Digital Corps

Twitter Platform Basics

Quick Tip!

On Twitter, make sure to stay up-to-date on relevant trends or conversations that the Digital Corps can use. This is a great way to earn more likes, followers, mentions, and get more eyes on future posts that are sent out.

Helpful Staff for this Topic

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Twitter is one of the four social media platforms that the Digital Corps uses to reach the Ball State and Muncie communities. With a zany personality that allows its users to post virtually anything, Twitter is a great way for the Digital Corps to have lots of fun with content. The Digital Corps, while maintaining a professional and educated voice, uses Twitter to reach younger demographics as a fun gateway into life at the Digital Corps.

Target Audience

Twitter fosters a fun, casual voice, which attracts a particular target audience. As a powerhouse social platform, many of its users are under the age of 25. For the Digital Corps, the target audience is narrowed down into two sections: Students and Ball State Alumni.

• College-Aged Students
  • The main demographic for Twitter users are people between the age of 18 and 24. Targeting college-aged students, especially those from Ball State, allows the Corps to inform others about available opportunities, such as jobs or certification exams, and even update students about other things going on around campus.
• Ball State Alumni
  • While outside the main Twitter demographic, the Corps engages with Ball State alumni and, more specifically, Ball State alumni who have worked at the Digital Corps. The Corps wants to make sure that they aren’t being forgotten after graduating. Specifically, this means using a more professional voice to gain their attention. Even though they are not the target demographic, they are an important one that helps with engagement on all of our social media platforms.

Optimal Times

All social media platforms revolve around the timing of your posts. For example, you wouldn’t want to post a call-to-action to engage with followers at 6am because no one would likely see it and it would be drowned by other tweets in their timeline. Understanding the most optimal posting times for Twitter will increase your post engagement and post reach.

• The best time to post tweets are Monday and Tuesday between 11am-1pm. These times signify a big break in many people’s days and could result in people being active on social media. These days are great ways to post and start off the week with some nice visual content.
• The overall best times for Engagement posts are Wednesday and Fridays between 9am-11am. Engagement posts are posts made to foster more interaction than a normal tweet. While these are early times, it’s been found that people log in earlier to catch up on any news they have missed. So if they see a tweet from the Digital Corps in their feed, they are more likely to engage with it.
• Another tool that is useful for optimal posting times is Twitter Analytics. This built-in tool allows you to see what is performing well and what isn’t. It can also tell you which post performed best at specific times. These analytics help formulate the posting times the Digital Corps uses for Twitter.

Optimal Content

There are several different options of content you can post on Twitter. Across the whole platform, videos and photos are a main source of content. Those are also the main forms of content that the Digital Corps posts. However, there are other forms of content, such as Evergreen and User Generated, that make for good posts and generate good engagement from our followers. Looking at analytics for past posts is also a great way to see what performs well and what doesn’t.

• Visual Content
  • Videos and photos are easy and fun ways to engage people with our posts. These are usually provided by the Video and Design Teams but some are created from other Digital Corps members. The Corps Social Media Videos project is a great example of some of the content the Corps produces to engage with followers because the content is made specifically for our audience.
• Evergreen Content
  • Evergreen Content is any type of content, including visual, that can be used at any date. For example, the Digital Corps has some videos that reflect this type of content. While the Digital Corps doesn’t post them often, they are great ways that will always remain relevant on social media. For example, we have Evergreen Content such as Tech Tip and Portfolio Day videos.
• User Generated Content (UGC)
  • User Generated Content is exactly what it sounds like. It is when followers interact with us and provide an opportunity to interact back with them. This type of content can come in the form of retweets, likes, mentions, and even visual content like photos or videos. UGC is a great way to get more eyes on our post and helps produce organic content. Check out the #social_media channel on Slack for examples of content we could use that could foster UGC.
• Interactive Content
  • Twitter is unique because it offers the opportunity for users to interact with your content more directly. For example, posting polls about various topics allows users to express their interests through your content. Interactive content like polls are a great way to boost engagement levels on Twitter.

Quick Tip!

Using the “Lists” function on Twitter is a great way to get inspiration and engage with others. By saving tech inspiration accounts, Ball State organizations, clubs, and other pages, you can easily organize topics and view tweets and other activities from saved accounts.

Analytics

Twitter Analytics is a built-in tool on Twitter that allows managers to see how people interact and engage with their content. The analytics provide insight into what works and what doesn’t and makes it easier for the Corps to choose which content performs best with followers. There are three main components to Twitter Analytics: Engagement, Impressions, and Engagement Rate.

• Engagement
  • Engagement is the total number of times a Twitter user interacts with a tweet. This includes clicking on the tweet, replies, retweets, follows, likes, etc. Engagement is important because it truly narrows down just how many times people are interacting with the tweets sent out.
• Impressions
  • Impressions are how many times a Twitter user has seen the tweet on Twitter. This means that someone is seeing a post that has been made on their Twitter feed, either by following us, seeing who they follow retweet or like it, or having our tweet come up as a recommended account to follow. These numbers allow us to see how our tweet is reaching across our platform, the more impressions there are, the better.
• Engagement Rate
  • Engagement Rates combines Impressions and Engagement by dividing total number of engagements by total number of impressions. This analytic is important for the Digital Corps because it accurately depicts how much of an audience we are attracting as well as how much they are interacting with our content. A “good” engagement rate is usually between 0.02% and 0.09%, however, because the Digital Corps is not a huge company, our numbers exceed the average numbers and usually reach around 3%-10% engagement rates.

Overall, Twitter, while easygoing, is an important tool for the Digital Corps to use in order to reach students at Ball State and alumni. By staying relevant, engaging with them, and producing fun and interesting content, the Digital Corps is able to connect with their target audience for Twitter and have an effective presence on social media.