5 best Twitter metrics to access performance

Like any social platform, Twitter too provides tons of data to a marketer. There are three important things to remember – knowing which tools to use to mine your data, understand which data matters the most to you, and how to analyze and draw actionable conclusions. Twitter's own dashboard is the best place to see everything there is (You can access it by going to analytics.twitter.com).If you want a better-segmented view of the data, you can go for paid tools like Buffer for business or Sprout Social that can dissect the data and give you a smaller section of analytics to deal with. No matter what you choose, the basic rules of the game remain the same – social needs to translate to better visibility, tangible engagement, warm leads, and ultimately money in the bank. Here is how you can measure your twitter success

1. Engagement rate: Engagement shows that when you throw a tweet at the universe, it is not lost in a virtual abyss. Instead, someone listens and responds. The ways to engage in twitter are many and each has its own importance. For example, a like may mean a positive sentiment towards the tweet, a re-tweet will mean that someone is endorsing your view, and a reply will mean someone wants to directly respond to it. The engagement rate is defined as the number of engagements divided by the number of impressions. To get this data, you can export it out of twitter into an excel or Google spreadsheet and dice it out month-on-month to see how your engagement rate is moving.
2. Tweet length v/s engagement: This statistic is useful when you want to get better at how you tweet over time. Two things to keep in mind - this one is not a readily available metric and you will have a sizable number of tweets over a few months to get conclusive data. Use the engagement rate spreadsheet and add a column to calculate the length of your tweets. You can use the =len(column-name) formula to do this [For example =len(A2)]. Add another column and use the formula to get the word count for each tweet including the shortened url.

=IF(LEN(TRIM(C2))=0,0,LEN(TRIM(C2))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,” “,””))+1) 

Compare your tweet length and engagement rate to see if you can find your magical number.

3. Your biggest influencers: Some tweets gain a viral effect because one person may have re-tweeted it to thousands of his followers. To find out who these are, use the buffer tool to see which tweets have had the highest potential reach and who the people who re-tweeted them are. Make a physical list of these influencer's to thank them personally for the re-tweet and to engage with them for future conversations.
4. Best time to tweet: While it’s good to use a scheduling tool like Buffer to be sure you are seen round the clock, it always helps to share a couple of extra tweets when your followers are online. There are tools like Follower wonk and Tweriod which can pull out the numbers for you
5. Your follower's interests: While the first glance will not show much, this statistic can be useful in knowing what your followers are reading and enjoying. Tailoring some content to these interest areas and then connecting them with your product can be an interesting way to re-purpose old content.

What statistics do you measure and how has it helped you improve your Twitter strategy?