Social Media is an indispensable asset to every company which can be used to broadcast and reach out to their audience. How do they generally plan to reach out and gain authority? The answer lies in conducting campaigns with social media on a consistent basis. These campaigns can be stand alone and singled out for only one social media platform or can be a part of (or assisting) an overall digital/offline campaign.
One of the pain points which brands/agencies face is to justify spend of the campaign with quantifiable results. Hence, measurement is a key step for any social media activity to tell you the effectiveness of your campaign and place it in accordance with the goals you have set in place. The questions a brand needs to ask to assess the result for their campaign can be generalized with the below set of questions:
How far did my message reach? [Reach]
How did the audience react to my message? [Engagement]
What was the outcome of the broadcasted message [Leads, Brand Awareness, Sales]
Twitter is one of the most used social media platforms which is being increasingly adopted by Brands for real time conversations with their audience. In this article, we will look at some of the Twitter tools which can help you track the effectiveness of your Twitter oriented campaigns and track your company’s progress over time.
1. Simply Measured: [Free]
KPI’s offered:
- Audience Profiling [Free Report]
- Engagement Stats [Paid]
- Reach [Paid]
- Web Traffic [Paid]
- Influencers [Free]
- Hashtag analysis [Paid]
You simply cannot ignore this tool, Simply Measured lets you track your Facebook/Twitter stats along with a competitive analysis with multiple free options for different social media platforms. The Follower report on gives you a measure of your own Twitter account and the analysis of what, why and where of your Followers.You can get information on the top keywords your followers are using which can determine the type of tweets they do and the topics they might be interested in (for you to include those topics/flavors within your campaign). This report can basically help you with audience profiling which is a necessity before launching a campaign on Twitter. There are other simple but important features covered like
Free Twitter Follower Report : Simply Measured
When does your audience tweet (To time your posts accordingly for maximum exposure)
Audience Distribution by TimeZone (To decipher where and when can you target messages for a global brand)
Most Influential Followers (By Followers & Klout Scores describing the topics which they tweet about most)
Follower Distribution
SimplyMeasured offers you more options with paid subscription plans which can help you get a holistic view of your Twitter account along with the campaign activity and reach. The integration of the tool with Google Analytics can help you view the impact to your business website (in case of increase in visits or converted leads via the campaign) right within the reports. And you get all the reports in a business friendly Excel or Powerpoint format which you can directly present to your client.
Twitter Account Report :Simply Measured
The paid reports give you detailed engagement stats alogn with content breakdown which you can use to measure a specific campaign (within a limited timeframe) or as a weekly analysis for your brand. Simplymeasured also offers competitive analysis reports for you to compare your brand with your competitors so you can quantify your win against your competitors (Engagement Vs Engagement). The customer service aspect is also covered with detailed report on the response strategy of your brand along with key mentions.
Twitter Customer Service Analysis: Simply Measured
2. Topsy: [Free]
KPI’s offered:
- Reach & Exposure of your content
- Mentions
- Engagement Level Metrics
- Location based information
- Sentiment Level
Topsy which was recently acquired by Apple has been there as a popular tool for long. The tool has access to Twitter data since 2006 and can be effectively utilised for real time monitoring of keywords and hashtags related to your Brand. So when you are having that hashtag campaign going for your brand, you can check real time updates or otherwise directly within this tool to check what people are tweeting related to it. The Tool provides you a ‘Social Search’ function which acts as a normal Twitter search function boosted by filters of date range selection and language. Advanced search feature can help you with filtering down results with the help of parameters. The ‘Social Trends’ section offers you real-time engine of Twitter and what is hot and currently active on the microblog which can be a great medium for brands to have real time conversations around their topics.
Topsy Analytics for Twitter
The ‘Topsy Analytics’ section gives you the number of mentions of your account (Use @Twitter Username) or keywords for the last 30 days and can be used to generate insights about the number of times users have tweeted around your hashtag or campaign. You can also try out the Topsy Pro login for a trial of 14 days for some advanced analysis and listening solutions pertaining to your twitter presence. The Topsy paid account gives you a wide range of data to play with including the ability to track geography of users who interact with your content along with your contents reach & exposure. Various operators provided allow you to drill down and listen to specific keywords inside Twitter (For example: “site:digitalinsights.in” will give me tweets mentioning our blog posts only). Discovery feature helps you to search around a term and related terms to find out which people are talking about them.
