I have to admit to being very excited about the arrival of Twitter analytics for all. A week ago I start to look at the data that was available and wondered how much use it would be to individuals as well as for small businesses. The answer is that if used in the right way it is a great source of information that is available free.
The key for any small business is to know why they are using social media. Usually this will be to increase sales of a product or service and connecting with potential customers is possible using social networks. To do it you need to understand that social media is just that social, and it is the human touch that really matters. No one wants to suffer the hard sell on social networks.
If that is the case then being able to access average engagement rates and look at which tweets attracted retweets or favourites can tell you a lot both about your activity and also the priorities of your followers. It is really easy now to review the data on a weekly or monthly basis to track whether you are making the most of the opportunities as well as developing your use of social media.
It doesn’t need an expensive analytical survey or report to gather the data which means small businesses can focus on finding some support to improve what they are doing, whether that is through training courses or engaging the services of a PR or marketing specialist.
So, how useful is it to the average individual user of social media? I suppose that depends what you want to do and why you engage through social media.
For me it has made me review and reassess why I use Twitter and what I want to achieve or not by using it. One of the important things was to look at the level of engagement highlighted because if that is a really low figure then I am obviously not making the most of things. It would be like sitting in a room and just talking to myself. I don’t want to get obsessed with reviewing the figures but every so often it will help me to get a reality check about what I am doing and whether it is making a difference.
If you haven’t checked your Twitter analytics out yet then just search Google for “Twitter Analytics” and then set it up to view. Definitely worth checking it out.
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