The Quest for Twitter Followers

Briefing

   

Recently in my English 211 course, my class was challenged to accumulate the most followers possible. The winner of the challenge would get Awesome points. Quite the reward if I say so myself. When I started this project, I had posted two hundred forty-two tweets and had twenty-five followers. Most of the posts are little articles that I have found interesting or my thoughts on a current event. I never really got into twitter. My main purpose of having it was to check up on sports. You can get an inside look at what people are thinking at a certain moment. In the sports world, it’s interesting because you can look at tweets they send out when something big is happening in their life or bonehead decisions they made.

The Strategy

My strategy was to tweet about current events that were going on. One of my main points was to tweet about the upcoming election. With all the drama surrounding the two main candidates, finding interesting stories was not that difficult. Find the article, add my thoughts, and throw in a few hashtags, such as #Vote2016, #HillaryClinton, #Trump should be sufficient for efficient post circulation.

The next big event was the World Series. I knew tons of baseball fans, as well as analysts, would be following the action. I was getting into the action as soon as project commenced. I tried a few polls as well as questions in an attempt to get interaction with people scrolling through twitter at the time. I looked at trending hashtags and used as many as I could. Using such hashtags as #WorldSeries, #MLB, #ChivsCle, as well as the individual team names #ClevelandIndians and #ChicagoCubs were all used in my tweets.

Another event I knew would draw some attention was NFL games. While the games are played, there is tons of twitter activity. While watching the game, I would comment on the action. Giving up-to-the-minute updates on the action using #NFL or the teams involved. Being a Dallas Cowboys fan, I am full of valuable tidbits of information to entice potential followers. It just so happened that the Cowboys played a prime time game, meaning no other games were happening when they were playing. A perfect opportunity to drop #DallasCowboys, @Dak, @EzekielElliott, #DC4L and get into the twitter action, posting about every big play. I also posted a few polls to my twitter feed, pertaining to the outcome of the games.

The Outcome

My twitter feed has been very active during the duration of the contest. I posted over 100 tweets during the time of the project and using the hashtags I previously mentioned has netted me a ton of activity on my feed. Some of my posts have generated upward of three-hundred views and a ton of likes. Unfortunately, follows have been hard to come by. I only generated two additional followers, but in the mean-time, lost two of my previously accepted followers. Therefore, during this challenge I have gained a total of zero followers. I thought my tactics would get me action and it did. I might have been able to gain a few followers if I had directly hashtagged #follow or #followme. Hindsight is 20/20, but with the popularity of twitter, I doubt that many people would follow based off of a few random tweets. I think I will continue to use twitter on occasion. The challenge may be over for the class, but I have made it my mission to gain some followers, not just a simple browse and go.