Upping My Twitter Game: An Analysis of My Social Media Influence

Posted on by Alyssa Lobo

Though I have been a Twitter user for 6 years, I haven’t consistently tweeted, nor have I actively attempted to increase my social media influence. I used Twitter for information, entertainment and to keep in touch with friends. So I rarely used hashtags, because I felt they were intrusive, and frankly, a bit tacky.

I couldn’t be more wrong. The biggest take away from this class has been how important hashtags are to growing your audience and increasing your influence online. I even started using them for tweets and conversations that  weren’t for this class. At the beginning of the semester my Twitter followers were 247 and my Klout score was 40. Around the time of writing this post I had 268 followers and a clout score of 42. This is a follower increase of around 8.5%. My Klout score was 44 by the end of March 2018, but dropped when I stopped tweeting as regularly. So my second take away is to be more regular with my tweeting.

Here’s a look at what else I learned from my highest performing tweets:

Impressions: 2,002   Media views: 139  Total engagements: 42
This was my highest performing tweet. I tweeted it after news broke that a very popular Bollywood star had suddenly passed away. I wanted to catch this moment without being insensitive. So I focused on a niche aspect of Sridevi’s legacy – that she was a queer icon. I also included a gif from one of her most well known films. I later found out that this tweet was picked up by news agencies in India and used in their coverage of her death.

Impressions: 984   Media views: 88   Total engagements: 37
Stock content is a good way to engage your audience, so I used #FollowFriday, #WednesdayWisdom #TuesdayThoughts, etc. I have been following both these accounts almost since their inception and found them to be fun and informational. After this tweet I got a like, reply and follow back from @AgentsofIshq . They also started following @WhoresofYore. I think the tweet did 3 things – it widened both the accounts’ audiences, it allowed them to connect to others who were doing similar work and it showed some love with the gif. 

Impressions: 709   Total engagements: 9 Impressions
This was a quote retweet from @qikipedia , the social media account for the QI TV show. I used the trivia to talk about my identity and used appropriate hashtags. There is a sizable Goan diaspora across India and the world. Last semester I took the Buzzfeed class and learnt how they used identity and emotion in developing content. I think the emojis also helped add rich media to what was only a text post.  

Impressions: 673    Total engagements: 37 
This post was meant to mimic the voice of Aditi Mittal (@awryaditi), who’s an Indian comedian. I happened to see this brand of sauce at the grocery store and this seemed like a joke she would do. 

Impressions: 531   Total engagements: 3
This was a quote retweet from Chinese American writer/comedian @jennyyangtv . I think this tweet did well, purely because of the informational value of the original tweet and the #MeeToo hashtag.

Impressions: 524  Media views: 59  Total engagements: 16
With this tweet, the gif does the heavy lifting of bringing in engagement. Writers absolutely love Dead Poets Society and EVERYONE loves Robin Williams. I got some engagement from the accounts mentioned and a couple of book lovers on Twitter.

Impressions: 229   Total engagements: 25
This was a meme that went viral earlier this month on Twitter. I decided to hop onto the bandwagon. There was no hashtag associated with it.

Impressions: 423   Total engagements: 26

This was my first attempt at meme making, so I’m sure about the quality of the meme itself.  This was tweeted during the Oscar ceremony broadcast, so I used hashtags that were associated with it. I didn’t get any likes, RTs or comments, so I think the engagement came from views by people who were browsing #Oscars90.

Impressions: 263  Total engagements: 28

This tweet was a class assignment and part of a thread. I used the fandom hashtags so that people who were looking for fan content could find it easily.

 

Impressions: 177  Total engagements: 9

This was a Twitter collage post, so I thought, what kind of pictures do people like the most?  It was a no-brainer. Thankfully I happened to have a lot of pictures with animals and used to corresponding hashtag for each animal. I also used an emoji to add richer media to the post.

 

Looking at my Twitter use this semester, I think that rich media (especially gifs) does drive engagement. But one should also not underestimate the value of a well-placed emoji. Hashtags are king when it comes to Twitter and can bring in an audience, so people will see your tweet, even if they don’t actively engage with it. Thinking about the kind of content your audience wants and how to best serve them helps – whether its information, helping them build their audience or even some lulz. But I think time is the most important factor here. Tweeting at the right time (whether when some news breaks or during an event is the best thing you can do to get people interacting with you.

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