How a small Twitter account can create top impressions and engagements?

Even small Twitter accounts can reach top impressions and engagements if they focus on quality posts. Sharing original and interesting content, bringing expertise, supporting other users for a cause are rewarding. Visuals such as images and videos are appreciated by an audience. Taking relevant part into a conversation launched by an influencer and expert is a good tool for reaching an audience. But, the « must » is to get your posts retweeted by influencers. It allows you to enjoy their followers and their engagements.

A mass retweeting, by a normal user, is usually poorly attractive towards his own Twitter account. Personal issues, also, don’t federate a community. Interfering into a conversation, for diverting it to self concerns, is not engaging. A large volume of tweets and a mass of following accounts are no keys for success. They reduce the interest of an account. It is better to not comment emotionally and especially to avoid aggressive statements or threats. Those can backfire very quickly.

Here, I will show how I got a strong engagement with few tweets and with just 130 followers. I will give actual examples of content, taken between August and December 2020.

1. A small Twitter account…

My account is small with just more than 2,2278 tweets. It only recently went over 130 followers. It also did not get the certification granted by Twitter for influencer accounts.

However, note that this account is not anonymous. This is my real name. My real name is also written in my Twitter name and backed by my personal website which has a strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO) added to more than 100 articles published. The profile picture is a real one. Last but not least, the ratio, followers/following is 122%. This is a positive indicator.

2. … with an unusual level of engagement.

2.1. A good total engagement figure for the 2,270 tweets

2.2. A great engagement score

• 1.97 likes per tweet, while similar accounts have 0.08 likes – It is 24.6 times better.
• 0.44 retweets per tweet, while similar accounts have 0.03 retweets – It is 14.7 times better.

2.3. Frequently granted a Twitter carousel for French and English searches

Twitter carousel is a fantastic tool for monitoring Ereputation. It is usually granted to important twitter accounts. This exception shows that Twitter and Google value the account @BernardGrua.

More information about the Twitter carousel.

3. Twitter account figures: impressions, profile visits, new followers

3.1. Gross figures

Top numbers over the last seven months are highlighted in red. They are, all, concentrated on the last two months: November and December 2020.

The highest tweet production was in October and November. Then, the favorable results should be compared with the publication production to assess its value.

3.2. Tweet productivity

The indicators presented above should be divided by the number of tweets posted on the same period in order to determine what is their real efficiency.

The graph changes dramatically with a big peak in August, 2020. Obviously, August showed a strong productivity for impressions and mentions.

3.3. What means August peak for impressions?

In August, there is no tweet over 1,700 impressions (i.e. top five impressions). However, there are 8 tweets over 500 impressions. In total they make 7,611 impressions. The first of them (1,600 impressions) was a reply to Ariane Chemin , a famous French reporter who has a strong Twitter account (76.8 K followers). It also got the largest numbers of likes (14) and profile clics (21) for this month.

The three following ones were from the same thread about QAnon , a hot topic.

Then, came one post about Navalny (poisonning) and two about Belarus (riots against forged elections, here and here). The eighth posts of the top is, again, about QAnon. There are also 8 posts with #Paimpol (an old Breton fishermen harbour) which all together reached 2,429 impressions. Each post was with 4 pictures attached.

Sixteen from 59 August tweets make 10,040 impressions. This is almost half of the 21,400 August impressions.

The August performance for impressions is not the result of outstanding tweets but more the consequence of a certain number of good ones. It just shows that few relevant posts and quality pics boost impressions.

3.4. What means August peak for mentions?

While the tweets mentioning a user are external, it is almost impossible to know who is their author. « Fortunately », the data from the Pakistani stalker, Ramla Akhtar, aka Rmala Aalam, tweeting under @GruaAbuseArkive & @CopingWithCovid give us an explanation. From the 123 August mentions, 62 mentions were done by the stalker. The stalker initiated 50% of August @BernardGrua mentions. The magic side of a stalker is that you don’t need to tweet for getting his mentions. Meanwhile, @BernardGrua activity was at its lowest on Twitter (59 tweets). This led to a strong ratio mentions_received/tweets_posted.

The August outstanding ratio of engagement (2.8 mentions/tweet) for Twitter was given by a rabid stalker.

Stalkers make the Twitter account of their victims stronger. This is what I presented on an August 27, 2020 article. It was such an important demonstration that this paper was reblogged by an influent American website specialized in supporting bully victims – « Discover the strength of your Twitter account while facing a cyberstalker« . It got more than 100 WordPress likes.

4. Top tweets from August 1, to December 31, 220

From September to December, 2020, indicators are roughly on line with the tweet productions. Though, impressions are doing better and profile visits just explode. We will try to understand this performance based on the 5 top tweets for impressions, total engagement, engagement rate, profile clicks, media views and media engagement.

