My Social Media Analysis And Reflection

 It's common knowledge that not everybody uses social media with the intentions of creating a strong presence, or really putting themselves out there. Some just take a casual approach and use it to stay up-to-date on news, others to watch funny videos, or post occasional life updates and photos to family and friends. For a long time, I considered myself one of those people, and still somewhat do. However these past five months have shown me countless different strategies that anybody on social media should want to know regardless of how they choose to use their platforms. It's also helped stress just how important it is as aspiring journalist to really try and maximize my output on these sites in a better attempt to make a name for myself.

 Although the focus of my social media analysis is my TikTok, what I learned is applicable to many other platforms and I feel better prepared to achieve my goals of being a prominent figure in the world of sports journalism. I'll admit some of what I do on TikTok might be against the grain a bit (not everything is evergreen) since the next day there's a new game and people might not care as much 24 hours later. Still, I try to use the advice of ensuring what I post is relevant and also a reflection of what my audience wants to see.

 I want to start off by saying I used to dread using TikTok. I didn't know how to navigate the platform and thought the search process was overly-complicated. Vine was still fresh on my mind and I couldn't help but feel it was a knockoff version. In general I felt there wasn't enough appealing content, especially from a sport's fan's perspective. Granted this was in 2018-19, around the inception of TikTok, when all kinds of dances dominated the app. What ultimately swayed me is that friends and cousins would sometimes send TikTok videos that were funny, and I figured perhaps the landscape had changed.

 Upon giving TikTok a second try, I actually found the app to be quite simple to use (which goes to show I probably just never cared to figure out the app before). I enjoy how it's formatted and tailor-made for endless scrolling, and how the "for you" page is actually accurate towards what I want to see. It's perhaps sometimes too relatable. Looking back at it, it's kind of crazy the 180 I've done on it, to the point where it's one of my most used apps.

Why I chose TikTok for my project

   I went with TikTok because of my familiarity with the platform, and also the fact I had already been growing an audience on there. I also didn't want the results of the project to be underwhelming, and felt I'd put my best foot forward since I had been creating content on TikTok prior. I thought it'd be perfect to try and keep growing my account while implementing strategies I learned throughout the semester. It's also easier to gain followers on TikTok, since a few moderately viral posts could lead to hundreds of new followers in a short span.

  3,750 followers was roughly where my profile was at when the social media analysis project began.  It had been growing at a steady rate for 2-3 months. Although I benefitted from the Astros winning the 2022 World Series and simply having more free time throughout the holiday breaks, I thought I could still achieve my main goal of 1,000 new followers. I thought it would be a bit of a challenge, but the good in that is that I'd feel incentivized even more to put out quality work.

 The main reason I thought my goal was within reach was just the sheer amount of new content opportunities everyday with baseball. I mean, there's 162 games in the season and even in some of the losses, there can be positive takeaways that could turn into a video idea. I also wasn't working at the time, so even with school I had the time to cook up content. The way I saw it, I didn't have any real excuse.

  The vast majority of my followers live in the United States, so I made sure to upload at times that made sense. Most of them are from Houston since my content caters towards Astros fans. Late morning hours/early evening hours were my go-to, and I did see more success in these videos compared to some I had posted later at night prior to the project. The other Latin American countries listed above share a similar timezone to Houston with a margin of two hours. The Houston Astros have a large quantity of Latin American talent, with key players Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Jeremy Peña, Framber Valdez, and Cristian Javier being few of many. They're beloved in their respective countries so it explains the distribution in followers.

  To follow up, in the past week, my followers have most been active during the 3-9 PM hours. While the majority of these days it has been the 8-9 PM range, I still feel it's better to upload earlier in the evening since the activity rate takes a steep decline after those hours. To my knowledge I can't go back further than a week, but I'd presume my followers are usually most active during those same hours.

How did my content do?

 I was quite impressed with the results in terms of engagement, views, comments, and shares. Although TikTok's algorithm can be a bit tricky sometimes, the only post that was a victim of it was ironically my latest one which has been stuck on 400-450 views. Most of them had 1,000+ views and 100+ likes, with my most popular one being a video of Astros rightfielder Kyle Tucker getting ejected.It had 211.2K views, 9,723 likes, and received 213 comments. Tucker is usally one of the more reserved players on the team, so seeing him lash out on the first base umpire surprised a lot of fans including myself. A key strategy I used was including relevant hashtags so that I could reach my intended audience. It's always a point of emphasis of mine since without them there's serious limitations towards how well the post will perform, especially as a smaller account. A quick comparison of a post with and without hashtags is enough go convince any creator to use them. I tried to avoid uploading longer videos north of 2+ minutes, since lack of attention span is a very real thing in today's age. TikTok is more prone to people just swiping to the next video more than any other app since it just takes the flick of a thumb.

  Although I'm satisfied with the results overall, I could've been more consistent. There were times I wouldn't post for 2-3 days, and one of my goals was to upload every other day. Prime culprit likely just being laziness or being busy with something else. I usually jot down ideas on my notes app because they'll come to me at random times, and there's definitely several that I didn't get to for the reasons stated above.

 Did I reach my followers goal?

  I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that I not only met my goal, but exceeded it. While I unfortunately do not have a screenshot of how many I had at the beginning of the project, it was around 3,750-3,775. I ended up with a bit more than 5,000, which is over 200 more than I had in mind. As stated before, I could have been more consistent, but the quality of content made up for it. I always try to include stats and graphics in most of my posts, to give them more flavor but also help paint a better picture as to what I'm talking about. I felt that helped draw in more followers, alongside just knowing who my audience is and what they want. I sought any opportunity to post some of the more polarizing players on the Astros because I knew these videos would do bigger numbers and drive up engagement.

   My TikTok might seem like more of a hobby than a journalistic brand, but I think it could help take me to places I want to go. I always enjoy creating video content and expressing my fandom in as many ways as I can. I do hope to start including myself in more of the videos even if it's in the form of voiceovers, and posting on YouTube consistently and building an audience there. An example of somebody I look up to in the baseball content creation world would be Foolish Basbeall. I could only aspire to have such high quality and in-depth videos one day. I aim to grow my other platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. As I continue to navigate through college and make new connections, gain new experience, and continue to learn about my dream profession, hopefully one day I have a real voice and role in the sports world. It'll take a lot of time and insane effort to be in the shoes of those who inspired me but I feel it was made easier by what I've learned this semester.