It’s All Greek To Me: Twitter Analytics

September 21, 2015

If you want more ROI from your organization’s Twitter account, then it’s time to dive into the Twitter analytics interface.  Here are some basic definitions and navigation tips to help you get the information you need to tweet shrewdly and confidently.

The basics

You can view individual tweet analytics on your mobile device by clicking the graph at the bottom right of your tweet. For a more comprehensive experience, log on from a desktop. To find your analytics, click on your profile picture at the top right, then select “Analytics” from the pull-down menu. This opens up a 28-day summary that shows the number of tweets you sent; the number of impressions, meaning how many times a user saw a tweet in his timeline or through search results; the number of profile visits, meaning clicks on your name, @handle or profile photo; how many @mentions you received; and how many followers you’ve gained. This will also show your top tweet, your top media-rich tweet, and your top @mention. To see summaries from the past few months, just keep scrolling.

Digging in

Once you have the basics, you can dive deeper to help you connect and engage. To get specific analytics for all tweets, you can click on the “Tweets” tab at the top or on the “View all Tweet activity” under your “Top Tweet.” This will show your tweets from a default 28-day time range; that range can be adjusted on the top right-hand side. The number of impressions are shown in the bar graph at the top of the page, with numbers, the day, the date and the amount of tweets sent appearing when you hover over each bar. You can sort your tweets in chronological order (the default setting), or by top tweets, tweets and replies, or promoted. On the right side, you’ll see the impressions, engagements and engagement rate. Sadly, you cannot sort by those fields, but the engagement information here will help you take your tweets to the next level.  Engagements are the total number of times a user interacted with a tweet, meaning a click anywhere on the tweet. The engagement rate is the number of engagements divided by impressions. A good rate can vary depending on industry, but anywhere between 1 to 2 percent is slightly above average.  If retweeting is a big part of your strategy, take note: Retweets will not be included in this list unless you wrote a comment with the retweet. Also less-than-great is that the exact time a tweet was sent doesn’t show directly on the interface. You must click on the time listing for each tweet, then your tweet will pop up in a new window. As always, the time sent is listed at the bottom of each tweet. If you’re a visual learner, check out the far right to see some graphical representations of engagement rate, link clicks, retweets, favorites and replies. Also of interest, the “Followers” tab, which shows the gender and location—by country and region—of your audience, as well as your audience’s top 10 interests. You can even add a comparison audience, or look at how your audience breakdown compares to Twitter demographics.

Real-time data

Outside of Twitter’s analytics interface, the notifications tab shows all favorites, retweets and @mentions for your account. This tab is always available on desktop or mobile through the “Notifications” button that looks like a bell. This will give you a real-time look at interactions with your account. One note: On a desktop, the @mentions can be looked at separately by selecting that tab once you’ve navigated to the “notifications” spot, although they are also included in the summary.

Twitter’s analytics can give your tweets more power and purpose in this data-driven society. Next month, the analytics of Pinterest and Google Analytics will be tackled. Does your business need more in-depth help? Contact us for content, branding and social media strategy: freshcreative.com/contact us.

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