Topsy unlike SimplyMeasured is a Twitter powered search engine which is a multi-utility tool for your Twitter needs from a campaign perspective.
3. TweetReach [Free]
KPI’s offered:
- Reach
- Exposure
- Top Contributors
- Tweets Timeline
TweetReach Report for Twitter
TweetReach is a freemium tool which allows you to look at the last 50 tweets based on keywords/hashtags when signed in via Twitter. The free version allows analysis of the first 50 Tweets providing you valuable information about Contributors and ReTweets. You can also download the data in excel by creating an account with TweetReach. Anything greater than 50 tweets will be payable to Tweetreach based on their pricing plans . Paid accounts can give you the capability of inbuilt dashboard with real-time monitoring on Twitter along with engagement drilldown for each tweet. You can capture a quick glimpse into recent Twitter activity around a specific account or topic with a set of snapshot reports. The ability to export full datasets to CSV for further analysis and generate beautiful PDF reports for clients and stakeholders is also a good to have.
4. Keyhole [Free]
KPI’s offered:
- Contributors
- Reach & Impressions
- Top Sites & content
- Influential Users
- Location & Demographics Data
- Top sources of Tweeting
- Related hashtags/keywords
Keyhole only focuses on hashtag tracking for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and is a pretty handy tool for your Twitter hashtag campaigns. You can get started by creating your free account in Keyhole and entering your desired hashtag to view the visual analysis. The paid option allows you access to historical data along with the ability to find your contextual influencers with their Influencer Marketing capability. You can also download all the data in excel for advanced analysis through paid subscription only. The premium plans can further give you the ability of real time tracking of campaigns along with new content discovery.
Keyhole Hashtag campaign tracking
The advanced search option is available to get in to minute details and filter according to dates with different operators along with creating sub-categories based on the specified filters. Keyhole truly has some progressive features which when utilised well can prove to be a goldmine of information for your Twitter account/campaign level analysis. You can also name your search and generate your desired url to save your tracking report under your freely created account to refer to it at a later time. Initially, you get the option of creating 3 track (or searches) for free with the tool when you create the account with Keyhole.
Keyhole hashtag analysis
5. Twitter Analytics: [Free]
KPI’s offered:
- Follower Growth
- Tweet Level engagement
- Interests and Demographics
- Twitter Card Analytics
Twitter Analytics Tool
When you are talking about measuring Twitter, you cannot forget mentioning Twitter’s own analytics tool which it released for all the Twitter users. The Twitter Analytics dashboard is a great way to look at your owned media performance on Twitter focusing on your engagement and follower growth. So if you do see a spike in engagement, you can narrow it down to which content actually did the job for you by looking at ReTweets and mentions which you can also download in CSV format. You can narrow down campaign ideas with the help of demographics and interests based data straight out of Twitter’s mouth. If you are looking at Lead Generation data via Twitter Cards, you can surely find great information in the ‘Twitter Cards’ tab with link wise traffic information along with influencer identification and sources.
6. Google Analytics [Free]
KPI’s offered:
- Traffic to the website
- Lead Generation/Conversion
- User Behavior via Social (User Flow report)
- Campaign Level Analysis
Google Analytics can provide you the data when your campaign goals are relevant to your website (lead conversion, increase in visits to a certain page). The direct impact data can often be tracked by your web analytics tool (which in this case is Google Analytics) with correct attribution to your social channels. When starting the campaign, you can start tagging your links with UTM parameters for correct attribution under your Google Analytics. You can use this handy chrome extension to get started with UTM parameters. This helps us segregate attribution levels when multiple campaigns are being run online and you would want to check the impact of each campaign separately to your business. In this case you can input the Source (i.e:Twitter) of the campaign along with the Medium (i.e: Social Media) & Campaign (i.e: Lead Gen Twitter). You can also integrate the url’s with bit.ly to shorten them and paste it directly on Twitter.
Twitter Campaign Measurement in Google Analytics
To measure the campaign wise impact, you can go under Acquisition à Campaigns àCampaign (which you named ‘Lead Gen Twitter’ earlier). You can find traffic and lead generation related metrics for the particular campaign right inside to measure the ultimate impact of your campaign to your business. GA also provides a separate Social tab under Acquisition tab for you to co-relate and compare your social media performance to your website goals.
