Twitter has finally made analytics available to everyone! In June a few select users were given access, but now anyone who want to see their analytics can. This means that no matter who holds a Twitter account (a business, individual, or character like Voldemort, Don Draper, or Grumpy Cat) can now see a variety of wonderful data based on their tweets and followers in Twitter’s analytics.
The layout of this new analytics tool is highly user friendly and simply requires you login to your Twitter account through the Twitter analytics dashboard. With Twitter’s analytics comes all the usual speculation about whether or not Twitter is trying to be Facebook, just like when Twitter rolled out new profiles in May.
Whether or not that’s the case, Twitter offers some very useful new features that may even surpass Facebook’s current analytics.
Getting Started:
It appears that Twitter does not begin tracking your impressions and other data unless you’ve logged into your account through the analytics tool, or have used other analytics tools or scheduled tweets in the past. The company pages I run showed a great deal of data already, but my own personal page greeted me with a “no data found” front page. I’ve let my analytics tool run for about two days now, so I’ve collected some data over that period. Just be mindful that in order to start collecting useful data make sure you login before sending your tweets.
Impressions:
Once your all set up and have sent a few tweets, this is how the first page will appear:
Now my impressions are a bit off as this is not actually my impressions over 28 days. It’s really my impressions over about 2. But its a good start.
I have been experimenting with the types of tweets I send over the course of this few day period. My account is rather small, with only about 65 followers last time I checked. This means my impression will tend to be small, right?
Wrong.
Notice that I’ve garnered more impressions from posts tagging the Huffington Post and Always, along with the hashtag #LikeAGirl. These posts did much better because more people are searching through hashtags or through a specific brands mentions.
The posts where I didn’t link any content or any other person only garnered about 25 impressions, which is less than half of my following. But posts tagging companies did double and quadruple that in impressions and actually had engagement.
And then there’s this tweet:
If you click on an individual tweet on that opening dashboard it will show you all the statistics since it was posted. This tweet got to about 5.5k impressions, and garnered retweets and other engagements including handle clicks and favorites.
So how did my little account of 67 get me 5.5k impressions?
Easy, LOFT retweeted me.
Out of 64.8k followers, only about 5.5k saw LOFT’s retweet. Interesting, huh?
Ah, but wait! There’s more:
Twitter’s analtyics tracks all the other good stuff too: retweets, replies, favorites, and on the previous image you can see engagement and link clicks. This is displayed on the right hand side of the Twitter analytic dashboard and gives you the overall picture of how your account performs when it comes to engagement.
Followers:
If you go to the “Followers” tab at the top of the page, you’ll see some more highly interesting and valuable analytics.
The followers show the increase and decrease in followers on my account. This graph shows that something I posted or started doing in July set my follower growth to begin expanding much more rapidly. While I was aware of this before, having the visual graph reinforces this information and sets dates for when this occurred (if you move your mouse along the blue line it gives you dates along with a number of followers).
The data here is a little behind according to my Twitter profile. It appears to take it a day or two to catch up with new followers. This is interesting, and makes me wonder if the impressions rate is behind as well. Even if it is, this is still valuable information to have.
Like Facebook, Twitter breaks your followers down into location and gender, so you have a better understanding of who your followers are and where their from. It also gives you suggestions of other profiles to follow.
But even more interesting than this, Twitter lets you know what your Twitter followers are interested in:
Most of my followers are really into music, fashion, movies, and pop culture in general. Yet there is this interesting information that displays the “Most unique interests” of my following. I guess Shaving and grooming is probably a good interest to have…I just don’t know I would broadcast that on Twitter!
Anyway, these analytics give you a better idea of what people who are following you are interested in.
How Does Twitter’s Analytics Help Company’s Social Media Marketing?
Yes, I’ll admit it, this is a really fun tool to play with on your own personal profile. But the big question is does this really help online marketers in any way?
The answer is simple: YES!
1. Companies Want to See Results
Twitter has always felt a little like posting into blind nothingness. There were some analytics to be had, but mostly just follower growth and engagement, not necessarily impressions. And this tool allows all companies to have access to analytics, just like on any Facebook page or LinkedIn company page.
2. Track Engagement
Not everyone is going to retweet or favorite your tweet, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t interact with the tweet in some way. It gives you a great way to track what tweets are really doing a good job and getting those clicks, and what could use some work.
Because you can see the impressions vs. the clicks, you know that perhaps two different tweets have the same impression, but one is getting double the clicks. This tells you something about the style of the tweet that is getting clicks and this is valuable information for driving Twitter engagement.
3. Know Your Followers
Your followers should reflect interests that actually have to do with the product your offering. If your a B2B company, specifically in the marketing field like us, most of your followers should be interesting in business, finance, leadership, and also more industry specific things like: marketing, social media, SEO, content, and so forth.
If their not, your not reaching the right audience, which means your content may not be targeting the right group of people. Use this tool to help shape future posts, especially if your struggling on Twitter to engage with the audience you have.
Conclusion
Twitter analytics is not the end all, be all for companies. It’s just another useful tool that we can add to our arsenal and should be treated as such. But it sure is nice to finally have some good, free data to help you shape your Twitter strategy. Companies now have no excuse not to use analytics for Twitter because it’s completely free.
Re-evaulate and strengthen your Twitter strategy to focus on what your audience is looking for, otherwise your business is missing out on a great opportunity to connect with customers and bring in new leads.
Happy Tweeting!