Twitter recently revamped their analytics offering an made it accessible to everyone.
Here’s a graph I quickly generated with the data it provides:
These are the time I should be Tweeting for a maximum # of impressions. Darker colors = more clicks. #tableau pic.twitter.com/6d21BNX4xg
— Paul Shapiro (@fighto) August 28, 2014
If you haven’t already checked it out, definitely do so. It’s accessible at https://analytics.twitter.com/.
There have been a number of EXCELLENT posts written about the platform. Definitely check out what AJ Kohn and Dan Shure have written on the topic.
I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty awesome and works well for understand your personal tweets. You can easily get a sense which tweets receive the greatest engagement, what gets favorites, or are the most ReTweeted, and why.
BUT, there’s another official Twitter Analytics offering available and I haven’t heard anyone else talk about it.
Unlike analytics.twitter.com, this allows you any tweet activity involving your website.
If anyone shares a link from your website, it’s recorded, EVEN if you aren’t the one tweeting!
You get all sort of information like who tweeted it, how many clicks it got and what engagement it received! The data can be viewed within certain date ranges as well as examined at the sitewide or page-level.
This information is invaluable and you can’t get it if you just use Google Analytics and the other Twitter Analytics platform.
Here’s how to add it…
Head over to Twitter Ads. Don’t worry, it’s free and you don’t actually have to buy any ads if you don’t want to.
Navigate up top to “Analytics” and then “Websites”.
From there, click the “Add website” button.
It will bring you to a website that will provide you with Twitter specific meta tag that you can add to the head section of your website. Once you add the meta tag, click the “Verify website” button found on the same page as the Twitter meta tag.
That’s it! You’re site will start collecting some sweet data.
Update: Luiz Centenaro tipped me off that that once you implement the tracking on your website, at least some data appears retroactively.
@fighto I installed it yesterday and found analytics dating back to the 12th! Found some retweets I did not catch, amazing tool. Thanks
— Luiz Centenaro (@LuizCent) September 26, 2014
I originally shared this tip in my newsletter, which I’d like to encourage people to sign-up for. You can sign-up here.
Update: Twitter may have killed this feature. I’m currently investigation…