Experiments on Twitter

As a Master’s student at Birmingham City University (BCU), I did an experiment on Twitter during the last six days.

I used my personal Twitter account (@bifarrugia) to post different types of content, in a variety of formats and narrative techniques, in order to analyze the performance and engagement of each post.

Altogether, I published 10 tweets, in Portuguese and in English. I decided to use both languages ​​in order to check the engagement of my current followers (mostly Portuguese speakers), and the possibility of attracting new English-speaking followers.

In these 10 tweets, the following techniques and narratives were used:

One authorial 10-seconds video tweet about London

One humours tweet

One breaking news thread

Two authorial tweets about a ddj report.

Five retweets from BBC, FT, Daily Mail, IJnet, and Birmingham Live.

In all publications, I applied at least one narrative element characteristic of Twitter: emoji, hashtag, picture / video, RT or mention.

Video tweet

Considering that videos generate more engagement than texts and photos on Twitter (Bradshaw, 2018), I produced a timelapse video footage about the city of London.

I edited the video in horizontal format to generate a better viewing experience on the timeline. I used emoji, but I didn’t use hashtags.

The post was published in English, on Sunday, 18 October, at 22 pm (London time), and had only 50 impressions and two engagements.

I believe that, if I had used more hashtags and published at a time when more followers were online, the post would have a greater engagement.

The humor tweet

In this post, I also used emoji, but I added hashtags and used an image (picture) as the main message.

The content was published in Portuguese, on Thursday, 15 October, at 20 pm (Brasília time).

I decided to use emojis and hashtags to generate a language more interactive and compatible with the Twitter narrative.

I also created a CTA to generate interaction, but the post only had 88 impressions and no engagement.

I believe that the time was also a determining factor, as the Brazilian audience on my personal Twitter account goes online earlier.

Thread

I made a thread about a knife attack in France. I published the posts as soon as the attack occurred, as a breaking news service. The posts were in Portuguese and were published at 16 pm in Brasília, on 16 October.

In that thread, I used the major of Twitter’s narrative features: emoji, hashtag, mentions (Le Monde and Charlie Hebdo), as well as a retweet.

Considering that Twitter is a social media where breaking news content resonates better, this post was the second best in terms of engagement during this experiment. It had 121 impressions and 14 engagements.

I believe that three factors contributed to this number: the time of the post (earlier for the Brazilian public), the content (breaking news), and the maximum use of Twitter narrative resources.

Authorial tweets about a ddj report

I wrote a post in Portuguese and another in English about a ddj report that I have produced recently.

I created a video to add to the post, as well as emojis, hashtags and hyperlink.

The Portuguese version, published on 13 October, at 20 pm in Brasília, was the post with the highest engagement in this experiment: 196 impressions, 11 engagements and 2 likes.

The English version, published on 16 October, at 8 am in London, was the 3º on the list, with 107 impressions and 18 engagements.

It should be noted that authorial content directly related to the audience’s interest has a higher chance of success on Twitter, as long as it is published at a time when the audience is online.

RTs

During the experiment, I used RT 5 times. The most successful was from a BBC news, in which I mentioned the geographer Daniel Raven Ellison, the main character of the story. He liked the post, which had 82 impressions and 14 engagements.

What I have learned:

Considering all formats and experiments, I believe that I could explore more hashtags in each post. In addition, I could have chosen better times to post, considering the behavior of my audience.