Twitter’s widespread launch of its analytics dashboard is something special. First, the dashboard is available to everyone, not just advertisers or verified users—what Twitter deems a “key individual or brand.”
Second, this move comes at a time when other social media companies such as Facebook are increasing the complexity and opacity behind algorithms, driving what gets top billing on their users’ news feeds.
There are still so many businesses, especially in the SMB sector, without a social media strategy. Not using social media makes sense in some instances, but it can certainly be a great way to easily communicate with your employees and customers to get them excited about new products, developments, and ways of doing things that might be taking place outside their areas of visibility.
And still, those businesses that have social media strategies often lack the ability to quantifiably measure the results of these initiatives. With the introduction of Twitter’s analytics, we now have a new way to measure the reach of our social media campaigns without cost. Hopefully the availability of these free tools will grow in the future.
At a high level, the new analytics tool provides Twitter users with the following information:
If you or your business uses Twitter, I highly encourage checking out the help page for more information about how to use its analytics as well as definitions for the metrics you’ll see when viewing your specific analytics report.
I am a big believer in fostering valuable communication between people and organizations. Tools like this give everyone—not just top brands or celebrities—an increased ability to understand their reach and fine-tune their communication and strategies to make sure they’re communicating valuable, engaging, and timely information to exactly those they intend to communicate it to.
Jennifer Bonine is presenting the tutorials What’s Your Leadership IQ? and Innovation Thinking: Evolve and Expand Your Capabilities at STARWEST, in Anaheim, CA, October 12–17, 2014.
