Ever get a hankering for some Twitter web analytics? Well, it looks like your craving is about to be satisfied. Twitter announced today that it will be releasing its own official Twitter Web Analytics tool, which is aimed at helping website owners understand how much traffic they generate from Twitter as well as the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their websites.
Before now, Twitter users not already using integrated analytics platforms haven't had a very accurate understanding of how well their activity on Twitter is driving traffic to their websites and content.
We sort of knew this was coming. The availability of Twitter's new Web Analytics tool has been largely due to its former acquisition of BackType, a social analytics platform, back in July.
Twitter's analytics platform will offer three main advantages to marketers:
- How much of your website content is being shared on Twitter
- How much web traffic Twitter generates for your website
- How effective your Tweet Button integration is
While the tool is still currently in beta and only available to certain Twitter partners, Twitter's plan is to roll out the feature to all users in the next few weeks. Twitter has also indicated plans to release a Twitter Web Analytics API for developers to incorporate the feature into their own products.
Why Marketers Should Rejoice
For inbound marketers, analytics should be an important part of their inbound marketing processes. Understanding what is working -- and what isn't -- is a helpful way to determine which tactics you should stop doing and which ones you should improve or keep doing.
Social media participation is no different. Marketers need to know which social media sites are generating results, and analytics are a helpful indicator of this. Twitter's new Web Analytics tool will prove helpful for marketers seeking to justify and understand the impact their Twitter presence is having on their marketing efforts. Furthermore, with this reliable data soon available in API form, more marketing analytics platforms will be even smarter, providing even more powerful data to marketers.
What do you think of Twitter's latest announcement?
Inbound Marketing Blog Feed
Dana Morris 5:46 PM on September 13, 2011
I could swear that Twitter made the same announcement @ a year ago?
Second announcement, still no analytics tool....
Terry Kerr 6:52 PM on September 13, 2011
Amazing! We at Gruv are very much looking forward to employing Twitter Analytics to measure the efficacy of our work on the platform.
Joe Kyle 10:16 PM on September 13, 2011
This is great. Now I want more.
- A way to flag tweets for later reference and
- A way to bookmark links from tweets so we can go back and review them at a latter date.
- Oh and hey, how about a way to segment followers into groups (like circles) in Twitter. THAT would be great.
Maybe some of these things already exist through things like Hootsuite, etc. Not sure.)
Thanks HubSpot!!
xo Joe
MaggieB 10:25 PM on September 13, 2011
We'll take any and all tools that will allow us to analyze our performance and to see what is working so we can fine tune our efforts!
David Blackshaw 5:31 AM on September 14, 2011
Looking forward to using Twitters new Web Analytics tool to track & monitor any traffic it generates for the website!
Yvette Pistorio 9:13 AM on September 14, 2011
This is great! Looking forward to using it.
Hartley Brody 9:49 AM on September 14, 2011
HA Joe, all of those things already exist!
1. Most people use "favorites" (the star) to mark tweets to come back to
2. There's a service called Trunk.ly that stores all the links you share. If you want to bookmark other's links, there are apps like Instapaper and Read it Later
3. Twitter already has built in lists, and has for awhile. These let you sort the people you follow into groups. You can then look at each list's stream separately
=]
Joe 10:17 AM on September 14, 2011
Hartley Brody, I am humbled and grateful. Not sure if you ever do any charity work but this Social Media beginner would gladly buy you lunch. (Old school marketer trying to ramp up my Inbound Marketing chops.) Peace. Joe