witter has a bad a** analytics platform. And it's not just for advertisers! The UI is amazing and the data is invaluable. When starting any new marketing endeavor, I always start with a deep dive of available analytics. As a marketer you're going to have to start to love numbers if you don't already. If you're looking for simple ways to improve your Twitter presence the analytics platform is a great starting point.

Today, I'm going to walk you through it. First, go to your analytics dashboard. (If you're logged into your Twitter account now, just go to analytics.twitter.com.)

static1.squarespace.png — When you get to this page you'll see a nice overview of your twitter engagement broken down by month. If you're just looking for a light overview of your Twitter account, I suggest you start here.
But to really get into it, you're going to have to click on "See all Tweets." Here's where you can see all of your tweets for a given time frame that you select. >>>>>
If you're new to analytics and are feeling a little overwhelmed with what all of these numbers actually mean, don't worry. I'm going to break it down for you.

IMPRESSIONS

The number of impressions is going to be indicative of your engagement rate, any hashtags you may have used and the time of day you posted.

Take a look at the tweets with the largest number of impressions. Was it because of the engagement? The hashtags you used or the time you tweeted?

This is a great starting point and will get you some valuable data about what times, what hashtags and what language is getting you the engagement and impressions you want to use.

If one of your marketing objectives is to raise brand awareness, the number of impressions is an important number to measure.

ENGAGEMENTS

Engagements are the total number of times someone clicked anywhere on the tweet (hashtags, links, avatar, username and Tweet expansion), replies, retweets, follows, and likes.

Engagements are important. No matter what your overall objectives are, be it traffic to your website, more followers or more leads- all of those metrics are going to be reflected in engagements.

For specific marketing objectives you are going to want to click into each Tweet to see what types of engagements you are getting. If you were looking to get traffic to your website, did you get link clicks? If you were looking to increase followers, see how many followers certain Tweets got you. For more brand awareness, did you get more retweets?

ENGAGEMENT RATE

Engagement rate is determined by the number of impressions to engagements you get. If you only have a few hundred people following you but you get multiple engagements- that's going to be a great engagement rate! That means of all the hundreds of tweets people see a day, they were compelled to click on YOUR content. You should feel appreciative.

Engagement rate is a good measuring stick of value for the engagements you get.

DRAW CONCLUSIONS

Now that you know what all these numbers mean and what they are indicative of, it's good to create a recap to incorporate into your twitter strategy moving forward. Put the numbers into word and the words into action!

I thought it would be helpful to share a sampling of conclusions I came to after taking a look at a client's Twitter analytics for a month. I took a glimpse at all of our tweets for the month and took note of the tweets that got the highest levels of engagement. I was specifically looking to increase engagement on Twitter so my conclusions are inline with that objective.

(Side note: I wouldn't advise you to just take my observations and apply them to your business. Every business is unique and unfortunately there is no one size fits all rule.)

Overall types of Tweets that performed well:

Photos. While we typically think of Facebook or Instagram as big photo platforms, people also like to engage with photos on Twitter as well. A great way to really entice someone to click on a link is to use a photo as well that helps visually paint the picture.
Stats. People love stats. We are considered to be in the home automation, smart home, Internet of things categories. There are tons of data reports out there predicting this growth. Those data reports are typically pretty intense and can be complicated to the average consumer. Pulling out stats that clearly convey something about this space are very popular.
RT asks. I'm always a bit hesitant on this one. Blatantly asking for retweets can be obnoxious, especially if you go into overkill with it. However, if there's a fun statistic that has a benefit to that end user for retweeting, they are more likely to do so. For example, ask someone to RT if they agree with a stat or if they are participating in an event. These types of tweets are more likely to get retweeted because it creates an opportunity for that other user to participate.
CTAs. Using actionable language really works. Use terms like “learn more,” "find out," "see how," etc. at the beginning or in the middle of a Tweet with a link to get people to take action.

Not so scary, right? AND it doesn't take that much time! You'll be left with real, valuable insight into your Twitter strategy.