Google Analytics: Social Referrals
7. TweetChup [Free]
KPI’s offered:
- Engagement Drilldown
- Tweets Per Day/Hour
- Keyword related tweets
- Most followed users
- Related hashtags to the keyword
TweetChup is a twitter analysis platform to gauge your own performance with similar features to simply measured. You will be required to sign in with your Twitter account to get started and the tool will give you information around your engagement (Mentions & ReTweets breakup by day). You can also perform similar analysis of other Twitter accounts by entering their username and selecting the range for which you would like to display the analysis.
TweetChup Twitter Analysis Tool
TweetChup also provides Keyword/hashtag search functionality within the tool which analyses upto 1,600 recent tweets containing the keywords you specify. Advanced search functionality is also available within the tool and can give you the information around the reach of the keyword along with the users mentioning them. The tool also display the hashtags which have been used mostly in combination with the keywords you specified by the users. TweetChup is a great tool which is free and can give you a good hands-down report as far as Twitter analysis is concerned.
TweetChup Keyword Analysis
Below are some of the tools which are more or less used for the same purpose and can also be referred for measuring any Twitter related campaigns:
8. Twitonomy [Free]
This tool can be used for visual analytics on hashtags and tweets along with the drilldown on favorites/mentions on a particular account along with user level details. Requires you to sign in via Twitter and can be leveraged for a competitive landscaping across Twitter as well.
9. FollowerWonk [Free]
Followerwonk is one of the first tools I explored when I was new to Twitter. Works best when you have to identify relevant people to follow under your niche and can work when you are looking for lead generation and outreach programs for your brand via Twitter. You can analyse your followers and search for Twitter Bio’s for relevant and timely interactions. A handy free tool by Moz which has also got premium plans for detailed analysis in and around your Twitter profile.
10. Twtrland [Free]
Twtrland works similar to Followerwonk but has some additional features for Facebook and Instagram profiling added to it. You can search for Influencers within your niche an also calculate your engagement and impression level details in the Dashboard. Content level analysis is also available for you showcasing who often has interacted with and around your content to identify the top followers for your Brand. The in-depth filtering capability of Twtrland with various options is what set it’s apart from other tool.
11. Twubs [Free]
Twubs is not a Twitter measurement tool, but more or less a real-time conversation engine which can help you monitor and engage with people around a certain keyword. This can help you with hashtag campaigns when the need is to constantly engage and look after your branded keyword. This is a must have tool when your Brand is looking at/planning a Twitter event or Twitter Chat regularly.
12. SocialDon: [Paid]
SocialDon is an owned social media analysis platform which can give you a dashboard around your Facebook/twitter presence with KPI’s around engagement and follower growth. You can try out their paid package for free for 7 days.
13. TweetBinder [Free]
TweetBinder requires you to authenticate your account with Twitter to get started for seeking out keyword related searches on Twitter. The tool is perfect for analysis around an event on Twitter with their paid plans depending on the number of tweets you want to analyse. However, the free version also offers keyword level insights for a limited number of tweets (limited to 2,000 tweets)
14. Quintly [Paid]
Quintly is a paid social media analytics platform which contains insights around Twitter engagement and follower growth. Quintly can be utilized for competitive benchmarking where you would want to compare the impact of your campaign (in terms of follower growth and enagement increase) with that of your competitors.
15. TagBoard [Free]
Tagboard unlike other tools is a cross-network hashtag powered social hub which can help you organize conversations around certain hashtag (Twitter Chats). You can create a visual representation around keywords and give a name to your Tagboard along with choosing the right image/cover image. A new way of monitoring conversations which you can surely try
16. TwitterFall [Free]
Twitterfall is a Twitter client specialising in real-time tweet searches. It has a whole lot of features including activity monitoring and advanced filtering capabilities. The user interface though looks a bit cluttered at first, but can be a good addition in your Twitter toolkit for the future.
With so many tools available for you, choosing the right Twitter tool for the right objective is very important.
Which metrics do you usually track when it comes to Twitter campaigns? We would love to know! Do let us know your views in the comments below.