Update: I’m not famous on social media… yet

Posted on by Austin Towns

Influence

When I found out that we were using Twitter for this class, I made the decision to create a brand-new account.  I have a separate Twitter page (@Towns22) that I consider to be my main account, but I felt it would be best to start fresh and enter the world of having a “school Twitter account”.  As a result, I started the semester with a whopping 0 followers.  Over the past couple of months, I worked to build my social media brand through networking with my friends and other students in the course.  As of November 28th, my account has earned a total of 21 followers.  With there only being room for improvement, my growth checks out to a 100% increase from the beginning of this course.

One main strategy that worked when trying to increase my influence and network was following other students in the class; for the most part, I received a follow back every time I followed a classmate.  I tried to make my page as inviting as possible, which explains why I have a picture of my dog as my background photo.  Furthermore, I was easily able to find more of my classmates through the hashtag “#NHsmc”.  As I did not know many people in the class in the beginning of the semester, navigating and networking through the hashtag was huge.  One surprising technique that didn’t work for me was following my friends from home.  Along with only choosing to follow my main Twitter account, they knew what it meant to follow a school account; they did not want to see a lot of random posts on their timelines.  This is of course understandable, but it was something that I had not thought of when the semester began.

 

Execution

TOP POSTS: TWITTER

#1: Sunset on Campus

Impressions: 1,586   Engagements: 53   Engagement Rate: 3.3%

For this post, I included a Twitter-native video of me standing and waving outside of Falk College.  From what I learned in class and from past experiences, videos typically earn a lot of engagement from others on Twitter.  As it was a beautiful scene on the Syracuse campus, I felt that it would be best to not only use the hashtag “#sunsets”, but to also tag @SyracuseU in the post.  In addition, with the hopes of catching the eyes of users who were scrolling through their timelines, I chose to include an orange and a sun emoji.  I believe this strategy worked well as I was able to draw in my largest audience of the semester.  Overall, the tweet earned 8 likes; my likes were from Professor Grygiel, my classmates, @SyracuseU, and users who follow @SyracuseU.  As Twitter allows you to see what other accounts are liking in your timeline, receiving a like from @SyracuseU was crucial to my post earning over 1,500 impressions.

 

#2: Gordon Ramsay

Impressions: 957   Engagements: 40   Engagement Rate: 4.2%

This was a reply-tweet to a @GordonRamsay post that was judging other foods (of course).  As Gordon has a history of roasting random Twitter users and their dishes, I saw this as an opportunity to share my french-toast picture from Snapchat in the hopes of receiving a response.  Knowing that the picture of my french-toast doesn’t look like the most appetizing meal, I decided to add some sarcasm to my post by adding the hashtag “#Delicious”.  Though Gordon Ramsay failed to respond to my post that received zero likes/retweets, I will continue to work towards the goal of having a meal judged by this legendary chef.  I believe that I received most of my impressions from people who checked the replies from Gordon’s original tweet.

 

#3: Periscope Excitement

Impressions: 729   Engagement: 90   Engagement Rate: 12.3%

I took this picture directly from the Twitter app, and it took place during the in-class Periscope assignment.  As I had a front-row seat to the best Periscope presentation, I thought it would be a great idea to live-tweet it for the rest of the class.  Along with using the hashtag “#FirstRowFears” to express concern for my safety, I tagged Professor Grygiel (@jmgrygiel) so that it would be viewed and possibly retweeted for many more to see.  A lot of my peers were also live-tweeting this event, so I knew that I would most likely receive a lot of engagements/impressions.  Luckily, my strategy payed off as my tweet earned 4 likes and a retweet from Professor Grygiel.

 

#4: DOG IN CLASS! 

Impressions: 603   Engagement: 63   Engagement Rate: 10.4%

I posted this tweet during our class on 11/28, and it is by far one of my favorite tweets of the semester.  Since the video was taken on SnapChat, I chose to apply a caption and a filter directly on the video.  Along with using a dog emoji in my tweet, I added the hashtag “#dogoftheday” because Nevada was a very very good girl.  The post earned a total of 4 likes and 2 quote-tweets (from Professor Grygiel and Nevada’s twitter page!).  Nevada was a huge hit in the classroom, so I made sure to take advantage of the opportunity by tweeting about it. Once again, I have found great success through using videos on Twitter and other social media!

