While we have always told you defining your goals on social should be your number one priority, measuring your efforts to reach those goals is just as important. Unfortunately, it has historically been difficult to measure that success on Twitter given the limited access to the data needed to prove it.
But today, we are happy to share with you that Twitter has finally improved their analytics page by adding a slew of long-awaited metrics for business.
Here's what is new:
Previous Twitter dashboard:
(Source: Hubspot)
New Twitter dashboard:
Upon first glance you can tell there is more color on the page. The colors represent a variety of graphs that portray a 28-day insight to the new metrics you are now able to analyze tweet by tweet, month to month. This can be very helpful when presenting information to colleagues or superiors when convincing them your efforts are valuable.
Here's the new data:
1. Impressions:
Measures the amount of times a tweet was seen by any user. We are probably most excited by the addition of this metric, since it exposes the reach of any Twitter campaign.
2. Engagement and Engagement Rate:
Measures the total number of times a user has interacted with a tweet (clicking hashtags, links, username, retweets, replies, favorites, etc.). Engagement Rate is that number (engagement) divided by the total number of impressions.
3. Export Data:
When you export from Twitter's analytics, even more data is revealed:
- Clicks (broken down):
- Profile Clicks: Measures how many times a username is clicked within a tweet
- URL Clicks: Measures how many times a URL within a tweet is clicked
- Hashtag Clicks: Measures how many times a hashtag is clicked within a tweet
- Detail Expand Clicks: Measures how many times the "expand" button is clicked on a tweet
- Permalink Clicks: Measures how many times the URL linked to an individual tweet is clicked
- Embedded Media Clicks: Measures how many times a photo, video or GIF is clicked within a tweet
- Leads Submitted, App Installments: Measures the clicks collected and leads submitted by Twitter cards
- Shares
- Email: Measures if a tweet was shared via email
- Dial Phone: Measures if a phone number was dialed after clicking on a number within a tweet. If you have a smart phone, this is when a phone number becomes a link and can be tapped on to be dialed.
- Follows
- Measures how many users clicked "follow" within a tweet
- Promotions
- The same metrics described above are also listed for Promoted tweets. It allows you to separate your organic and paid campaign efforts.
Here's a visual to help:
Here's what went away:
- Mentions
- This metric seems nowhere to be found in the new analytics report. It seems it will now be a more manual process that will involve checking notifications more frequently.Luckily, the number of Followers, Retweets, Replies, and Favorites are still documented.
Full glossary of these terms can be explained by Twitter here.
Here's what you can take away from this update:
Changes from Facebook are always expected, but changes on Twitter are infrequent. The last time we had any newsworthy changes from Twitter was when they announced their new layout. This is why we are a little surprised the Twitter blog has yet to make an announcement about this exciting news. Our only guess is they realized they should have had these metrics a long time ago, and would prefer people be happily surprised than give them a platform on which to express everyone's sentiment: "FINALLY!"
Either way, we believe this will make all of our jobs easier because we'll be able to track reach, engagement, and our overall campaigns.
So go on, visit your Twitter analytics and geek out about all the numbers at your fingertips.
Happy number-crunching!