chance why I lost some followers as the semester went on.  Another strategy that didn’t work consistently was retweeting or liking someone’s tweet thinking they may follow.  I think if I go with the follow combined with a retweet or like there’s a higher likelihood of someone following me.

Top 10 Tweets

This tweet was a very popular tweet in regards to likes.  There were 15 total engagements, with 7 likes, 7 detail expands, and 1 profile click.  The tweet was crafted to raise awareness and donations for dogs in need through the ASPCA.

This tweet received a great variety of engagements.  Out of 14 total engagements, 8 were detail expands, 3 were profile clicks, 1 was a reply, 1 was a like, and 1 was a hashtag click.  The tweet was sent during the assignment to reach out to a lost friend or professor.  During my time in Dr. L’Pree’s class, we had to watch PBS Newshour starring Gwen Ifill every single day, which seemed like a burden at first, but turned into a bit more of enjoyment as the semester went on.  We lost a legendary journalist when Ifill passed, so I’m glad I could reach out to my old professor to discuss it.

This tweet faired pretty well.  With 6 total engagements, there were 3 detail expands, 2 likes, and 1 profile click.  I think the content is solid, because not many people at all would know that random emoji fact.  However, it may have gotten more engagement if I had a picture or link along with it.

This is another tweet that did solid, but not as well as I would have liked it to do.  It had 5 engagements, including 2 detail expands, 1 retweet, 1 like, and 1 profile click.  The assignment was to tweet with a hashtag, so I chose #football but it didn’t seem to get that much notice outside of my followers, even though I did get a retweet.  Next Sunday I think I should try other football-related hashtags such as #NFL, #NFLSunday, or #Touchdown and see which one has the best community and engagement.

This tweet was in an effort to provide constructive criticism on how someone could make a specific tweet better.  Because it was a reply, it received significantly less impressions than regular tweets I send out, so that explains why the engagement rate of 6.2% is higher than a large majority of my tweets, even though it had a really low quantity of engagements.

This tweet was a tweet that I really thought would do better than it did.  With only 3 total engagements – 1 like, 1 hashtag click, and 1 detail expand – this tweet’s results were mediocre.  It was an #ICYMI tweet that I tweeted 4 days after the first Presidential Debate.  I thought that was a fair amount of time, with a story that would spark some interest in people, but it failed to do that.  My best guess is that the New York Times article headline is visible on Twitter and shows how many people watched, which might take away someone’s interest in clicking to read the article.

This is one of my more successful tweets in regards to engagement rate, with a rate of 7.6%.  Out of the 9 engagements, 7 were link clicks, which is nearly 80% of the engagements.  It is the first time that I have shared a Twitter Moment, but it is something that I think I should do going forward because it does garner high engagement.

This tweet occurred after I followed the class Twitter list and wanted to engage with a classmate on Twitter.  I think Twitter lists are highly underrated because they aren’t used as much as their usefulness would make me think they would be used.  The engagement with my classmate in this tweet received 2 likes and 2 profile clicks.

This tweet was another that did alright with the engagements with 4 total (2 likes, 1 detail expand, 1 profile click), but I thought the content was very insightful.  The tweet I quoted has a graphic that shows different ways social media is becoming more of a part of the corporate world, including 94% of corporate businesses saying they use social media and 85% saying their business has got more exposure from social media.

This tweet is a “flow” tweet where I looked at what was trending in London, United Kingdom to see what is being talked about on social media in another part of the world.  Interestingly enough, the top 2 trending topics, “Supreme Court” and “#Brexit,” both were part of the same story.  To my surprise, this tweet didn’t pick up much steam at all with only 2 engagements, even though one of them was a retweet.

 

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