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17 February 2014

Twitter Analytics Tool: The 101 Tutorial Guide

Twitter Analytics

Twitter Analytics

Collected here is a basic guide to help users make the most of the relatively new Twitter Analytics tool. When used correctly Analytics enable Twitter’s users to identify their most effective content. The first thing required to make use of the Twitter Analytics feature is to log in of course! Once you have logged in, click on the “Analytics” section of the tool bar at the top of the page. A drop down menu will appear, from here select “Timeline activity”. Once you have clicked on this you will be redirected to a page with a line graph on it. This line graph comprises two main sections “follows” and “mentions”.

Mentions:

Mentions form the first bar on the graph. This tracks how many times your unique Twitter handle, e.g. @GoogleExpertUK was mentioned on Twitter during the last 30 days. When looking at the timeline you may observe spikes in mentions. A top tip with mentions is to write down the dates when you are conducting networking activities. These activities may include conferences and events. By doing this you are then able to look back at your metrics in order to determine how successful your activities have been and to see what has been driving mentions.

Follows:

This is the second section of the graph. This line demonstrates how many “follows” and “unfollows” your account has received over a 30 day period. In order to gain further information about a particular point on the timeline you can hover your cursor over it. Doing this reveals a short summary of the mentions, follows and unfollows you have received at this specific point.

Recent Activity:

This section is where your “recent tweets” are to be found in Twitter Analytics and offers you the best insights. This section automatically charts all of your tweets from the last 90 days and presents them in chronological order. However you are able to optimise these results to show specific information. To demonstrate, sorting your tweets by “Best” means that you be presented the top 15% of your tweets. These are the tweets which received the greatest levels of engagement e.g. retweets, favourites and replies. A tip to bear in mind, when you have an opportunity to reference a person or company in your tweets ensure you tag their handle. When you do this the account will receive a notification that you have mentioned them and they will be far more likely to retweet your content.

Clicks:

The Twitter Analytics tool even covers the amount of times the links you share have been clicked on. All links used on Twitter are tracked even in cases where a link “shortener” has been used, e.g. http://t.co/YK16OIdRlv. What is perhaps interesting is that Twitter does not appear to be measuring this clicks in the platforms “engagement score”. Due to this your links which are most clicked on may not appear in your “Best” category or even your “Good” category, unless it received other forms of interaction such as retweets and mentions.

Top tip

Content which receives a large number of retweets is often quite different from content which receives a large number of clicks. To demonstrate, content which receives a large number of retweets is often insightful or interesting and in most cases is less than 120 characters. If you do include a link in a tweet ensure it refers to a site you wish to be associated with, e.g. your website or blog. Retweets and clicks are equally useful in their own way. However take the time to ensure that your content reflects what you are trying to achieve.

Followers:

In order to access the followers section of Twitter Analytics return to the top of the page and select “Followers” from the “Analytics” drop down menu. This section provides you with a potentially insightful snapshot of the demographic of your following. In this section you will be able to see quite clearly how your following has built over time, the gender of your followers, their location and the topics which they are interested in. The followers section can also be used to view the other Twitter accounts your followers follow. Using this information correctly can help you to discern not only what to tweet but also when to tweet.

Top tip

In order to get the most from localised sectors of your following select your timing carefully. Regardless of the specific time zone you wish to target there are universal times where tweets are well received. These times include, early in the morning, during lunchtime and in the evening after 6pm. The reason why tweets are well received at this time is that this is when people have the most free time.

Twitter Analytics charts