POST 1: THE LIFECYCLE OF THE SUN

ANALYSIS OF ENGAGEMENT

Users of twitter see posts on their ‘timeline’ and through direct searches. Posts on their ‘timeline’ feature the direct posts, likes, comments and retweets from users they follow, as well as extra content suggested by the twitter algorithm ‘based on their likes’. Direct searches will show posts that include the search term in the post’s body as text or a hashtag, or users whose biography includes the search term. For a twitter account, having an active following guarantees an impression from the following as the post will be guaranteed to show up on their timeline. Naturally, regardless of the content, the greater the number of people who see the post, the higher the chances of engagement. Hence, garnering followers is considered vital for success on the platform.

Since this is our first post and prior to this, the account had no following nor posts, the only way for the post to reach others was through direct searches and other users’ retweets, likes and comments. As we promoted the post ourselves and asked colleagues to engage (by liking, retweeting etc) with the post, the post received high initial main engagement of 8 likes and 7 retweets within the first 24 hours and plateaued across the week. We also saw a large increase in impressions (times seen on twitter, even if scrolling through) from 1278 to 7372 and subsequent increase in likes, engagements (interactions - (retweeting, replying, following, liking), clicking on the tweet including hashtag, links, avatar, profile, username, expansion), detail expands (clicking directly on the post to view more details), and profile visits which is suspected to be due to retweets from twitter users with larger followings on days 4 and 5 (@B0tSci: 3.5k following, @toomanyspectra: 16.7k following). On the final day, the post reached 7470 impressions, 14 likes, 11 retweets and 1 comment.

The ‘thread’ (picture slide-show) medium of presentation was intended because it was known for visual media (animated pictures, videos, emoticons etc) to perform better on the platform and receive higher engagements (Twitter). Popular science hashtags were used as well as a ‘clickbait’ (Mukherjee et al.) initial slide and title to induce a ‘curiosity gap’ and hence encourage them to click on the post. Although we cannot determine whether there were any users who found the post through direct searches, we can attribute most of the engagements to the ‘clickbait’ nature of the first slide. The quote retweet and comments on the post also directly relate to the statement presented on the first slide which further suggests that a clickbait title results in higher engagement rate. Contrary to the results of Mukherjee et al.’s study, we found that the first post which uses a clickbait title resulted in more shares than the other posts which did not use clickbait.

The thread nature of the first post allows us to track the analytics for every ‘slide’ of the thread and see how many users decide to read through all of the slides and what the drop-off rate is. Out of the 7470 initial impressions, 214 users also saw the very last slide and there were a consistent number of impressions (~250) throughout the entire thread meaning that those who chose to continue reading through the thread, read it in its entirety. The reading rate (impressions on the last slide/ impressions on the first) was 3.3% and the liking rate (likes/ impressions) was 0.1%.

POST 2: THE SCIENCE OF ANT-MAN

ANALYSIS OF ENGAGEMENT

The second post about the science behind Ant-Man did not perform as well as the first post in terms of outreach (impressions - times seen on twitter, even if scrolling through). On the final day, the post reached 1644 impressions, 441 video views, 10 likes, 8 retweets and 0 comments. There was an increased average of 30% viewing rate and a 0.6% liking rate. On the second post we see again an instance of a retweet from another twitter user (@B0tSci: 3.5k following) on day 7 resulting in a large increase of impressions, video views and retweets. We can hence see the importance of having other users with larger followings interact with the post in order to achieve increased impressions and outreach.

The group chose the topic of Ant-Man as we believed that many of the public would be interested or aware of the Marvel hero and hence would have a higher chance of interaction than a direct exploration into quantum mechanics. We attempted to present the information through a video format, using short clips of the movie and layering text on top. This was because a video with action scenes may appear more engaging to the viewer and encourage them to read the text alongside the clips. It also removes the necessity of scrolling and clicking, making it more convenient for the user to read through the material. The nature of the content as well as having a video presentation format may have aided in an increase in the viewing and liking rate of the post.

However, it is important to recognize when analyzing posts that main engagement rates generally decrease as impressions increase. As the posts reach a greater and more general audience, there is a higher chance that the audience wasn’t intending to look for science information and hence will not interact with the post. The readership rate and liking rate of the first post was higher than the second at around 1000 impressions so we cannot conclusively say that the quality of the second post was better than the first.

POST 3: WHY THINGS NEVER ACTUALLY TOUCH

ANALYSIS OF ENGAGEMENT

For the very last post on Twitter we made a thread (picture slide-show) and addressed the phenomenon of touch experienced by everyone in daily life and the science behind it. We hypothesized that using too many hashtags for our post could negatively affect its performance as it may give off the impression that the account was made by a bot and thus we only used one hashtag instead of 11 for the first and 6 for the second. We also experimented with using more of twitter’s text feature and added a text description to each part of the thread as well.

On the final day, the post achieved 160 impressions (impressions - times seen on twitter, even if scrolling through), 5 likes, 2 retweets and 1 comment. This post performed poorly relative to the prior two in terms of outreach and impressions but kept a similar liking rate (likes/ impressions) and had a significantly higher readership rate (impressions on first slide / last) of 32%. We can attribute the decreased number of impressions to having less retweets and postulate a higher readership rate due to the nature of content. Although threads may increase a post’s likelihood of being retweeted and shared, it may not have performed as well as the first post as users may not have developed a meaningful interpretation or emotional response from the content (Majmundar et al.).

No significant conclusion can be drawn about how the presentation style of information affects its performance as all three posts varied in content and we cannot conclude any exact attribute of a twitter post that will increase its number of impressions or engagements. None of the posts have led to an increase in new followers which implies that there are still many things we have yet to learn and improve about our posts to increase outreach and engagement.