Here comes Twitter's social analytics.
Twitter Web Analytics was announced this week, a tool that provides website owners useful data in terms of content curation using the Twitter network. Powered by BackType, the social analytics company that Twitter acquired in July, the BackType dashboard enables a user to generate keyword performance analysis and Twitter data reports. It suggests the best time to tweet, retweet, and reply as well. It's currently in beta and will be released in a few weeks together with an API for developers. BackType founder Christopher Golda explains how Twitter Web Analytics will play a key role in helping website owners and marketers.
The product provides three key benefits:
- Understand how much your website content is being shared across the Twitter network
- See the amount of traffic Twitter sends to your site
- Measure the effectiveness of your Tweet Button integration
It's a no-brainer if you are drawing unique visitors from your social media networks. As brands enter the age of social business, it's not an option but a standard that a business establishes itself across all relevant social platforms. One of those social platforms is Twitter. I've always saw Facebook as a market of sorts, it has become a destination-location for marketers and consumers alike.
While Facebook is a market, Twitter is a giant bulletin board. Content fuels Twitter, it's considered a destination-location for instant news and current events. So it's no surprise if Twitter rolls out a web analytics tool to gauge how it drives traffic to a site. I've seen a couple of third party apps claiming they can give precise Twitter analytics by signing up with them but such apps are inconsistent.
Twitter's web analytics tool has yet to break the ice for site owners and marketers. BackType's previous service was to track comments which hints an SEO-like function. If this is integrated with Google Analytics, it will further enhance analytics reports, keyword analysis, and monitoring, you can actually combine reports from both Google and Twitter. With BackType, Twitter is out to prove that a social platform can be an effective tool to draw traffic and garner leads.