Starter Guide to Twitter Analytics
Twitter—a social media platform that gives marketers and advertisers alike the opportunity to reach 400-million users every day. And with so much potential, Twitter should be a core part of any social media marketing strategy.
Here's what we'll cover:
What is Twitter analytics?
Twitter analytics is the foundation to understanding your Twitter presence, your audience, and your engagement. No matter your account type, you have access to Twitter’s in-app analytics. Twitter analytics provides a basic Twitter dashboard that displays impressions, profile visits, and mentions. For Twitter Ads users, your Twitter dashboard includes metrics like ad spend and impressions.
Twitter In-App Analytics
Twitter’s in-house analytics tool gives you access to metrics like impressions, profile views, followers, and mentions. If you are using Twitter Ads, you have access to a Twitter's Ads dashboard that provides metrics like ad spend, cost per click, and audience demographics.
Within Twitter’s in-app analytics, you can view your overall performance with the metrics mentioned above, or you can view a Twitter dashboard that is specific to your tweets to measure your content engagement. Your content engagement dashboard shows metrics like your total number of impressions over a 28-day period, your engagement rate, link clicks, and likes.
Third-Party Twitter Analytics Tools
So if Twitter has in-app analytics that provide you with basic metrics to track your performance, why do you need a third-party Twitter dashboard tool like PowerMetrics?
It’s a problem that any data-driven marketer has likely encountered: how do you get your historical Twitter follower data? Arguably, followers are one of the most important Twitter metrics to track. After all, your followers are the ones who see and engage with your content, so you want to continue to see that number move upwards. But how do you gather trends and draw comparisons if historical follower data isn’t available within Twitter’s analytics tool? A third-party lightweight BI tool like PowerMetrics collects your historical Twitter data so you can compare metric values over time and compare data between different time periods, enabling you to identify and report on trends.
And, if you’re using Twitter as part of your marketing strategy, you’re likely using Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, too. With a lightweight BI tool like PowerMetrics, you can bring all of your social media data together on one dashboard. PowerMetrics allows you to build a data service specific dashboard, like a Twitter dashboard, or you can combine your social media metrics on one dashboard so all of your cross-channel insights are waiting for you every time you log in.
How can a Twitter analytics dashboard help me reach my goals?
- A Twitter analytics dashboard can support your other marketing goals. Twitter can drive users to your website to increase brand awareness or make a purchase, or generate leads for your newsletter. Whichever metric you’re measuring, you can do it on a Twitter dashboard in PowerMetrics.
- Learn about the audience you’re reaching by tracking age, interests, and locations of the users who are engaging with your Twitter posts. By putting these metrics on a Twitter dashboard, you can tell whether your intended audience matches your campaign’s audience, or get inspiration for users who are engaging with your content but aren’t your typical target audience.
- Measure the impact of your messaging on a Twitter dashboard. Track which content type gets more likes, retweets, and replies to understand what content your audience is interested in. You may be surprised! Use the data on your Twitter dashboard to help refine your Twitter strategy or your overall messaging.
- Look at trends to see how your account has changed over time and use the data on your Twitter dashboard to set your Twitter strategy.
- A well-designed Twitter dashboard pulls all of your Twitter data alongside your other marketing data, so you can gain insights to improve your social media and overall marketing campaigns.
The top Twitter statistics that every marketer needs to know
- Twitter is one of the top 3 social networking apps in the USA
- In the last 12 months, 82% of B2B marketers used Twitter for organic content marketing
- In the last 12 months, 27% of B2B content marketers used Twitter Ads
- Twitter has close to 400-million users and 206-million are active every day
- Twitter has 8.85% of the world's overall social media user base
- Twitter ad engagement is reportedly up by 27%, while cost per engagement is down 9%
Twitter Ads Metrics
Ad Clicks
Track your ad clicks to count the number of times users clicked on your ad to reach a webpage.
Click-through Rate
Track campaign performance by measuring click-through rate (CTR) to track the percentage of clicks that generate impressions.
Cost Per Click
Track your cost per click (CPC) to know exactly how much you are paying for each ad click.
Twitter Account Metrics
Followers
Track your followers to understand how effectively you are building an audience around your brand.
Post Likes
Track the popularity of your tweets with post likes and compare it to your impressions and engagement for a full picture.
Retweets
Track the total number of retweets to measure content engagement and compare it to your followers to see if your increased reach resonates with a new audience.