First of all, notice that no retweets done by @BernardGrua for any other user’s post is shown in these top tweets. Retweeting other users, atlhough it can bring further interactions is not a strong factor for immediate engagements. It can even be detrimental to the value of a Twitter account.

4.1. Tweets with top impressions

4.1.1. The number one for impressions (4,197) is a short reply on @complotsfaciles. It is a parodic account having 307 K followers. It shows that it is easy to get a big impression. Just join a conversation from an account with a big number of followers. However, it does not mean success. This post has no other interesting indicators. In the opposite, if the total engagement is low, a big impression number makes a poor impressions/total_engagements ratio. This last ratio might be meaningful for Twitter and Google. Here, this ratio is very low: 0.5% (22/4,197).
4.1.2. The second top impression is more interesting. This tweet is also the first for media engagement and is in the top five total engagement. This is because the visual is good and because it was quote-tweeted by @NhuBretagne. It fully enjoyed NHU 5.5 K followers, built from faithful and determined activists working for Bretagne re-unification. Though, it might not be obvious, the tweet was not only an image but carried a political message. This is how a simple picture taken by mobile phone got so many positive indicators.
4.1.3. Gérard Araud, @GerardAraud, is a former French ambassador of France in UN and In USA. He is a recognized influencer for geopolitics with 80 K followers. My reply was factual with personal historical family facts supporting his tweet. The number of impressions was mechanical. However, here too, it did not bring other interesting indicators.

Impressions, continuing

4.1.4. & 4.1.5. The two last replies were posted under Imran Khan’s tweets. @ImranKhanPTI (Pakistan PM) has 13.1 million followers. His lies and hate speech about Islamophobic France at a time we faced Islamist deadly attacks were an outrage for our country which was actively supported, on Twitter, by compassionate millions of Indian people. A French feed back was relevant on this hot topic. Note that one of the two replies also got one of the top five total engagements.

All in all, it is quite easy to reach a big impression number. However, if the tweet does not interest the potential audience reached, then it will lead to a poor total engagement and to an unfavorable engagement ratio. It might play, likely, against the credit Twitter gives to an account. It is better to think about it before dumping replies on influencer threads. See below § 4.2. & 4.3.

4.2. Tweets with top total engagement

4.2.1. The top total engagement post belongs to a thread which was started by a tweet sent to Nantes municipality by the Pakistani stalker Ramla Akhtar. My reply proved to be powerful because it was quote-tweeted by Bassem Asseh, @3asseh (4 K followers), Nantes first deputy mayor, who threatened, me, Bernard Grua, the victim, of legal proceeding. It was stupid from him. But, it was attractive for an audience. May be because of voyeurism… However, as we were in a period of deadly Islamist attacks, at a time authorities were challenged for not protecting Samuel Paty, the beheaded teacher, Bassem Asseh made the tweet and the full thread popular. => Read the detailed analysis of this very productive thread.
4.2.2. As observed above with another tweet (§ 4.1.3.), adding value to a Gerard Araud‘s post is rewarding because of his geopolitics expertise and because of his large number of followers. Here, the interesting point of this reply under a Gérard Areaud’s post, is the number of engagements it brought.
4.2.3. The top third total engagements tweet is, again, the one quote-tweeted by @NHUBretagne. See § 4.1.2.

Total engagement, continuing

4.2.4 et 4.2.5. The last top total engagements are, again, about Pakistan. The first one was an original post with a quality article from Francesca Marino, @francescam63 (17,6 K followers) a writer and journalist unknown in France. It brought a number of clever answers at a time France tried to understand what was considered as an irrational hate speech from Imran Khan against our country. Francesca Marino retweeted it. She brought her followers to this post, explaining the impressions. It also brought numerous profile clicks, because my profile mentioned I was under Pakistani Islamist bullying. The last tweet, a reply to Imran Khan was already mentioned in § 4.1.5. It got impressions because of Imran Khan and engagement because it was a well deserved slam. The butcher attack mentioned, in Paris, was committed by a Pakistani citizen.

4.3. Tweets with top engagement ratio (the most important Twitter indicator)

This ratio presents the impressions divided by the total engagements. In other words, it shows how the people, who viewed a post, reacted.

4.3.1., 4.3.3. & 4.3.4. are again the post coming from the thread launched by Nantes first deputy mayor, Bassem Asseh. As already explained (§ 4.2.1.), it was a stupid move from him to threaten a victim. It backfired and promoted my account. Read the detailed analysis of this amazing post.
4.3.2. @CynthiaDRitchie has 288.2K followers but many detractors. Debunking her unsupported hatred statement by French actual information got the second top total engagement ratio (likely from Ritchie’s opponents).

