Twitter analytics is a powerful tool for any social media marketer. Make sure you go beyond the basics to get an edge on your competitors. Here is complete guide for marketers how to use twitter analytics
Tracking your brand’s Twitter analytics is an important part of any business’s social media strategy. That’s because Twitter analytics provide key insights into how your audience engages with your content, what content performs best, and whether your brand’s social media strategy is working.
If you’re not using Twitter analytics already, you’re missing out on key Twitter insights that could help you refine your strategy and maximize ROI.
In this complete guide, you’ll learn:
- What Twitter analytics are.
- Why you should be tracking Twitter metrics.
- Which Twitter metrics are most important to track.
- How to use Twitter analytics.
- And what tools you can use to track important insights.
What are Twitter analytics? Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
Twitter analytics is a built-in data-tracking platform that shows you insights specific to your Twitter account and activity. It’s much like Facebook analytics, Instagram analytics or Google analytics, using graphs and reports to show important metrics.
Since 2014, Twitter analytics has been available for all accounts, from business accounts with huge followings to personal accounts with followers in the double-digits.
Absolutely thrilled to open up access to http://t.co/wcU6oj9hFM to EVERYONE. Check it out, and let us know what you think!
— Ian Chan (@chanian) August 27, 2014
Using Twitter analytics for business is kind of like getting a monthly Twitter analytics report card. Twitter compiles an easy-to-understand summary showing metrics like Tweet impressions, mentions, profile visits, top follower, top mention, top tweet and top follower.
Twitter metrics is covered in more detail below. But here are the dashboards and metrics available through Twitter analytics in a nutshell. Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
1. Twitter analytics home dashboard
This is the dashboard you’ll first see when you open Twitter analytics. Here, you’ll find a snapshot of key metrics — called Tweet Highlights — for each month. That includes:
- Tweeton top.
- Mention on top.
- Follower on top
Next to that is a summary with additional Twitter insights for the month like:
- How many tweets you sent.
- The number of visits your Twitter profile got.
- How many of mentions your account received.
- Quantity of new followers you gained.
- Your tweet impressions.
2. Tweet activity dashboard
This shows your brand how tweets performed over a specific amount of time. The graph provides a day-by-day breakdown of impressions over a 28-day period — or whatever time frame you choose using the calendar date range button. Find metrics like link clicks and likes per day here.
You’ll also find Twitter insights for individual tweets, like:
- Impressions.
- Engagements.
- Engagement rate.
3. Video activity dashboard
Find this dashboard by navigating to More in the menu and selecting Videos from the dropdown.
This dashboard looks much like the tweet activity dashboard. The only difference is that Twitter metrics in this dashboard are just for videos published using Twitter Media Studio and Twitter Ads.
Important metrics your brand can analyze here include:
- Number of video views.
- Video completion rate.
- Total minutes of video viewed.
- Video retention.
4. Conversion tracking
Source: Twitter for Business
The fourth dashboard brands will find in Twitter analytics is the conversion tracking dashboard.
This dashboard shows brands how their Twitter advertising spend converts into an action, like installs, sign-ups or purchases. Setting up a website tag allows brands access to website conversion tracking analytics.
5. Audience insights
In January 2020, Twitter removed audience insights.
Twitter is killing the Audience Insights page on Jan 30
For now, you can find this page at https://t.co/eOk5ECahfJ pic.twitter.com/YIRwqMdmDM
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 7, 2020
This used to list information about your Twitter followers’ demographics, including their interests, consumer behaviour, demographic info, mobile device usage and more.
6 benefits of using Twitter analytics – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
Using Twitter analytics for business helps brands make data-driven decisions about their social media strategy. Armed with data, brands can optimize Twitter campaigns to get better results and more followers.
Find out what content performs best
Do your followers prefer tweets with GIFs or photos? Are they more likely to engage if you share a poll or when you write a question? Do you know if your followers retweet your content more often if you share a link or if you share a video?
Don’t guess what your followers like. By tracking important Twitter metrics like top tweet, engagement and impressions, you have quantitative data showing what kind of content resonates most with your followers.
Build out your social strategy to do more of what works
Knowing what kind of content performs best can help you incorporate more of the same into your social media content calendar.
Basically, tracking Twitter metrics helps brands cater their content to their audience and give followers more of what they want.
For example, the Toronto International Film Festival often uses video clips in its tweets. As well as being on brand for a film festival’s Twitter account, this social strategy is likely repeated because it works well to engage TIFF’s Twitter audience.
Tonight at the Drive-In, Midnight Madness takes flight with Roseanne Liang's new nightmare SHADOW IN THE CLOUD, premiering now. #TIFF20 pic.twitter.com/lbhf3qUq5O
— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) September 13, 2020
See patterns and make data-driven decisions
Regularly checking your brand’s Twitter analytics report makes it easy to see patterns and trends.
