Twitter Analytics: Twitter for busi­nesses – Part 2

The first article in the series ‘Twitter for busi­nesses’ gave us an in­tro­duc­tion to the subject and offered tips about how to optimise your Twitter to gain a large following. In the second part of the series, we will present several Twitter analytics tools, which can support a company with its Twitter presence and allow you to evaluate its overall success. Twitter’s many business-ori­ent­ated offerings make it par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing from a social media marketing per­spect­ive. For example, the website features headings like ‘Business’ and ‘Marketing’, a blog for smaller busi­nesses, as well as the eBook ‘#TweetS­marter’; the latter informing creative industry pro­fes­sion­als how to best achieve more con­ver­sions via the social media platform. Fur­ther­more, Twitter offers the analysis tool Twitter Analytics; a com­pre­hens­ive analysis tool that can measure the reach of your tweets and the en­gage­ment rate of your Twitter followers. This tool has been designed spe­cific­ally for stra­tegic­al marketing use and was ori­gin­ally only available as a fee-based product. However, since 2014, it has been available free of charge and to this day remains a very useful tool for measuring the success of a company account. But it is not just for Twitter Analytics that tools exist – there are also other helpful Twitter features out there. These include tools for the likes of account ad­min­is­tra­tion, expanding your following, and the op­tim­isa­tion of content. Nowadays it has become im­possible to try and keep track of just how many of these tools exist. For this reason we have compiled a list of the most useful tools for suc­cess­ful Twitter marketing. Ad­di­tion­ally, we will also explain the best and most optimal way to use Twitter Analytics for your business.

At the core of any success on Twitter are the followers. The tool Twellow helps you to find users that belong in your target group. It organises Twitter users by names as well as by subject area and industry; this ‘yellow pages’ of sorts helps you to quickly find new and relevant followers. Users that have similar interests can also be found using the tool Tweepi. Users of Tweepi are filtered based on areas of interest, offering the pos­sib­il­ity to access further in­form­a­tion on followers and the following-status of in­di­vidu­al users. If, above all, your priority is finding followers that have a large reach and influence, then Klout is the right tool for you. This par­tic­u­lar tool generates rankings of in­flu­en­tial persons re­flect­ive of the prom­in­ence of their online presence, and is par­tic­u­larly popular in the USA. These rankings allow you to quickly discover which person(s) are viewed as the experts of authority in certain branches and fields. It is unknown what the algorithm for the creation of these rankings is, but it does manage to evaluate the number of followers (or likes) of certain in­di­vidu­als within social media. There is also the option of the tool Grouptweet, which also allows you to send tweets aimed at pre-defined groups of followers, meaning that you can guarantee that the tweet reaches the right target.

Up until now, the tools we have mentioned have been to help with the or­gan­iz­a­tion of Twitter accounts. But is it also possible to get technical support for content and the content creation? The answer is yes. One such tool is Nuzzel with which, for example, you can carry out content research; Nuzzel lists the top no­ti­fic­a­tions of one’s own followers and shows what is of interest to the overall community. Such an overview of follower’s current interests can provide valuable in­spir­a­tion for your next suc­cess­ful tweet. The tool Trend­ist­ic is a good al­tern­at­ive if an account does not yet have suf­fi­cient followers for an analysis by Nuzzel. By contrast, the tool Twtpoll generates content that is par­tic­u­larly popular with companies because of its ability to get followers actively involved through the use of surveys. The tool makes it easy to quickly create surveys and integrate them into tweets, or online platforms, like blogs or websites.

For anyone out there who has their Twitter account for more than just personal reasons, but also for strategic marketing purposes, there are also some very useful tools out there which use stat­ist­ics to measure the success of a Twitter account. Such Twitter metrics tools allow you to identify the strengths and weak­nesses of your own Twitter strategy, and improve your overall activity as a result. Without a doubt, Twitter Analytics is among the most popular of these analysis tools. It is not even necessary to register – simply click on the drop-down menu of your Twitter account and you will suddenly find yourself amongst Twitter reports in the form of dash­boards, diagrams, etc.

To be able to precisely assess the stat­ist­ics from Twitter Analytics, you first need to consider which successes you even want to measure. For that reason you should define the most important KPIs of the account – KPI stands for ‘Key Per­form­ance Indicator’. What is meant by this are numbers, which can be used to track progress towards the desired target. For example, some of the most important KPIs when it comes to social media are the growth of followers, the reach of the posts, and the amount of profile clicks. In this regard, Twitter is no exception, and these in­dic­at­ors of success can be viewed stat­ist­ic­ally through Twitter Analytics tools.

When de­term­in­ing the KPIs for measuring success, it is important that you are aware of your own target/objective. Is the most important thing to reach as many users as possible? Or should users actively interact with the content through en­gage­ments, i.e. by sharing or com­ment­ing? Or should the primary aim of the Twitter campaign be to achieve as many con­ver­sions as possible? Whatever the answer, different KPIs are decisive depending on the different targets.

