The Secret Recipe of Your Twitter Account
Unlike several Social Media applications, twitter offers you a free service (Twitter Analytics) that helps you analyze and discover your followers’ characteristics and further understand who follows you and why do people engage- or not- with different posts. Of course, the elder your twitter account and the more active you are, the more interesting the analysis will be. So below are some humble findings and interpretations I found about my twitter account that is only about 2 months old- born on January 20, 2016.
Personally, I’m not a fan of Social Media applications. Do not make false interpretations. This does not imply that I’m against them. It simply means that I do not join much. Managing them needs time and sometimes special skills. So I felt satisfied with my only Facebook account that’s 6 years old until we were asked my classmates and I by a Social Media course at university to have a Twitter account. I do all my assignments. Having a Twitter account was one. So I did it: @tannous_maria.
The interesting news was that we will have to analyze our Twitter account’s activity towards the end of the semester. Which is what I’m doing now. So here was the harder part- making the account active. Two things made this somehow possible.The first was that we were encouraged to re-tweet articles related to course topics and mention our class’s account (#myCOM224). The second is that I’m a segment-presenter on a local TV channel (LBC) so most of my personal tweets are about this. No, I don’t re-tweet news updates or love quotes. Nor do I tweet personal thoughts or feelings.
The total number of my followers is now 38. At first, my followers were mainly classmates at the Social Media course. We followed each other according to the general follow/follow back model. The peak by which the number of followers rose was on January 25 when I posted a picture on Facebook about the TV program I’m presenting a segment in -called Bte7la ElHayet- and mentioned my Twitter account in the same post. A collaboration model between Facebook and Twitter helped me gain about 15 new followers. Since then the graph has taken the form of almost a plateau- a steady growth of followers with an average of 7 during February and 9 during March. This is not low- but very low. The cause? Me not being an active tweeter.
Among my 38 followers, about 70% age between 16 and 26 years old. Most of these are my friends- same age as mine, plus or minus. Also 63% are females- again my friends- and 15% are diverse pages that most probably follow you to win a “follow-back.” However, generally speaking, my followers are mainly my friends. Some who I don’t know followed my account after I posted content to myCOM224 course account- articles about Social Media. Obviously, they liked the summaries I re-tweeted with the articles or the articles themselves especially when they were about Social Media as a business model.
More notable are my “Top Followers, Top Tweets, and Top media Tweets” as Twitter Analytics calls them. In January, my Top Follower was Yazbek Wehbe, with 109K followers and 9,536 likes. He is a news anchor and reporter at LBC- where I present my TV segment- so he’s obviously a public figure. Mr. Wehbe is so active on twitter and engages with followers by continuously tweeting news updates, weather updates, personal thoughts, jokes, and famous quotes (clearly unlike me). In the same period- i.e. January- my post about the TV segment I’m presenting gained Top Media Tweet with 379 impressions and 69 engagements after Luna Saad, a friend with 718 followers, 1, 953 likes and is a common friend with Mr. Wehbe as well, tweeted about my post and Mr. Wehbe re-tweeted hers as well. Social capital it is. ‘Followers’ capital’ actually.
In February, my Top Tweet was an article about Web 2.0 as eCommerce that I shared with my Social Media course (#myCOM224). It gained the highest rate of Impressions: 225. And people I don’t know- who liked the post- followed my account as well. These are likely to be interested in understanding the structure of Social Media, the way they work, and the relation between users and owners.
So there are two engines for making your twitter account more lively and active. One is content and the other is connections. My Top Followers show that posting content of interest to people (news updates, personal thoughts, jokes, famous quotes…) does actually stimulate engagement and attracts followers who expect to see similar content from you in the future despite if you’re a public figure (Yazbek Wehbe) or not (Luna Saad and Liliane Abou Ali). Clever are those who manage to include all varieties and hence not only attract more passive followers but an active audience who they -more cleverly and systematically- are able to continuously engage with.
As for connections, they imply popular followers you get who in turn attract attention to your own account-as in my case. These followers define the principle of “social capital” in life. Social capital refers to the links and connections people establish through membership in organizations or network of friends which become social capital when they help people achieve their goals effectively or when they open up access to places or things that are otherwise hard to get into (Giddens & Sutton, 2013, p.857). The “links and connections” in Twitter are the popular followers who help Tweeters reach a wider audience simply by re-tweeting their posts.
An example is that during the period when Luna Saad and Yazbek Wehbe (my Top Followers) tweeted about my TV show and mentioned me. I got the highest number of profile visits among all other months: 866 Profile Visits. If I were more active and eager to benefit from the fruits of this ‘Twitter Capital” (the equivalent of Social Capital) my account would’ve been way more active as well. But followers seem to not have found interesting content in my account to follow it. So , the tricks are clear and the recipe is here — my fault.
Another story that supports the importance of ‘connections’ and influential followers is about the page of the TV program I’m in: Bte7la ElHayet, more than 7,500 followers. This page posts live updates of the segments being presented. So every time on TV a picture of me is tweeted. They don’t mention me in the tweet because I’ve never asked. So one time, I was mentioning in front of a social media specialist how inactive I am on these platforms and mentioned that I have a new Twitter account. The first reaction was: why don’t you ask Bte7la ElHayet team to mention you in every post of you? It’ll attract followers to your personal account. Well, this might seem too obvious and known that it doesn’t necessitate a specialist -it was actually clear to me too- but I’m further supporting the argument.
The principle of social capital in society is no different in the online realm. To maintain your connections as well as establish new ones you need to be active. So maybe the extent to which one engages with the audience on social media platforms reflects the person’s attitude in everyday life. Some people are so social and like to express their thoughts, share them, and react to others’. Some people prefer remaining in the circle of close friends. Others, although they might not be so social, cross this circle only where they see promising connections awaiting and thus are selective.
So neither of the two engines (content and connections) dominates the other. They are complimentary. Insights about the activity of your account help explain certain instants and peaks but the general formula remains: content+connections= a fruitful account according to the principle of social capital. The more diverse the content (as the accounts of my Top followers show) the more the followers. The more active you are the more your followers will be. The more connections you make the more attention you’ll get- and basically more followers as well. It’s a whole management system and the tools are clear. Some pages even offer tips. If interested, it’s not a secret. Try it and discover your account’s infrastructure to further understand how fruitful your online social capital is being.
References
Giddens, A. & Sutton, P. (2013). Organizations and Networks in Sociology. Polity, Cambridge.
Twitter Analytics. Retrieved from https://analytics.twitter.com/user/tannous_maria/home
