While brands that advertise on Twitter have long had access to analytics within Twitter’s ad platform, now the rest of us get our hands on the good stuff too.
Twitter recently announced that all “advertisers, Twitter Card publishers, and verified users” now have access to these rich analytics. Here’s what a Twitter Card is, in case you were wondering:
There’s some great data here.
First, you can see how many impressions a single tweet reached, as well as the number and percentage of engagements. And then you can get data that compares to last month. So perhaps your retweets might be up 43% this month over last, while your link clicks are down 17%. You can also learn whether tweets over a few days old are still gathering impressions, for example.
So What Does This Data Do for YOU?
Analytics are nice, but what’s the point of all this information? Well, if used correctly, it can help you strategize your Twitter efforts, increase engagement, and grow your follower base.
Pay attention to those engagement numbers. That’s where the gold is. If a tweet about a free ebook got a decent number of retweets, shares, clicks, or comments, those are the types of tweets you want more of. So you can build that in to future updates. Those that didn’t see any activity, well, you don’t have to repeat those again.
You can also:
- View Twitter performance in real time.
- See how many Retweets, replies, favorites, follows, link clicks, and embedded media clicks each Tweet received.
- Export performance metrics into a CSV file.
Twitter’s a Team Player
Twitter’s trying to help businesses leverage the social site as well. In the official post on the Twitter Advertizing Blog announcing the new feature, Buster Benson, Analytics Product Manager explains:
“…we saw that brands that tweet two to three times per day can typically reach an audience size that’s equal to 30% of their follower base during a given week.”
So this tells you that tweeting multiple times a day can help you reach more people. That’s really valuable when your time to tweet is limited, and you’re not sure whether more actually equals better. Using the analytics, you can determine what frequency is ideal for your audience, as well as what time of day helps you have the biggest impact.
It’s certainly a benefit to small business users that Twitter is no longer withholding great tools and data like this from non-advertisers.
Next stop: Twitter analytics for all users. Until then, just spend a few buck on ads to get the analytics.
Aira Bongco
I guess this is a good thing. Google has its analytics for free and it still gets them some ads. After all, you pay for ads to advertise and not so you can get access to analytics.