How well are your Tweets performing? Unfortunately a lot of businesses don't know the answer to this question because they aren't measuring their Tweet activity. Getting to know the data behind your Tweets is important because it shows you what's working, and more importantly, what's not.
If Twitter is a big part of your social media marketing strategy, you need to get familiar with the analytics dashboard. The Tweet activity section is where you're going to spend most of your time. In this post we'll break down how to view your Tweet activity and how to use the data to improve your Twitter marketing strategy.
How to See Your Tweet Activity
Tweet activity lives in the Twitter Analytics dashboard.
From the main dashboard, click on Tweets in the top menu to go to the Tweet activity dashboard.
The Tweet activity dashboard gives you an aerial view of your Tweet performance. You can narrow down the data to see:
All TweetsTop TweetsTweets and repliesPromoted TweetsWhile this dashboard gives you an overall look at your performance, you can also access Tweet activity for individual Tweets as well through the desktop or mobile app.
For desktop, just click the three bar icon below your Tweets.
This will show you the activity of a single Tweet, including:
ImpressionsTotal engagementsProfile clicks
To see your Tweet activity from a mobile device, the process is the same. Tap on any Tweet and click the three bar icon below it.
You'll see the same data as you do on desktop.
As you can see, you also have the opportunity to setup a promoted Tweet from this screen. Learn more about promoted Tweets in our Twitter Advertising guide.
Now that you know where to find your Tweet activity, the next step is figuring out how to use the information.
How to Use Tweet Activity
The main use of the Tweet activity dashboard is to find out how many people are seeing your Tweets and how many are engaging. The specific metrics Twitter gives you are:
Link clicksLikesRetweetsRepliesEngagement rateHere's what you can learn from each data point.
Link Clicks
Link clicks are the highest level of engagement. When someone clicks your link, it means the Tweet's copy and image were so compelling they wanted to learn more.
If you're getting a lot of impressions but aren't seeing as many link clicks as you'd like, it's a sign that either the content you're sharing isn't connecting with your audience or your headlines/images aren't eye-catching enough. In that case, you can start to test different headlines and photos.
A good tactic is to use Sprout Social to schedule multiple Tweets for the same post and change out the text a bit.
Then look at your Tweet activity or Sprout's Sent Message report to see which version got the most engagement.
Look for similarities in your most clicked Tweets such as certain call to action phrases or hashtags. If you find patterns, use that information when crafting future Tweets and track your results.
Likes
Likes are lower on the engagement totem poll because the action requires the least amount of effort. However, it's still very useful to help you figure out what content is having an impact on your followers.
If you Tweet a lot of links, there should be somewhat of a correlation between your number of likes and link clicks. If you notice your Tweets are receiving a lot more likes than link clicks, it could be a sign that people aren't clicking through and are just randomly liking your Tweets.
Retweets
Retweets are a level above likes. Retweeting doesn't require too much effort beyond hitting a button, but it gets your content in front of more people. This can make it more valuable than a like.
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— Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) March 15, 2016
