I have chosen the Twitter feeds of two different organisations for an analysis of social media success: the Washington Post and the Digital Education Research Network (DERN). These two organisations differ greatly in their social media presence from their follower count to the type of content they tweet/retweet as well as the audience they seek to appeal to. The Post has 18.6 million followers, in comparison DERN only has 1853 (numbers correct as of 22/01/22). The Post exclusively tweets links to articles from their website and retweets a few select posts from their journalists. In contrast DERN posts few original tweets, mostly retweeting posts from industry professionals, professional associations, and ACER. The audience for The Post appears to be Washington D.C. residents primarily and US citizens and world readers second; DERN’s audience is leaders, educators, and researchers in the field of digital education. These differences, however, do not determine whether one organisation is more successful than the other.

When using the engagement metric to measure success, it is assumed that higher numbers of shares, likes and replies would suggest greater success. Both The Post and DERN have low numbers of engagement with their posts in proportion to their follower count which leads to the conclusion that neither organisation has achieved success on social media. However, to explore this metric further, Hodgkinson (2021) suggests comparing these key metrics against those of competitors and industry leaders.

Comparing DERN against other similar organisations, namely Digital Learning and Teaching Victoria (DLTV) and ACER, shows they have a lower follower count and lower engagement on their posts than DLTV and ACER. They are also less active, posting less than their competitors, including a two-year abandonment of the account between 2019 and 2021. From this comparison it can be concluded that DERN have not displayed social media success. In contrast, when comparing The Post against a competitor, the LA Times, and an industry leader, the Wall Street Journal, their follower counts are higher against the Times, but lower than the WSJ which is to be expected. The engagement displayed by all three organisations is similar in proportion to their follower counts, and all three display similar amounts of activity. This leads to the conclusion that The Post is successful in their social media presence.

The success of an organisation’s social media presence is often judged by the number of likes and shares a post receives but there is no one right way to measure success. While these publicly available metrics can be used to measure a certain degree of success, when used in conjunction with other metrics such as impressions, reach, referrals, and conversions a more complete view of an organisation’s social media presence can be generated (Chenn, 2021). This can then be used to measure against an organisation’s social media goals to better determine whether their social media presence is a success (Hodgkinson, 2021).

Chenn, J. (2021, March 26). The most important social media metrics to track. Sprout Social blog. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-metrics

Hodgkinson, R. (2021, July 23). How do you measure social media success? Agorapulse blog. https://www.agorapulse.com/blog/social-media-success