Who Wants to Be an Influencer??

Posted on by Robyn Deneroff

I created a my first ever Twitter account for the purpose of the course. I started the account with one follower and I followed about 30 people including friends and celebrities. Since starting the account in August, I have gained 46 followers and am following 70 people over the course of 97 days. My percentage of growth is 4500% ((46-1)/1) x100. As I started to gain followers, the timing of my posts had to be more carefully calculated. This chart shows the daily activity of my Twitter followers.

The most successful way I gained followers was through simply following someone first, and they would then follow me back. I did this with most of my followers, especially those who are from my hometown and don’t know that I needed to make this account for class. Posting on other social platforms about my account was another successful way I gained followers. I posted in my sorority Facebook group about my account and my sister followed me. Using this Facebook group also helped me increase my influence because it increased awareness of my Tweets. I would post when I sent out a new Tweet and I would quickly start to get likes.

I also created a new Instagram account for the class, starting with one follower and ending with 12. I follow nine people and I only have 11 posts. My percentage of growth for Instagram was 1100% ((12-1)/1) x100. Unlike my Twitter account, I used this Instagram solely for the class. I have a separate personal Instagram that I didn’t want to use. I didn’t use any special techniques to increase my followers on Instagram, but I sometimes followed people first who then followed back. I never shared these posts on other platforms. On both this account and my Twitter, unless otherwise assigned, I only ever used the class hashtag.

Top 10 Posts:

1.

This was one of my first Tweets, and I was a little surprised at how well it performed. The engagement rate didn’t surprise me as much because I know both Shawn Parr and Elaina Smith, so I knew they would react in some way to my mention. They both engaged with the Tweet differently though, which I thought was interesting. Shawn liked and quote tweeted it, but Elaina just liked and commented. I tried to keep this one very simple and to the point, but also fun because they are radio hosts and their show has a very positive and fun vibe. I used the starry-eyed emoji because I was tweeting at real celebrities which had me pretty star struck.

2.

This was actually a cross-promotion for another class, but it fit with the Twitter assignment for the day. The assignment for the other class was to create a viral meme, and in order to help my meme go viral I tweeted it on multiple occasions. This was one of the ones I posted in my sorority Facebook group, which helped increase engagements. I asked people to like and/or retweet the meme, and in doing so I also gained followers. I didn’t expect anyone to retweet it but a few people who thought it was funny did, which helped my performance both in this class and the original class for which I made the meme. I used the Twitter window to create the meme and inserted an image after inserting the text. I think setting it up this way also helped because it is the standard way we see most memes.

3. 

This tweet didn’t perform as well on the surface, but of all my tweets it had the highest engagement rate, coming in at 21.1% and it was among my tweets that had a higher number of engagements. This was my first tweet with multiple images, and I think it worked well because I had increased engagement. I wanted to share three pictures of similar items without them being exactly the same, and most of my followers know that I love to share food across all my accounts. I didn’t edit the pictures because I wanted them to be as authentic as possible. I remember sending out this tweet later at night, which is why I think it didn’t receive as many engagements.

4. 

This tweet was also one that didn’t perform well on the surface but had the second highest engagement rate of 19.5%. All I did for this one was copy and paste a link that I wanted people to click on in order to help a meme go viral. I made the caption a little witty but also to the point with hashtags that even promoted the purpose of the post. I was desperate for clicks, so I tried to do as many things as I could that would lead to a high click-through rate. I shared a few other memes prior to this one, and I think that negatively impacted the impressions and engagements on this one because people were tired of seeing my memes that weren’t very funny.

5. 

The assignment for this one was to use a trending hashtag, and instead of picking a random one, I chose one that was meaningful to me. Earlier in the day, my grandma had called to share this information with me and I thought it was a beautiful and happy story. Using the Veteran’s Day hashtag helped my tweet because it circulated in the pool of tweets with the same hashtag. I wrote the message and only included a single red heart emoji to display the love and gratitude I felt, but also to show that I was talking about a serious matter. The use of more than one emoji usually indicates a more fun and sillier vibe, but a single generic emoji can show the same positive emotion in a more serious way. I think careful emoji choice here helped to increase the impressions for my tweet because I conveyed the exact right tone for the hashtag.

6. 

I tweeted this one twice, and both times it performed extremely well. But this first time performed slightly better in terms of impressions. I think that Bachelor content is always enjoyable and tends to go viral, so I was hoping to earn some high levels with this meme. Also making the caption related to the meme and the show was helpful in ensuring that people knew just how much influence the Bachelor has on my timeline. I picked this meme from the Twitter options because the man in the gif, Blake, was a very controversial contestant on the show. Some people liked him and others didn’t so everyone could relate to the gif in one way or another. Using the hashtag for the show was an important part of why this Tweet performed better.

7.

View this post on Instagram

warm n toasty🔥 #nhsmc

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This boomerang didn’t receive any likes but it did receive 9 views, which is more than half of my followers. I had taken the boomerang last year, but I thought it was a good post in keeping with the foodie theme of some of my other posts. I also wanted to post something that related to fall and cold weather, so warm and toasty dessert was a perfect choice. I didn’t edit or crop the image before posting, and I made the caption simple but fall themed because it helped convey the idea that food and fall go hand in hand.

8. 

This was a retweet of an earlier tweet in which I used the same gif to show how excited I was to start The Politician. I am surprised that the later one performed better than the original being that the gif is significantly blurrier than in the former. The gif, of Ben Platt, the star of the show, was meant to put the viewers in a happy mood, and get them excited to maybe watch the show. I used the gif gallery on Twitter for both the original and the remake, and then scheduled this later one to go through Tweet Deck. I tagged both the show’s Twitter account and Netflix, as the provider, and that helped increase impressions.

9. 

I posted this as a gallery in order to show multiple different accounts at the same time. All of the accounts had something in common so it made sense for me to group them together. I also did this to continue with the food theme that I have as part of my personal brand, but to shed light on some other food brands. At the time, I was the director of the Syracuse chapter of Spoon, so I wanted to shout-out fellow upstate NY chapters. Using the hashtag #FollowFriday let my audience know that I keep up with these accounts and I think they should too. I also included a hashtag about food and tagged all three accounts whose pictures I used. The yummy face emojis were just an extra touch to show that #FoodFriday is supposed to easy and fun. Having more than one media (3 images) in one post allowed for a higher media engagement.

10.

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my favorite view😍😍 #nhsmc

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I think that this one performed better than other Instagram posts because people know and can relate to it. Using a picture of our school shows that I am trying to connect with everyone and will help people feel more connected to my page knowing that we have something in common. Even though I only got three likes on this post, this is the most likes any of my posts on Instagram have. Tagging the location also drives awareness and lets people click in to see where I am. I cropped this photo as a square and edited it to look a little more artistic because I wanted to appeal to a wide range of people.

 

Before this course, I didn’t have a Twitter because I thought it was unnecessary. I did not know how to use the platform well and I would get stressed about posting, liking, and retweeting things. I have used some of the online resources like FollowerWonk and TweetDeck to do things outside of this class. I’ve also used Boolean in multiple other classes, which is something I originally learned in this class. One of the most interesting lessons for me was the one about #voice. Because I was new to Twitter, I didn’t really have an established #voice, and I was able to explore different ones throughout the semester and my Tweets. I’ve decided that I want my #voice to be witty, simple and mostly sarcastic, but also purposeful when I have something important to say. This is going to be hard to communicate because I am still learning new tricks, but I am excited to continue growing my personal brand.

 

 

 

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