BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Twitter's Analytics Platform Is Free And Provides Great Social Data

This article is more than 10 years old.

If you’re not heavily involved in the social media landscape you may not be aware that around June Twitter rolled out a free analytics platform accessible via the Ads section of its website. Though it's not that extensive, the data and information available will suit you and your business well if you want a general overview and want to know what’s working and what’s not.

In my eyes, it was a smart move on Twitter’s part to build exposure for their advertising opportunities by forcing users to access the analytics via their own ad platform.

To access it be sure you are logged in and either visit this link or click on the gear icon on the top right of your Twitter menu bar and then click Twitter Ads. Once you’re brought to the ad page, you’ll see a drop down analytics menu to access your options.

 Once on the Analytics Tab/Menu you’ll see options for your timeline activity, followers and websites.

Timeline:

This option displays a nice little graph showing you all of your mentions, follows and unfollows by date. Unfortunately, they do not allow you to select a date range, but instead seems to show you one month of data. Additionally, the page shows you all of your recent tweets and how they performed: the number of times they were favorited, retweeted or replied to. It will even allow you to sort your tweets by all, good or best, allowing you to narrow down what type of tweets perform the best with your audience. This is very important and powerful information for anyone constantly looking to increase engagement, which should be the goal of any brand.

You can also download what appears to be any date range of data via the Download CSV link at the top of the page. (Note: It does appear to limit you to 500 Tweets downloaded at one time)

Followers:

In the Followers section you’ll see another graph showing your increase or decrease of followers for what seems to be the last year.

The data here is really good, showing you some great metrics about your followers, such as interests, top interests, location, top cities and gender. When you mouse over the Location graphic, it will tell you approximat ely how many people follow you from those cities or countries and what percentage of your followers in that region makes up your total followers.

I’m not quite sure how Twitter arrives at its conclusions on some of the data, such as interests. For my account, Twitter claims the most unique interests topic for me is stocks, with 9% of my followers being interested in stocks. This does not make a lot of sense to me based on what I see and the engagement I receive. but who knows. There does not appear to be an option to select any other date ranges, or to download data like you can on the Timeline data set.

This is a neat  feature that Twitter recently added that provides you with a snippet of code to place on your website that will allow you to track and see people who are sent to your website via Twitter and their associated properties. It will also show you click-throughs on tweets you have received. Right now it does not seem very robust or specific. You’ll get most of this data and more through your Google analytics or most other tracking platforms you may use.

The bottom line is that data is key to checking performance and fine tuning your efforts for better ROI, reach and engagement. It’s not enough to “just do” social media. If you’re going to do it, do it right and at a high level. Build you brand based on your audience and what gets the most reaction. Remember social media actions such as shares, retweets and replies all mean visibility for your brand.