Introduction to Twitter Analytics: 8 Concepts That Will Help You Grow

Using Twitter Analytics effectively can be a powerful way to grow your brand and strengthen your online presence.Understanding how well your audience resonates with your content, which type of content performs the best, and if you're on the right track with your current strategy of growth is key to achieving the right results.

When you start tracking, analyzing, observing, and questioning, you also begin to understand how to fine-tune your content to earn the highest rate of engagement and reach the broadest audience possible.

Let's look at 8 concepts that will help you understand how your content performs, and - as a consequence - help you grow!

Impressions

What does it mean?

This is the total number of times a tweet has been seen.This includes your timeline, search results and as a result of someone liking, retweeting, or commenting.It's not considering unique users, so if a user sees it twice, it's counting as 2 impressions.

Why is it important?

This metric indicates the size of the audience the tweet was able to reach.Combining it with the number of engagements, helps you understand how popular your tweet is.See more about engagement rate below.

Engagements

What does it mean?

This is the total number of engagements associated with a tweet.And engagement is any kind of active interaction and includes likes, retweets, comments, profile clicks, and link clicks.

Why is it important?

Engagement is the most important metric to determine the popularity of your tweet.Engagement leads to more impressions, which in turn leads to more engagement. It serves as a strong social proof and is a clear indicator that you're using the right form of communication and storytelling.

Engagement rate

What does it mean?

The number of engagements, divided by the number of impressions a tweet receives.

The engagement rate is the total number of engagements divided by the total number of impressions of a tweet.Engagement rate = engagements / impressions * 100.

Why is it important?

The engagement rate gives a clear picture of how engaging your content is.A high number of impressions with a low number of engagements will result in a low engagement rate, and vice versa.

Generally speaking, an engagement rate above 5% over time is considered really good, but it's also worth observing spikes and dips when you track how your engagement rate progresses over time.Notice when you're doing something that works well and makes your audience engage with your content.

Top tweet

What does it mean?

The top tweet is the tweet that has earned to most impressions in a given period. (The default is 28 days).

Why is it important?

It's a good idea to observe and analyze what made this tweet reach the largest audience in the period.If you can narrow down some of the factors that made this tweet a success, you'll be better equipped to repeat the success.

Factors could include the time of the day, the content of the tweet, whether you use images or videos, whether you ask a question or encourage your audience to retweet it.

Followers

What does it mean?

This is your current amount of followers. In the Twitter Analytics Dashboard, you'll be able to see how many followers you're up/down with since the previous period, and you can also see how many new followers you've gained.

Why is it important?

A follower is the most long-term kind of engagement you can get and has a higher value for your brand than a like, retweet, or comment.When you see your follower count going up over time, it's a very good sign that your Twitter brand is on the right track.

Top follower

What does it mean?

This is the follower you've gained in the period, which has the largest number of followers themselves.

Why is it important?

The profiles that follow you with the largest number of followers themselves also have the best potential to help you reach a bigger audience.When a profile with a large follower count follows you, you may want to keep an eye on that profile.Return the favor and start engaging more with this profile's content. They'll probably return the favor, and this can be highly beneficial for both of you.

Top mention

What does it mean?

This is a tweet from a profile that mentioned you, which gained the most impressions in the period.

Why is it important?

It's a tweet that's worth keeping an eye on, and typically a tweet you want to engage with.

If the profile is mentioning you in a positive light, make sure to show your appreciation by saying thank you.You probably want to keep an eye on this profile and start engaging more with their content.

If the profile is mentioning you in a negative framing, you need to be careful. Remember that this tweet is getting a lot of impressions, so comment and see if you can correct the misunderstanding, or defend the claim about you.Remember, people are watching - so be polite and respectful.

Link clicks

What does it mean?

If you provide a link in a tweet, you will be able to measure the total number of times a profile clicked on the link.

Why is it important?

This metric shows you how many times you were able to let a user leave the Twitter platform in order to follow your link.In the same way we calculated engagement rate, we can calculate the click-through rate by dividing the number of link clicks by the number of impressions.

If you're using Twitter to promote a service, course, or other forms of products, this metric is very important in order to understand how well your tweet leads to traffic.

Top labels (bonus)

What does it mean?

If you're using FeedHive, you can see your top labels on the analytics page.This is the 5 best-performing labels based on engagement rate.

Why is it important?

When you use labels to categorize your tweets, it gives you an extra opportunity to understand which type of content performs the best.If you're using labels in combination with a posting plan, it may also reveal interesting insights about the ideal time of the day to post.

You can create an account on FeedHive for free, and get started using labels right away.

How to access Twitter analytics?

From Twitter

You can access Twitter Analytics from the Twitter platform itself.

In the left menu, press the (...) more button and click Analytics.This will take you to Twitter's Analytics platform.

Using FeedHive

FeedHive has an inbuilt Analytics Page that gives you access to the most commonly used metrics, plus additional metrics that is not provided by Twitter (like the Top Labels above).

You can start using it by creating an account on FeedHive for free.

Conclusion

If these terms are new to you, it may seem a bit daunting at first.But fear not - when you become more familiar with these concepts, they'll become less intimidating, and you will begin to understand how powerful they are, and how you can use them to hack your Twitter growth.