Have you checked the new Twitter Analytics function yet?

A note from Twitter appeared on my feed this morning alerting me to the fact that I could now access the platform’s new Analytics Dashboard.

(N.B. It may have popped up earlier, this was the first time I noticed it and checked out the dashboard; I believe this functionality has been available to advertisers for a while but has only just been opened up for individuals recently).

On the surface, Twitter Analytics looks pretty useful.

I’m a bit ‘iffy’ on the impressions stat – Twitter defines an impression as the “times a user is served a Tweet in timeline or search results”.  Thus, it represents the potential a tweet is seen, and as we all know, tweets appear en masse and disappear pretty quickly, so it’s not a true reflection of who actually sees your handiwork.

 But I like what I see in the right sidebar:

• Engagements: Twitter definition = total number of times a user interacted with a Tweet. Clicks anywhere on the Tweet, including retweets, replies, follows, favorites, links, cards, hashtags, embedded media, username, profile photo, or Tweet expansion (obviously something that’s worth keeping an eye on, although you can check individual tweets – reviewing high engagement tweets should give you a good feel for what’s working from an engagement perspective).

• Link Clicks – Clicks on a URL included in your Tweet (especially important if you’re sharing links to original content housed on your own blog or website).

• Retweets – the number of times users retweeted your tweets (set a benchmark, see where you stand now and review to see if you’re able to lift that average figure).

• Favorites – the number of times people favorited your tweets (this is a good measure to see if your content is resonating with people).

• Replies – the number of times users replied to your tweets (this is an excellent way to gauge interaction with those in the Twitterverse).

What I do like is the ability to dissect the performance of an individual tweet (see example below). Of course, Twitter also gives you the opportunity to ‘boost’ a tweet through its Twitter Ads function (very kind of them, no?). More on this here

From a business perspective, ultimate measure will more often than not be whether Twitter is directly driving new business leads or somehow positively impacting on revenue.

For me that’s not as important as the connections I make and the conversations I have (these, I find, quite often lead to new relationships that in turn result to new business opportunities anyway); I guess it’s up to the individual (or business) as to how what they want to get out of Twitter and then how can that best be measured.

Have you used new Twitter Analytics yet? What do you think of the dashboard?