Figuring out how to brand

Writing stories is the easy part. Getting people to care about who is writing is the tough part.

The hardest obstacle or facet of choosing a career in journalism was navigating social media. Not so much “using” it. That’s easy enough. Everything you click tells you it’s purpose. And I’m not too old to understand technology, yet.

The difficult part was “branding” myself. Or finding a way to be engaging to the masses. Everyone thinks they’re funny. So when a post gets a single like, if even that, it can be humbling. The career I’m pursuing in sports collides with the branding concept I was always afraid to encounter.

Something as simple as changing my profile picture had a massive effect on my engagement. I had used the same picture from my wedding since joining Twitter, so it was time for a change anyway.

The chart above shows my impressions in a twenty eight day period. That massive spike in the middle was in direct response to changing my profile picture. I have “Recruiting Assistant Intern at University of Houston” in my bio. I guess all it took was a photo of me in UH gear to make it real?

That was the most obvious change and accompanying response so far. But, I did notice that I got more engagement based on how I tweeted as well. Using some of the techniques that were discussed in class. Tagging an important figure or using a hashtag about the topic helped grabbed more eyes.

Along with linking a profile or adding a hashtag, providing some visual stimulation has helped as well. Tweets where I added a picture had more engagement than those without.

Piggybacking on someone with a bigger brand helped as well. Tweets where I was retweet or quote tweeting someone with a bigger following got more attention. Though their followers likely don’t know who I am, they were willing to support something that was attached to the other, more popular person.

The graphic above shows my top tweets in the last month. And there is a good mix of the methods for engagement being represented.

I mentioned before that I changed my profile picture, which helped a lot with engagement. Not only for the sake of class, but for the career I am trying to pursue. It gives validity to when I reach out to potential prospects.

If I send them a message stating that they’re invited to one of our summer camps, it means more. They tweet their gratitude for the opportunity to come out and pay money for us to decide if they’re good enough for us to pursue.

But, I was taught a lesson recently by one of these young men. It may have actually been a nice teaching moment for the both of us. My profile was not up to date, or correct is probably the more appropriate way to see it. I state that I am an alum of a scouting school, and have the handle of that school in my bio.

However, the handle was incorrect, and led to this interaction with a young man:

So the lesson here, keep your profile updated and correct. Another lesson, if you’re going to use other brands popularity to promote yourself, make sure you’re actually using that brand.

Customers, in this case a high school football prospect, will look into who you are and what you’re offering them. The internet and social media are a place full of trolls and scams. So anytime someone thinks they can out you, they will.

Generally, my engagement was low, I feel. At least in reference to journalism specific things. I did have a random person comment on an early tweet. And it was the expected response in regard to that topic. Guys who never played professional football pointing out the person they’re critiquing never played professional football.

Initially I was afraid to “at” reputable journalists because of how I may be viewed. This was a very foolish wall to deal with because it was based mostly on Bomani Jones stating that tagging famous people in things as lame. But, I don’t think this was what he was referring to.

I also was concerned with tagging specific people like Adam Schefter, because he is well known for his sensitivity and subsequent blocking. Tweeting things from my profile that I had just made more job friendly was a worry as well.

I did not want to tweet anything that would come off as bad for work either. So, I used that to my advantage. Every tweet was a way to promote the university or the city of Houston. And still have it fall in line with assignment expectation.

This has certainly helped my brand. Though I would argue that my audience is high school football players hoping to get a scholarship now. I did get some responses to my journalism “pieces” at work.

One of my coworkers stated that I was “causing controversy” on the internet jokingly. And the same coworker would check in to see what I “was upset about” that day.

So, it was sign that someone was noticing it enough to bring it up in conversation. Even if it was just in response to feeling obligated to like it due to proximity or relationship.

I still enjoy writing, and the idea of creating or cultivating a brand is much less scary after attempting to do so this semester. If nothing else, this practice has certainly pointed out what to do and what not to do.

The methods for engagement have allowed to get more bang for my buck. Looking at the start of the semester compared to last month, there is a significant difference in impressions per tweet and new followers.

Half the tweets allowed me to increase impressions, profile visits and greatly improve the number of followers I have. I actually just realized that I finally eclipsed 1,000 followers. Which, for some people may not be much. But seeing this recent surge is interesting.

More effort on my end can help improve those numbers even more. And maybe I can actually have a “following” at some point. These numbers are without even tweeting once per day.

This gives a clear idea of how doing something efficiently can improve performance. When I was hoping to make my name as a writer, I thought tweeting a link to my story was enough.

It didn’t make sense that people didn’t want to read what I wrote. I felt it was good, and I was talking about relevant things. But writing is clearly just half the battle. And I’m probably giving myself too much credit as a writer.