Twitter Analytics Provided Free by Twitter

Twitter now provides good analytics for free as part of its platform.

But what about all the tool providers that focus on providing Twitter analytics? What is going to happen to them?

Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook continue to build out their platforms, and their audiences want good analytics.  Facebook provides Facebook Insights and, now, Twitter has analytics that are available to everyone for free.

There is still room for Twitter analytics tool providers, but anyone providing just basic analytics for free, or for a fee, doesn’t have a hope against Twitter, so some tool providers are likely to close up as a result of this.

Let’s take a look at the analytics Twitter is providing.

Monitor Tweet Activity

When you login, you will see a dashboard screen, and this displays a visual of your performance.

Part of the dashboard

The terms you need to be familiar with for this are:

• Impressions –   The number of times your tweet was displayed to users on Twitter.
• Engagements – The number of times a user clicked on a tweet, clicked on a hashtag or a link, favorited a tweet etc.
• Engagement rate – Engagement divided by impresssions.

What can you do with this information?

a)  If you’re not getting impressions then your chances of engagement are lower.  I have over 18,000 Twitter followers and, as you can see, the number of impressions per tweet in the chart is around 6%.

On Twitter, only a small percentage of your Twitter followers will be online when you are tweeting, so you need to pick out relevant times to tweet and you need to post important tweets multiple times.  You don’t just post the same tweet, instead you can change the wording, pick out something different in your article, etc. but sending tweets multiple times is important.

b) You can export the data above and, in the export, it shows you the impressions based on the time of day.  For example, if you’re sending your tweets during the night and most of your audience is in bed, your impressions may be very low.  Monitor the times you get the most impressions and adjust the times you post based on this.

c) Analyze which posts get the highest engagement and see if this correlates to higher impressions, or if it’s related to the content you post.

Click on each tweet to see more detailed information related to it.

This is broken down by hour.

You can see that the majority of impressions happen within the first two hours.

View details of a specific tweet

On the dashboard, you can also see other graphs that show charts specific to engagements, link clicks, retweets, favorites and replies.

Analyze Your Followers

The follower analytics provides information on:

Follower growth chart – A simple chart that shows your growth.  I’m sure they will expand this at some stage to show predicted growth based on current trends.

Interests of followers –  This is a breakdown of your followers and the categories they belong to.

A breakdown by percentage of Twitter follower interests

Location of followers – A breakdown of where your Twitter followers are from.

Gender – Breakdown of male/female.

Other profiles they follow – This shows you the most popular profiles that your Twitter followers also follow.  This is useful because it should be a target to gain more followers.  Follow more people from relevant profiles.

What to do with this information?

a) When you look at the top interests of your followers, does this match with the type of people you want to attract?  If not, you need to start reaching out to more relevant people and engaging with them.  Use tools such as SocialBro to identify relevant people to follow.  Start joining in with Twitter chats on topics relevant to your area of speciality, and this will help you get better known in this area.

b) The accounts that your followers also follow will be a good place to build new followers.  If a lot of your followers follow particular accounts, you should follow relevant people from those accounts to increase your own following.

Review Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards are becoming increasingly important on Twitter.

When someone is sharing content from your site, you can automatically attach additional information related to the content you share and this is interpreted by Twitter.

For example, you can tell Twitter about an image in a post, and Twitter will display this on Twitter.com.

Here is an example of a Twitter Card containing a large image.  With this image, you are much more likely to get more engagement on your tweet.

Read this detailed guide on Twitter Cards for more information.

Great image displayed within twitter.com

Twitter Card Analytics shows information related to your tweets that contained Twitter Cards.

An example of how tweets with Twitter Cards are performing

Here is a list of key influencers sharing out tweets containing Twitter Cards:

The top influencers sharing out content

What to do with this information?

a) Set up Twitter Cards if you haven’t already!

b) Build relationships with the key influencers sharing out your content.

c) Identify which Twitter Cards are working best.

Summary

Twitter third-party tools that provide basic Twitter analytics are in trouble.  Twitter have provided a very viable alternative and are likely to keep adding on useful functionality.