For example, you can see if a Twitter poll was a one-off success, or if polls always have high engagement. You can see if tweets published on weekends perform better than tweets published on weekdays. Seeing trends and identifying patterns can help businesses make decisions about future content creation and publishing.
Track whether your audience is growing
Twitter analytics helps brands track follower growth in a reliable way. That’s because the Twitter analytics home dashboard provides new follower information in the Twitter analytics report generated each month.
Tracking this in Twitter analytics — instead of trying to remember if the follower number in your Twitter profile is going up each week — is a quantitative way of seeing how your brand’s Twitter presence is growing, and therefore, reaching more potential customers.
Some brands incorporate contests, discounts or giveaways when they’ve reached a new follower milestone. This is another way to increase Twitter engagement:
We've reached 10k followers🤯
As a thank you, there's a new code for Giant Simulator! Use code "SoulFarm" for +10k Gold in game!https://t.co/n5DdcPGvI9
— Mithril Games (@MithrilGames) April 25, 2020
Post on optimal days to increase chance of reaching audience
Not sure about the best time to post your content on Twitter? Unclear which days your Twitter followers are more likely to see and engage with your tweets? Tracking Twitter analytics means your brand doesn’t have to guess.
For example, if you see that Twitter engagement and impressions peak each Friday, always schedule and publish posts for Friday. If your Twitter analytics impressions are lowest on Sundays, avoid posting content you want lots of your followers to engage with on that day. Doing this helps brands better reach — and better communicate with — their followers.
See how your ad campaigns are doing
If you’re putting your money behind your tweets, you want to make sure you’re getting a good return on investment.
Twitter analytics can show you how your paid ads compare to your organic tweets. You’ll see how much your ad dollars are expanding your reach overall. You can also use Twitter analytics tools to compare the effectiveness of different Promoted Tweets.
10 Twitter metrics that matter – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
If you’re not sure how to start tracking Twitter analytics, here are important metrics to begin tracking. Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
1. Top tweet – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: The tweet that earned the most impressions in a 28-day period or set period of time.
Why this Twitter metric matters: This is the tweet that reached the largest audience. It’s worth analyzing this to see what made it work: maybe you published the tweet at the right time of day, used the right hashtags and included interesting content that encouraged reshares. If you know what went into that best-performing tweet, you can replicate its success for future tweets.
2. New followers – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: The number of new followers your account gained in a 28-day period or set period of time.
Why this Twitter metric matters: When your brand gains new Twitter followers, that means another Twitter user sees value in your content and wants to see more of it. Basically, a follow is an engagement that’s longer term than a like or retweet. If your follower count is climbing, it’s a good sign your Twitter strategy is working.
3. Top follower -Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: This is a new follower you gained in the last month that has the highest number of their own followers.
Why this Twitter metric matters: This Twitter insight shows which of your new followers has the greatest potential to broaden the exposure of your tweets through retweets and comments. You might want to keep them on your radar for potential influencer and brand advocacy campaigns.
4. Top mention – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: A tweet published by another Twitter user that tagged or mentioned you, and that had the most impressions in a 28-day period.
Why this Twitter metric matters: Engage with this tweet! If this is a positive mention, be sure to thank the person and keep them on your radar for future collaboration. After all, they expanded your reach more than any other Twitter user this month. If there’s a negative sentiment, reach out and see what you can do to repair the relationship.
5. Impressions – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: The total number of times a tweet has been seen.
Why this Twitter metric matters: This metric shows brands the total number of people who see the content you’re publishing, including those who don’t engage with it. (Realistically, not everyone who sees your tweet will like it or retweet it or comment.) This Twitter metric is most effective when you consider it with engagements, in order to get your engagement rate.
6. Engagements – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: This Twitter metric shows brands how many times people interacted with your tweet. This includes everything from retweets to likes to follows.
Why this Twitter metric matters: If no one is engaging with the content you publish on Twitter, you’re talking into a void. Social media is supposed to be social — and that means having two-way conversations!
Tracking which tweets generate the most engagement — and knowing the kind of response they get — is a good way to know what’s working in your social media strategy.
7. Engagement rate – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: The number of engagements, divided by the number of impressions a tweet receives. Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
Why this Twitter metric matters: Engagement rate gives brands a clear picture of how engaging a tweet really is. That’s because it factors in how many people saw the tweet with how many of those people actually engaged with it.
When tracking engagement rate over time, watch for spikes and dips. Analyze what worked well that may have contributed to a high engagement rate. When tweets have a low engagement rate, consider what you can improve next time to elevate Twitter engagement.
8. Link clicks – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: The number of times Twitter users clicked on a link or website card in your tweet.