Top engagement ratio, continuing

The fourth and the fifth top engagement ratios are replies to haters about the « Vendée Globe », the solo race round the world. Its audience is made of passionate people especially during the hot trend rescue of Kevin Escoffier in the roaring forties by Jean le Cam.
4.3.4. The fourth post is an answer to a troll (four followers) who was commenting on Emmanuel Macron (6.5 M followers) thread, a big buzz video between the French President and the rescuer.
4.3.5.The fifth tweet, of the top engagement ratios, was a reply to @dickeric76 (0.5 K followers), a politician from a French far-right party, the Rassemblement National, who tried to tarnish these sailors, seen as hero by many people.
Both tweets, contradicting the haters, were factual and positive. They got an audience largely unfavorable to the haters.

Note that no Tweet posted on Gérard Araud threads got a top engagement ratio. The total engagement reached was not big enough for the large audience, and the resulting impressions, this user offers with his big followers number.

For a better engagement ratio, target influencers, even medium ones, who are in a niche where you can bring a true expertise and focus on what can make their audience reacting: retweeting, favoriting or clicking. Attach media and/or links they will open.

4.4. Tweets with top user profile clicks

All the tweets leading to the top user profile clicks are about Pakistan.

Three of them (4.4.1., 4.4.3. & 4.4.5.) were created by the despicable but incredibly profitable thread of Bassem Asseh, Nantes first deputy mayor, already mentioned above (§ 4.2.1., 4.3.1., 4.3.3. & 4.3.4.). See detailed analysis.
4.4.2. The second tweet is a reply to @FranceinPak (13.7 K followers) about fake news, lies and hate speech against France written by ShireenMazari, the Pakistan « minister » of « human rights ».
4.4.4. The fourth tweet is, again, about Francesca Marino very good article, see § 4.2.4. (total engagement).

At this time, I was mentioning, in my Twitter bio that I was bullied and impersonated by a Pakistani stalker. It may have pushed to clicks from an audience concerned with Islamists and with Pakistan.

4.5. Tweets with top media views

All top media views come from videos. Except one, they are on line with trendy topics: demonstration for Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded by the Chechen jihadist, Karachi flood and Christmas. Only the third one, 4.5.3., presents my photography website. But they are not the media reaching the highest engagement.

Note that all these videos are not shared from another platform. They are directly uploaded into the Twitter posts. No Youtube videos are shown in the top ones.

4.6. Tweets with top media engagement

4.6.1., 4.6.4. & 4.6.6. with top media engagements, were quote-tweeted by @NHUBretagne. It made the difference. The hashtags used, also, attract an activist audience.
4.6.2. & 4.6.3. were from the Nantes demonstration for Samuel Paty, the beheaded teacher. It was a hot trend, of course. Remember the 4.5.1. & 4.5.2. videos from this demonstration were also in the top two media views.
4.6.5. is about my photography website. It shows a friend, the beautiful Abir, a young Tunisian lady, with a « safsari », a traditional veil worn by women from this Arabic and Muslim (Sunni) country.

Note that no pictures from other supports, like shared article covers or Flickr pictures, are shown here. All the images have been loaded directly into a Twitter post.

If pictures are interesting, it is likely possible that loading four into a Tweet, instead of one picture, creates more engagement. People will open each of them. But these images need to be strong ones because they are presented in a small window and capture less attention. This is currently being tested with a four pictures post that NHU has been kind enough for, once again, quote-tweeting.

5. Facing a rabid stalking makes your Twitter acount stronger

Between September 18, 2019 and December 31, 2020, the stalker Ramla Akhtar with her two accounts @GruaAbuseArkive and @CopingWithCovid posted 1,433 tweets mentioning @BernardGrua. It makes an average of 0.63 (1,433/2,278) mentions per @BernardGrua tweet. This was certainly of great help to « show » to Twitter that @BenardGrua was an engaging account => stalker’s mentions are profitable!

The @BernardGrua account mentioned @GruaAbuseArkive on 168 tweets. That means 0.01(168/11,817) mentions per stalker’s tweet. It, likely, had no impacts on this extremely poorly attractive account (compare with § 2.2.). => mention scarcely your stalker if you want to keep him low!

For the period under review, August 1 to December 31, 2020, there were 83 tweets posted by @BernardGrua mentioning @GruaAbuseArkive. None of these 83 tweets are shown in the top ones presented above (see § 4) and in the most favorited or reweeted ones.

Arguing with a stalker, even with shocking evidences, and documented website articles, does not produce engaging tweets. On the opposite, it is likely a factor of disengagement. Let the stalker working for you. But don’t spoil your account with answers and mentions about him.

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