The power of the social media influencer can be a significant force to harness for bolstering your brand and increasing user engagement. This truism was exemplified by the influence that the social media powerhouse The Dodo had on user engagement for the nonprofit Big Cat Rescue during the month of August.

Engagement, as measured by a combination of total retweets, total replies and total mentions, typically remains at a healthy constant with slight variances for Big Cat Rescue’s Twitter page. However, when The Dodo tweeted video content mentioning Big Cat Rescue, user engagement skyrocketed. On August 10th, The Dodo sent out two separate tweets which included video content (seen here and here) presenting BCR in a highly positive light to their over 517k followers. As a result, engagement (specifically in terms of total mentions), increased 26% for Big Cat Rescue from August 9th to August 10th.

Not surprisingly, conversation during this timeframe was dominated almost entirely by topics related to The Dodo’s two posts. With over 9,000 posts throughout the month of August, 31% of them were retweets of The Dodo’s posts mentioning Big Cat Rescue (total posts = 9503, The Dodo RTs = 2971).

Post contributed by Carly Wages, Jessica Peavy, Erica Kastner, and Hannah Cromey for their Social Media Analytics class.