Why this Twitter metric matters: This Twitter insight shows you whether your followers are choosing to interact with the content you share that takes them outside of the social media platform.
For example, if you frequently share links back to your website or your brand’s online store, a high number of link clicks show you that people are choosing to interact with your brand beyond Twitter.
9. Cost per result (CPR) – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: An average of how much you pay for each action users take after seeing your ad.
Why this Twitter metric matters: Each campaign objective is tied to a billable action. But you are only charged when the action occurs. For example, if your campaign objective is video views, you’ll only be charged when someone views your video. Tracking CPR will help you manage your advertising budget.
10. Conversions – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
What it measures: This Twitter metric shows brands how their Twitter advertising spend converts into an action, like installs, sign-ups or purchases.
Why this Twitter metric matters: This shows brands how followers interact with their Twitter ads after clicking on them. From the conversion tracking dashboard, see metrics like post-view conversions, transaction values and total sales. It’s where you’ll mostly clearly see where your tweets deliver on ROI.
How to use Twitter analytics – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
In the Twitter Analytics dashboard
1. Firstly, from your Twitter home page, click More. That’s the three dots icon above your avatar and the blue Tweet button.
Then choose Analytics from the menu.
2. Secondly, this will open the Twitter analytics home dashboard in a new tab. Here, find the Twitter analytics report card and Twitter metrics highlights for each month.
3. Thirdly, click on Tweets in the menu bar for an analytics deep-dive. Here, you can:
- Set the date range you want to track or keep it set at 28 days.
- Click through the options under the graph to analyze Twitter metrics.
- Export data, either by tweet or day, to incorporate into reports.
4. Fourthly, under More in the menu bar, click Video to analyze metrics on your published videos. And click Conversion tracking to see metrics related to that.
5. Fifthly, to access your ad campaigns and see how your Twitter ads are performing, log into your Twitter Ads account.
In Hootsuite Analytics – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
Using a Twitter analytics tool like Hootsuite can help you grow your brand’s social media presence effectively and efficiently. So it all about Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
1. Sign into your Hootsuite account. Make sure you’ve upgraded to the Hootsuite Professional Plan at minimum so you can access social media analytics.
2. To see Twitter analytics in Hootsuite, make sure you’ve connected your brand’s Twitter to Hootsuite. If you haven’t, click Add social network and then choose Twitter.
3. In the menu bar, click the graph icon to access Hootsuite Analytics.
4. To see your Twitter metrics, click on the Twitter Overview report. Or, click on the plus icon next to Reports in the menu to create a new Twitter analytics report.
5. In the analytics report template, set your preferred date range to see important Twitter insights such as number of tweets, tweet engagement, engagement type and the sentiment of inbound messages for that time frame.
Upgrade your Hootsuite plan to a Team, Business or Enterprise account to customize your analytics reports.
6. Click the yellow arrow to export the analytics report in a PDF, Powerpoint, Excel or CSV formats.
7. Click the calendar-and-arrow icon to schedule an email report of the metrics. So this is the top-left icon shown in the screenshot below:
This automatically exports the report and ensures your brand’s team receives consistent reports and updates, either weekly or monthly.
4 great Twitter analytics tools – Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
Twitter analytics and Hootsuite Analytics both give you great insights into your Twitter performance. However, here are a few additional Twitter analytics tools you might want to consider adding to your tracking arsenal. So Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
(By the way, if you’re interested in finding Twitter tools that can help your brand with everything from social listening to creating great images for your tweet, check out this post on 40 great tools to help your Twitter strategy.)
SocialRank
Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
Use this tool to get a good idea of who your Twitter followers are, to identify who your top followers are, and to track new influencers who could help grow your brand. So SocialRank also lets you compare your overlapping followers across two different social media accounts and find your competitors’ top followers.
TweetReach
Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
This Twitter analytics tool relies on social intelligence from Union Metrics to give brands a snapshot of how tweets are performing. As well as Twitter analytics reports, use this tool to search your hashtags, links, and keywords.
TrackMyHashtag
Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
Twitter analytics tools don’t have to be for tweet and video performance only. However, You can also get data on hashtags. TrackMyHashtag can help your brand download data on a branded hashtag you created, track your competitors’ keywords and hashtags, and more.
Keyhole
Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
Keyhole provides hashtag analytics and keyword tracking, but is also a great Twitter analytics tool. Keyhole also compiles social media reports, analytics and mentions. Twitter Analytics Marketers Guide
Once you delve into the world of Twitter analytics, you’ll see that it isn’t intimidating at all. And once you start tracking key metrics effectively to make data-driven decisions, it will pay off in a big way for your brand!
Gain insight into your Twitter performance—and the performance of all your other social media platforms—with EasySocialPost Analytics. Try it free today.