 

#5: Fantasy Football Life

Impressions: 594  Engagement: 39  Engagement Rate: 6.6%

This tweet was posted when I was trying to reach out to a Newhouse alumnus.  One of my favorite Syracuse University alums is Matthew Berry, who is a Fantasy Football expert on ESPN.  Within the post, I self-roasted myself by including a picture of my fantasy football team losing horribly in a previous match-up.  Instead of drafting my tweet as one large paragraph, I decided to split my thoughts up into 3 different sections; I have found that this style may be easier for users to read.  In addition, by tagging Matthew Berry (@MatthewBerryTMR) and using the hashtag #NewhouseNetwork, I was hoping to get a response and possibly some fantasy football advice.  Matthew Berry unfortunately did not respond to my tweet, but I did earn 1 like from my fellow class-mate, Jeffrey Gordon.

 

#6: My Meme

Impressions: ___   Engagement: ___   Engagement Rate: ___

This was my promoted tweet from the Viral Content Challenge.  I drafted and sent this tweet directly from Twitter Ads, and it allowed me to create a link that sent users straight to my meme on Imgur.  I believe that the the image in the link was comical and inviting enough for people to click on the link; in fact, I believe that my meme earned a decent number of views thanks to this post.  Overall, this post earned 3 retweets and 8 likes, all of which were from random Twitter users that I do not know.  Looking back, it may have been a good idea to add more context to what the meme was about so that people (college students) would be more likely to click the link.

 

#7: SnapChat

Impressions: 502   Engagement: 24   Engagement Rate: 4.8%

This was tweeted for one of our class assignments.  Along with using the hashtag “#SnapchatSunday”, I tried to grab the audience’s attention by using exclamation points and an all-caps “HEY!”.  I wasn’t sure if #SnapchatSunday was an actual thing, but since it sounded catchy and cool, I decided to add it to my caption.  In addition, I included a picture of my Snapchat username/Bitmoji so that my followers would feel inclined to add my Snapchat.  This post earned me 1 like and 2 random Snapchat followers (whom were later removed from my account).  Though this was one of my most popular tweets, I believe that it would’ve been better if I had actually included the link to my account within the tweet, rather than just posting a photo of my code.

 

#8: No One Likes Procrastination

Impressions: 429   Engagement: 14   Engagement Rate: 3.3%

This tweet was in reply to two of my classmate’s tweets about Junioritis.  I noticed that Julia Zucker replied to Kate Florin’s tweet, and since I could relate to the topic, I decided to respond with my own statement.  In my tweet, I continued the trend of using the hashtag “#junioritis”, and then I included a funny GIF of Willy Wonka that stated, “A World of Pure Procrastination”.  The similar hashtag usage allowed me to smoothly enter myself into the conversation, and the tweet earned me a total of 4 likes from my fellow classmates.  With a GIF’s ability to address almost every situation, I try to use them as much as possible on Twitter and other social media.

 

TOP POSTS: INSTAGRAM

Just like for Twitter, I decided to create a brand-new Instagram account for this class.  As of November 28th, my account has a total of 37 followers; most of them consist of other students in the class, but there are few from random accounts that I do not follow back.  I published 12 posts across the semester.

 

#1: Rush the Field

Likes: 14   Comments: 2

View post on imgur.com

This was the first post of my new page, and it was easily my most successful post on the app.  To begin, the picture was a very cool action shot of myself during last year’s Syracuse football season, and I have received great feedback on this photo in the past from a lot of my friends.  I felt that the image would be a cool way to introduce myself to the other students on Instagram.  In addition, my caption included the popular phrase “Let’s get this money.”, which is used a lot with people my age.  Along with this caption, I believe that my location “Win” helped make my post a popular one amongst my peers.  Through my Instagram usage on my main account, I found that a great caption and location can go a long way in earning engagement from followers.

 

#2: Instagram Meming 

Likes: 10   Comments: 1

View post on imgur.com

This post was in response to an assignment about finding a meme from another account and asking permission to share the meme on my own page.  I found this meme on the account @wermemes15 (the account has since changed its entire page and username to @moisttttttttttttttttttttttt), and I thought it was a hilarious meme to share with the rest of my followers.  The user thankfully allowed me to use this meme, and as result, I tagged the account within my caption.  Along with receiving likes from my classmates, the owner of the meme liked and commented on my post.  Overall I believe the meme was popular because its humor was something that everyone could easily understand and relate to.

 

Conclusion

Overall, I feel that I was successful in terms of earning impressions/engagement with most of my posts.  In addition, through this assignment, I noticed a trend with all 8 of my most popular tweets; they either contained a picture or a video.  If I had the opportunity to take this course again, I would definitely keep this in mind when composing tweets for the class assignments.

Through clever captions, media variety, and a sprinkle of humor, I believe that my top 10 posts used multiple strategies that made my Twitter/Instagram accounts a must-follow for the class.

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