Twitter Analytics Explained

If you’re a digital marketer, then we are sure you are familiar with Facebook and Google Analytics.  However, in 2014, Twitter joined the party by launching their own analytics dashboard. Twitter Analytics ensures a strategic move towards greater transparency for its users and advertisers.

You might have seen a few insights here and there. However, the purpose of this article is to ensure that you learn how to make the most of the data available.

How to Use Twitter Analytics

Once you are in your Twitter profile (on a desktop) you can go ahead and click on your profile picture on the top right corner. You will notice a dropdown menu and within that menu you will see “Analytics.”

Twitter Impressions

Twitter impressions are the number of times your tweet appeared on a user’s timeline. Keep in mind that this does not necessarily mean a user actually saw the ad.  An impression gets counted every time the tweet enters a user’s timeline even if it was the same user as before.

You can’t necessarily judge a tweet’s performance by the number of impressions it has received, however, the more engagement your tweet receives the more the Twitter algorithm will favour the tweet which means it will show it to more relevant users.

Twitter Reach

A lot of people confuse reach with impressions, however, they are not the same thing at all. Impressions are counted regardless if the same user has seen the tweet before. Reach, on the other had, tells you how many people could potentially see your tweet. For example:

• If you post a tweet to your 200 followers, then your reach will be 200.
• If someone with 100 followers retweeted your tweet, then your reach will be 300.
• If your reach is 5000 and you only received 100 impressions, then it might be because your tweet lacked engagement, as engagement is one of the core driving factors behind the Twitter algorithm.

Twitter Engagement Rate

The next stat we will be looking at is called your Twitter Engagement Rate (TER).

This stat refers to the amount of engagement your tweets receive in the form of follows, retweets, replies, favourites, and clicks.

For example, if your tweet received 5 000 impression and 89 engagements, then your engagement rate is 1,78% and the sum of this is (89 / 5,000) * 100.

This stat will give you insights to how people are responding to your brand’s tweets.

If your TER is lower than 0.3%, then you might reconsider your content schedule as the stats indicate that your content is not resonating with your audience.

Tweet Activity

Tweet Activity allows you to see different metrics within your Twitter dashboard. These metrics include all the ones we discussed above and more.

You can dissect your Twitter Activity according to date ranges which will help you better understand when your audience is engaging with your content and when they are not. This should give you insights to when is the best time to post as well.

Twitter is a neglected social media marketing channel for brands. It’s very misunderstood.

Most brands use it in a similar fashion to a Facebook page and it’s where they dump their latest news and offers thinking that that is what their audience wants to see while, in fact, people tend to prefer having conversations with brands.

Knowing this, and now that you understand the metrics, ensure you take a harder look at your Twitter marketing strategy.

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