6 Things You Didn't Know Twitter Tracks For Free

Keeping up with Twitter can be challenging as you strive to put out engaging (and relevant) content, while simultaneously building relationships with prospects and influencers, and fighting for attention against 500 million tweets per day. 

How do you know what’s working if you don’t have the budget for heavy-hitting analytics software? 

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​Twitter offers a number of surprisingly in-depth analytics for FREE – you just have to know what to do with them.

First, where to find them: Log in to your Twitter account, click your avatar at the top right of your Twitter feed, and choose Analytics from the dropdown menu.

You’ll see a navigation bar at the top left with tabs where you can dive into various categories for deeper info – Home, Tweets, Followers, etc. But there are a few key metrics right on your Home page that you can use to inform your social strategy:

• Top Tweet – shows you which of your tweets made the biggest impact with your followers. Want more engagement? Post more of the same. 
• Top Mention – tells you which Twitter user got the most engagement by mentioning you. That tells you that you have something in common with that user’s followers. Build on that common interest by retweeting items posted by your Top Mention’s account and seeing who responds. 
• Top Follower – is the person with the most followers who is following YOU. Want some of their audience? Engage with them as the influencer they obviously are. See what they’re tweeting about and give them a mention or a retweet where appropriate.

Moving to the Tweets tab on your analytics nav-bar you have some metrics that are listed for each individual tweet posted over the past 28 days:

• Impressions – indicates the number of newsfeeds your tweets have appeared in. But take note; that doesn’t mean they were actually read. 
• Engagements on the other hand… Click the number in the column for a breakdown of retweets, favorites, follows, profile clicks, etc. This tells you exactly what you want to know about how your tweet was received. If your tweets are getting the results you want, keep it up! If not, change it up!

Move over one more tab in your nav-bar and check out your Followers. Far from just a number, this tab has a wealth of information about the people following you – from what they do for a living and how much they earn, to whether they prefer TV dramas or comedies.

Even using Twitter for business you want to mix up your tweets with personal touches.  This information means you can kill two birds with one stone – offering up more personal info that just “happens” to coincide with the interests of your followers as well.

BONUS: Though it’s not part of your analytics snapshot, don’t forget to pay attention to Notifications when viewing your newsfeed to see exactly who has followed and favorited your posts. A simple “Thanks for the share!” is a little thing that can go a long way.  

And those little things add up. Keep an eye on your Twitter analytics, course correct where needed, and you’ll see. 

Have a question about Twitter, or anything else on social? Tweet me!