Social media is great for connecting with people in your industry or even potential clients. Even though it’s great for connecting, if you don’t know how you’re doing then you don’t know where to improve.
There’s an easy way to understand how well you’re doing on Twitter, enable Twitter analytics.
Below is what your standard Tweet looks like. It’s pretty basic, your only option is to reply, retweet, like the Tweet, expand it, or a handful of other options under the menu icon.
There’s no way to see how well your Tweet is doing, though. Twitter has built-in a whole suite of analytics tools for you, they’re just tied closely to the ad system.
Don’t worry, though, you don’t have to pay for ads to get analytics, you simply have to enable them by “pretending” you’re setting up ads.
Once you’ve enabled Twitter analytics, you’ll have access to the Twitter analytics page and the look of your Tweets will change forever.
How To Enable Twitter Analytics
Twitter analytics is turned off by default. If you visit analytics.twitter.com while logged into an account it hasn’t been enabled on, you get the following page:
To get to the analytics page, you first need to turn it on. This is a quick process and gives you access to all analytics to your account, historical and going forward.
You’ll then get a screen with a log of information on it, but your only concern is the Log in to Twitter Ads button.
On this screen, you’ll need to choose your country and time zone and then save those settings.
Those are the necessary steps to enable the analytics page for Twitter. Try visiting Twitter Analytics and you should now see a whole page of analytics that provides you details on how well your account is doing.
The Analytics
It’s helpful to see if you’re trending upwards, going steady. or declining. You’ll also see other key pieces of information that will tell you what does good and what doesn’t: Top Tweet, Top Mention, Top Follower, Top Media Tweet, and Top card Tweet.
Here’s what my analytics looks like:
The first thing I notice is that I’m on an upwards trend during the last 28 days.
These analytics are helpful (see below for even more details), but they are also removed from your Twitter stream. What if you want something a bit closer to your Tweet stream that you can just pop right up?
Inline Tweet Analytics
You remember at the beginning of this post I showed the Tweet before analytics was set up? It’s pretty plain with no options to see how your Tweet is doing. If you set up your analytics properly and it’s been enabled for a bit, check your Twitter stream and your Tweets will look like this:
You now have a new icon right next to the like button. Click that little button and you’ll see a pop-up with analytics specific to just that Tweet.
This activity pop-up shows you the number of impressions and total engagements. The engagements are then broken down further with things such as link clicks, likes, and even expanding the Tweet is considered an engagement.
Mobile Analytics
You’ll also have the analytics icon available on the mobile version of Twitter. I find the mobile version the most useful because I use the Twitter app more on my phone. Beware of the iOS app, though, the icon is so tedious to tap you’ll end up with theTweet open and then having to tap the analytics button again more times than not.
As you can see above, there are many places you can reach your Twitter analytics. Just enable Twitter analytics and you’ll be sitting on a heap of great data.
Go A Little Deeper Into Twitter Analytics
Now that you’ve enabled Twitter analytics and have checked out the main screen, take a look at the menu options along the top.
Tweets
One of my favorite overviews is the Tweets tab. It’s really cool to look at your Tweets by day and the impressions received. It’s really easy to tell by my graph which day I participated in a Buffer chat.
Another thing I can see looking at my analytics is that Saturday is my best day for link clicks, especially when compared to the volume of views my Tweets are getting. If I want to get Tweets with links to be clicked on, my best bet is to Tweet on a Saturday.
Audiences
This is my next favorite tab because if you don’t know who your audience is, you don’t know who to target. This tab lets you slice and dice your Twitter data however you want from all Twitter users to just your Twitter followers.
Twitter can tell a lot about its users just by what’s being Tweeted about. The audiences tabs give you access to all of that breakdown. I can tell you that 74% of my followers prefer premium brands while AT&T is the most used wireless carrier at 32%.
That’s pretty amazing.
Come Equipped
All of this data is available to you at no cost on Twitter, take advantage of it. The better equipped you are, the better you’ll be able to target your audience and tune your product or services to their tastes.
Go enable Twitter analytics now to take full advantage of social media. This data may not be available forever, but while it is, take full advantage because it will equip you with the tools you need for your business to thrive.