Try out their Twitter Analytics and see for yourself!

What are your thoughts?  Are these analytics useful?

Article Source http://www.razorsocial.com/twitter-analytics/

The Social Shake-Up 2014 Recap

This week I was at the W Midtown Hotel in Downtown Atlanta for Social Media Today’s Social Shake-up Conference. I knew to expect a great event as this was my second Social Shake-Up, following the Social Media Today event in Austin during SXSWi in March. So, let’s get to it. Disclaimer – Most of these notes will be from just one panel. Also – please excuse my phone’s picture quality. Can’t wait for the iPhone 6, also to avoid spending most of my time charging during events.

Guess I Should Have a Portable Charger By Now?

10:30am Data & Creativity: Defining Your Data-Driven Social Campaign

Laurent Francois moderated the panel consisting of Adam Naide (Cox Communications), Tracy Bell (Bank of America), and David Schweidel (Emory University)

This panel explored creativity and data, and their combination for deeper story telling. Also discussed was social analytics, and the importance of having clear goals in social media campaigns. Laurent began by apologizing for his French accent, and the way he pronounces “Adam,” although both Adam and I agreed it was a nice twist on the American pronunciation. Once the discussions were underway, Adam was quick to note the heavy lifting and social listening done by his Cox social care team, including Frankie Saucier, who I had the pleasure of sitting next to during the panel. Make sure all interactions are handled, and handled correctly – your brand sentiment is on the line! Consumers connect around their passions and creativity, social connects the two. David, with a background in statistics and market research, explained how he’s basically paid to be a skeptic. David piggy-backed and agreed with Adam’s thoughts on how to best engage with customers, and that the right way has yet to be determined. How do we engage customers at each touch-point?

Tracy noted that social can fill your gaps in customer service, as well as aid in sales and lead generation. Perhaps my favorite quote from this panel came from Adam when asked about social media tools, though. He stated, “Tools are tools, but people run social [media]. That’s why it’s called social media.” Adam went on to discuss how Cox customers who are engaged on social media are 33% more valuable than a typical customer, and score 32 points higher in NPS (net promoter score). The goal here is to turn your social customers into advocates! Another interesting note from Adam came in that social is now the first place people go for customer servicing. It can’t be any simpler than sending a DM, and seeing immediate resolution (again, props to the Cox social care team). Imagine a world where social media is the #1 place to go to seek technical support, and where brand advocates reply and assist even before the brand can.

What do you think when you hear the words engagement and organic? You probably think it’s just some marketing buzz word lingo, but you’ll be happy to hear that Adam Naide agrees with you. If he had it his way, he’d retire these words because they’re “fluffy and everyone has a different meaning for them.” Agreed!

An early takeaway from this panel was that customer’s comments and thoughts are incredibly valuable social offerings. Cox ran a Facebook brand campaign with Nielsen to promote that Cox has doubled their internet speeds. By reading comments and listening to what customers thought Cox was able to gather feedback in their customer’s context that they would’ve otherwise never known.

Tracy pointed out that your social media efforts support your creative processes. Listening to people and seeing how they react to your advertising is invaluable! How are they talking about the music in the background of a video? What do they think about the imagery? These are good to know data points gained through social that you may otherwise over-analyze. Feedback is different when it’s live.

The panel went into a great discussion on feedback, and Adam actually played moderator for a bit, asking Tracy the questions. The takeaway – find real reactions buried in data. Use what you have and bring it back to a simple human reaction.

Adam then quoted Maya Angelou. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I love this, and the same goes in social. Your followers may associate with you because of one emotion-bringing post, but never actually remember what it was. This relates, in a way, to Cox’s social strategy of using content like Game of Thrones as click bait, with an ultimate call to action behind it. Adam knows that Cox’s fans share clear emotions about their shows, so why not go where they’re already talking and sharing feelings? Another great example comes through the World Cup earlier this summer. Cox curated simple posts around existing conversations, just letting people know how to catch the games on their phones at work. Genius. Speaking of Game of Thrones, look who favorited one of my live-tweets…

Article Source http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/social-shake-2014-recap