In the first part of this three-part series of posts about measuring the success of marketing campaigns on Twitter, we looked at the most important metrics you need to pay attention to. In this part, we look at how to build an analytics framework for those campaigns.

Build your analytics framework

Knowing when and how often to check your performance is an important consideration, but also knowing what you should be looking for at certain times is key too.

Part of building your Twitter presence involves keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s happening around your brand. So what data should you be checking on a regular basis to ensure you’re not missing what could prove to be a critical opportunity or event?

Time-critical measurements

Obviously you could argue a case for combing through all of your metrics with a fine toothcomb, but we’re interested in looking at key stats that will alert you to everything from a campaign going viral to a potential PR crisis. Here’s what you need to track:

• Total mentions: this figure will usually hover around a certain mark, but if there’s a sudden spike in brand engagement the Total Mentions figure – part of Twitter’s analytics API – is the quickest way to see that’s something unfolding, allowing you to investigate further.
• Most Retweeted Tweets: when working out what content – as well as its style and tone – is catching the attention of your audience, this figure is key, allowing you to find out what’s popular and adjust your content strategy to suit.
• Top Tweeted links: like most Retweeted Tweets, this stat helps point the finger to the most popular content relating to your brand. It might highlight a blog post or new product that’s captured your audience’s imagination or it may reveal a third-party site that’s either helping promote your product or generating some negative publicity around your brand. Either way, knowing what these links are can help you take appropriate action – say thank you to an advocate or take steps to remedy a bad review, perhaps.

Measure your influence

It doesn’t matter how diligently you’re following our tips to reach out and connect with other influencers, how do you measure your success rate? Here’s some handy metrics to look out for – all of which are available in Simply Measured, and some of which will be accessible through other tools too:

• Klout Stream Report: this report measures the percentage of Tweets mentioning your brand or @username that are originating from top influencers – you can view this by day of the week or even on an hour-by-hour basis.
• Klout Share of Influence Analysis: this tool allows you to compare your influence to other competitors – choose your terms to compare and then see if you or any of your competitors is outpacing the competition when it comes to being discussed courtesy of the ‘Relative Volume by Term’ report. Not only does this give you a rolling figure, it also reveals those times and days when your competitors are weakest, providing you with an opportunity to jump in.
• Number of Retweets: yep, simply tallying your Retweets reveals how influential you’re becoming. Keep an eye on this week-on-week to see if it’s influence is growing (and which Tweets are helping boost your influence).

Build brand awareness

If your primary goal with Twitter is to use it to boost your brand awareness, you’re not alone. According to Mashable, nearly 80% of US marketing professionals are primarily interested in improving their brand’s visibility and reach through Twitter. It’s important to note that you need to focus on different metrics than you would for other goals, such as driving sales.

What you’re primarily looking at are ratios, and these are defined by your specific brand awareness campaign. Here are some ideas to help you when considering which ratios to track:

• Number of Tweets sent compared to number of unique people engaged: this gives you a solid idea of how many people are motivated by your Tweets to actively engage with you. Keep measuring this regularly and eventually you’ll reach a sweet spot between how many Tweets you send out and the number of people engaged, giving you the basis of a goal ratio to aim for.
• Number of Tweets sent versus total engagement: use this ratio to figure out what makes followers particularly loyal and engaged compared to more passive users.
• Number of Tweets sent versus potential reach: this figure helps you determine how far your brand is being pushed by your followers – a high ratio would suggest you have influential followers with large numbers of followers of their own, helping maximise your exposure.
• Number of Tweets versus potential impressions: this figure could be critical, as it reveals just how much exposure your brand is getting, and highlights how effective your current brand awareness strategy is.

It’s worth experimenting with a number of ratios like this for a short period until you decide which one is the most relevant for your specific brand and goal.

Twitter analytics

When you sign up for Twitter’s Ads platform you gain access to four key analytical tools, all of which are free to use. You can glean general information from these about your Twitter profile as well as track the performance of your ad campaigns, plus monitor engagement and lead generation too by recording click-throughs to your website or monitoring signups for an email newsletter, for example.

The great news is that you don’t need to sign up for Twitter’s Ad platform to access three of these tools: by visiting the Twitter Analytics site while signed into Twitter you can measure your Tweets, Followers and Twitter Card performance (Website stats are still restricted to those with an Ad account).

Here’s what useful insights you can glean from the Tweets section for example:

Analyse your Tweets via Twitter Analytics

1. Overall impressions: roll your mouse over the graph to reveal total impressions for your Tweets per day.
2. Select Tweet type: by default all your Tweets are selected, but you can also measure Tweets and Replies or simply focus on your Promoted Ads.
3. Tweet performance: get at-a-glance stats for each individual Tweet: its impressions, engagements and the overall engagement rate (based on engagements to impressions).
4. Engagement rate: get a daily chart revealing total engagement rates over the previous 28 days.
5. Link clicks: how many times were the links clicked in your Tweets? This graph reveals all.
6. Retweets and Favourites: another way to measure your growing influence is to see how often you’re being Retweeted or Favourited on a daily basis.
7. Replies: how often are users choosing to engage directly with you? This chart reveals all.
8. Export data: you can save your analytic data in CSV format for reading offline or plugging into another analytic tool.

New developments

Better still, Twitter’s analytics allow you to drill down to individual users, giving you answers to questions like, “What kind of person is buying our products?” or “What are users doing with the content we provide?” It also allows you to monitor “real impressions”, the actual count of times users have been exposed to your content, giving you the hard facts about your campaign’s reach rather than a vague “potential” figure.

Twitter’s analytics also make it possible to measure clicks for individual URLs – while you can still use a third-party tool such as bit.ly, it’s no longer strictly necessary.

By making the tracking process simpler, it means you can fine-tune your Tweeting too, discovering that sweet spot you need to hit when working out how many times you need to Tweet a single link to drive the optimum amount of traffic to your website. Similarly, its dashboard now includes measurements for #hashtag clicks too – a useful addition to those tracking a campaign or chat’s unique hashtag, for example.

In the final part of this three-part series of blog posts, we’ll look at the best third-party tools for gaining deeper analytics insight into your Twitter marketing campaigns.