For example, if your goal is to increase the business presence, then the decisive KPIs would be the number of new followers, profile clicks, and mentions. On the other hand, for companies in the service industry it is customer service that is decisive – and the most important Key Per­form­ance Indicator is a high in­ter­ac­tion rate on the account. If it is the case that you wish to establish a repu­ta­tion as a new, know­ledge­able source, then it is above all the reach of the tweets and the number of re-tweets, or you evaluate the top tweets based on suc­cess­ful subjects.

Twitter Analytics measures the different KPIs and then displays them via clear and easy to read diagrams. But exactly which cat­egor­ies does Twitter Analytics cover? And how can you use these stat­ist­ics to help you optimise your overall Twitter strategy?

The following is a list of all the KPI stat­ist­ics displayed on the homepage:

• Tweet volume: the number of tweets sent
• Tweet im­pres­sions (all tweets): the frequency that users have seen the tweets in their timeline
• Number of profile visits
• Number of newly acquired followers
• Number of mentions of your username in other tweets
• The eval­u­ation of a ‘tweet highlight’ featuring…
  • Top tweet: the tweet with the largest amount of in­ter­ac­tions
  • Top follower: the follower with the highest number of followers them­selves
  • Top mention: the tweet, featuring your username, that generated the most im­pres­sions
  • Best Twitter Card

Here is a list of all KPIs included under the ‘Tweet’s category heading:

• Detailed in­form­a­tion on the timeline of tweet im­pres­sions with a choice of time
• List of the top tweets
• A timeline of the Twitter en­gage­ment rate, which Twitter cal­cu­lates by dividing the number of im­pres­sions by the number of en­gage­ments
• In­form­a­tion on in­di­vidu­al en­gage­ments: graphs dis­play­ing the timeline of link clicks, views of photos and videos, replies, retweets, likes, and profile viewsDetailed in­form­a­tion on each in­di­vidu­al tweet: info relating to retweets, likes, link clicks, replies, media in­ter­ac­tions (how often photos and videos are viewed), detail expands (clicks on the tweet to view more details), and profile views

The ‘Audience’ dashboard serves less as a barometer for the success of an account, and instead provides in­form­a­tion relating to content that is of par­tic­u­lar interest to your audience. This provides useful insights for the creation of new marketing strategies, or even the op­tim­isa­tion of already existing ones.

Some accounts also obtain ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion regarding demo­graph­ic data on their followers (e.g. in­form­a­tion on income, education, oc­cu­pa­tion, marital status, etc.) as well as on lifestyle trends and consumer be­ha­viours. Up until now the Twitter website has remained silent when it comes to revealing the reasons why certain accounts acquire this in­form­a­tion.

The data provided by Twitter Analytics can certainly be used stra­tegic­ally by busi­nesses. With the help of these analysis tools, you can con­tinu­ously measure and optimise your success on Twitter. But how exactly do you put this acquired in­form­a­tion to good use?

The headings ‘Home’ and ‘Tweets’ are used to evaluate the per­form­ance of your current Twitter activity. On a whole, an analysis of the overall per­form­ance shows to what extent the selected strategy can be deemed a success. By contrast, the per­form­ance of in­di­vidu­al actions provides insights into which activ­it­ies and tweets are proving es­pe­cially promising, and which are not.

For example, based on top tweets, you can quickly find out what, e.g. photos, surveys, hashtags, get the attention of your followers or resonates par­tic­u­larly well with them. By focusing on these features you can shape and dictate future tweets and increase the KPIs. Ad­di­tion­ally, the ‘Top Follower’ – the one with the biggest reach, also offers in­ter­est­ing pos­sib­il­it­ies for future marketing co­oper­a­tion.

The ‘Tweet Details’ section breaks down the impact of a tweet in its first 24 hours. Here you can find out the exact time when most of your followers read the tweet. This means you can quickly and easily discover what time your tweets reach the biggest number of followers, and thus keep this in mind for future tweets.

The ‘Export data’ button also gives you the pos­sib­il­ity of exporting the timeline analysis as an Excel table. This means you can archive the data. A good and clear overview of your timeline is also useful if you wish to keep a content calendar for your account. This allows you to plan the pub­lic­a­tion of tweets based on specific topics to spe­cific­ally planned times – ensuring that topics do not repeat them­selves, while still allowing you to often return to subject areas that, in the past, were par­tic­u­larly relevant for your followers.

The ‘Audience’ category also contains in­form­a­tion on your follower’s interests. This makes it optimal for the re­search­ing of new content that is relevant to your followers. When it comes to the re­search­ing of content, the ‘Events’ option sup­ple­ment this very nicely as events can be filtered not just based on location, but also by theme.

This audience group com­par­is­on from Twitter Analytics can be a very useful feature: by comparing one’s own followers with other user groups it becomes clear what is specific to your community of followers. Without dis­clos­ing any extra sensitive data, this option can be crucial for un­der­stand­ing the profile of one’s own followers.

If you wish to make a success of your business’ Twitter account, then Twitter tools can be enorm­ously helpful. They allow for much more frequent and better quality tweeting, inspire optimised content, and more often than not, are useful tools for measuring success. Par­tic­u­larly useful is the Twitter Analytics tool, as it provides countless in­dic­at­ors for mon­it­or­ing success, which without this tool would remain untouched.

In the next article in the series ‘Twitter for business’, we will explain how to go about utilising Twitter Ads for marketing purposes.