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Twitter Metrics

Written by: Ryan Nokes

Article Overview: Metrics that can be used to track performance on Twitter.

Twitter Metrics

Though there is a metric to measure almost anything, the goal is to avoid analysis paralysis. As marketers, we want to focus on what is critical to our success and measure only those things. By tracking those metrics over time, we can see if we have moved the needle closer to our goal or not.

There are various programs out there claiming to have robust Twitter metrics, like the ones featured below. However, we fail to see how these apply to anything. They don’t tie into anything specific.

Tied Back to Goals

Critical success factors can generally be classified under three questions:

• Does it build revenue?

• Does it improve efficiency/reduce costs?

• Does it build brand loyalty?

Ask yourself why you tweet. Because all of your metrics need to tie back somehow to one of those overarching goals above. Otherwise, you will end up like these guys… Looking forward to Flutter Eyes, for sure.

Twitter Analytics

For the rest of us that are trying to get real value out of Twitter, it’s time to incorporate Twitter analytics. Twitter analytics takes the existing tools and uses them to track metrics that are tied back to your marketing goals.

Last time I listed several ways businesses are using Twitter. This post is going to create measurable metrics for those as much as possible.

Drive targeted website traffic

o Tweet Conversion Ratio = # Site Visits from Twitter / # of Twitter Followers (or new Twitter followers)

Build brand loyalty and buzz

o Twitter Friends = # of Twitter Followers over time (watch for upward trends)

o Retweet Ratio = # of Retweets / Total Tweets in a given period of time

Obtain opinion data from a diverse group, perform simple market research

o Reply Ratio = # Replies / Total Tweets in a given period of time

Direct people’s attention to good information or valuable content

o Clickthrough Ratio = (# Clickthroughs per link) / Total Tweets with Links

Track memes and trends

o # of Tweets in given period vs. Google Trendsgraph of specific subject/topic

Gather competitive intelligence

o Competitive Intelligence Ratio = # of Tweets about Competitors / Total Tweets about Industry

e.g. The number of mentions Avinash gets vs. Omniture vs. web analytics in general

Manage customer service, create a brand index

o (Positive Tweets – Negative Tweets) / Total Tweets

Create a tribe

o # of New Followers per Tweet

Each of these ratios will give you a percentage. The higher the percentage, the better. If percentages are low, it’s time to experiment and try something new. Perhaps posting more frequently, or maybe less frequently, or adjusting the content you share, or the way you present information, will help you improve your ratios.

Last post discussed some potential Twitter metrics. This post seeks to tie your twitter ratios into blog success. Answer the following questions with the following metrics:

How often do I post on Twitter? (substitute blogs for tweets for blogging)

o Measures whether or not you are worth following, subscribing to, or listening to

o # Tweets / # Months (or weeks) Tweeting (Thanks Avinash!)

How strong are my calls-to-action in my Tweets?

o # of @ Replies / Total Tweets (or total tweets with a call to action)

How much of the information I share is being absorbed?

o This metric is a little tricky. The average human reads about 200 words a minute, studies show. Assuming it is a link to your own site, compute the following ratios:

Absorption Ratio (minutes to read) = # Words in blog post (or whatever) / 250

Use the clickthrough ratio in conjunction with this metric as well as your analytics stats to see what the average time spent on your site is. This will help you understand how much information you share is actually being absorbed.

Is my audience growing?

o Trended stats of Twitter followers, blog readership, blog subscribers.

What brings people to my site?

o Use the traffic report to analyze keywords bringing in traffic from Twitter in Google Analytics

How can I tie my information into trendy topics?

o Use Google Trends

o Since a lot of people search for trendy topics, like Paris Hilton, you have the opportunity to potentially grab more followers by tying into a trendy topic that gets a lot of searches

That wraps this subset up of our overall series on Twitter and marketing analytics. In the next post, we will discuss which tools can be used and combined to track the above Twitter metrics. What metrics would you add or change? Let us know. We want this to be a discussion.

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Article Tags: analysis paralysis, brand loyalty, conversion ratio, critical success factors, diverse group, followers, font family, market research, marketers, marketing goals, metrics, period of time, rsquo, sans serif, several ways, span style, style font, tweets, twitter, upward trends



Related Forum Posts
Re: Using Twitter To Double Your Traffic? - I'm sure in many cases Twitter sends more traffic than Search Engines because most people don't have good enough SE rankings to get SE traffic. But anyone can get Twitter traffic. The problem is that Twitter traffic won't convert for the most part and SE traffic will. I'd venture to say that 98% of the time getting just 100 visitors from search is better than getting 2000+ from Twitter.
How to Use Twitter to Market Products? - How do you use Twitter to market products? Has the Twitter route given you good results? Please share your experience and ideas on how to use Twitter to take a product to the customers. Thank you in advance.
Re: Social Media Works If You Do It Right... - Hi Michelle, Ah, but it seems hashtags are still being used by a lot of people - including Twitter! So I would still use them for your keywords. It's just that if you are searching for something on Twitter you can either go the #hashtag route, or do a direct search on the Twitter homepage. I guess you could use #hashtags when searching on the Twitter homepage as well! DH
Re: Facebook or Twitter? - Thanks for the feedback guys! I personally started with Twitter and am now moving over to Facebook. I polled people on both my accounts and (not surprisingly) the Twitter people said Twitter and the Facebook people said Facebook! The actual order of my social media presence looks like this: 1) LinkedIn (with little success) 2) Twitter 3) YouTube 4) Facebook
Re: Twitter vs Facebook - I use Facebook pages for Business and rarely ever use Twitter. I hace lost count of the no. of Hotels that I have visited, regarding their marketing campaigns, that may have 5k Facebook Fans and only 100 followers on Twitter. It is a lot more difficult to engage with people on Twitter and thus harder to gain traction. If you are a business like Nike, then Twitter is great, but if you are an SME, then focus on Facebook or LinkedIn (if you are providing a professional service.) You can always have your Facebook feed directly in to Twitter, so you can have a presence on both, but do the work on one. Also check out ping.fm for managing campaigns - it is a free tool, and a great time saver.


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