More than ever, hard numbers are necessary to demonstrate success; they are incontrovertible, easy to communicate, and can point out what is or is not working. For new media darling Twitter, marketers are finding more tools to help them understand how their efforts are performing.
There are five tools to consider, but first you have to know what to measure. Not all of the tools out there are going to be helpful. Some are introspective, looking at how the Twitter campaign is presented. Others are quantitative tools to analyze traffic, trends and follower count. First, make a measurement plan, noting what is important to the organization and how to justify the success of the campaign. What does success look like? What are the key things that need to happen? List these goals and then determine reliable tools to measure progress.
Five Useful Tools for Tracking Twitter Success
- TwInfluence. Track not only how many listeners you have, but also how concentrated your audience is, and the rate at which your campaign is growing.
- TwitAlyzer Measure your popularity, signal-to-noise ratio, and how many times you’re being cited. This is valuable if your aim is to become a thought leader. Twitalyzer also lets you tie into Google Analytics and collect information on site traffic coming from Twitter. This can provide insight into how the digital marketing channel is being influenced by a Twitter campaign.
- TwitterFriends Get detailed insight on who you’re interacting with on Twitter. This includes everything from a map indicating where your followers are to the average length of a given tweet. This helps provide clarity on who is responding, how frequently and the nature of these interactions. This information can be useful in the planning stages of a Twitter campaign, as well as tracking once the work is in progress.
- Trendistic Get an understanding of trends in Twitter. Enter a keyword and see how it is referenced in the space over time. It’s possible to see up to 180 days worth of information.
- TweetEffect Find out how individuals are reacting to your posts. By entering the user ID and clicking search, you get a summary of recent changes, as well as adds or losses based on specific tweets. It’s an excellent way to see what is resonating with followers and what is not.
As more users flock to Twitter, developers are coming up with tools that enable marketers to measure a multitude of interactions. While the information may not be 100% accurate, it is close enough to accurately capture trends in the space.
