Twitter Releases Card Analytics: Here's How to Use 'Em

If there was a magic wand you could wave to suddenly make your Twitter presence more successful, I'd bet that most people on the platform would do it. More followers? More clicks? More retweets? All without any work? Sounds like a marketer's fantasy. 

Well, I hate to break it to you, but there's no magic wand ... though we now have the next best thing. Yesterday, Twitter unveiled a brand new analytics dashboard for Twitter Cards -- you know, those rich media attachments you see at the bottom of tweets like these: 

Blogging Myth #7: "You can't write a blog post in an hour." http://t.co/02AEOurs7O #blogfor30

— HubSpot (@HubSpot) January 24, 2014

So it's not quite a magic wand, but these new analytics can give you great insight into your Twitter presence and tips for making it even better. It still requires hard work, but at least you'll have the information you need to optimize your presence.

If you have Twitter Cards implemented (if you need help with that, here's a quick tutorial for you), you can access your new analytics dashbord at analytics.twitter.com, sign in, then choose "Twitter Cards" in the top navigation. 

There are quite a few new metrics you can measure with this dashboard, but we're here to help in whichever format you prefer to learn in: Twitter's put together a quick tutorial video and we've also decoded all of the metrics in the dashboard in the post below (along with a few key insights on what this dashboard means for your marketing).

So if you want to be walked through the dashboard step by step, keep on reading -- I'll explain every part of the Twitter Card analytics dashboard so you'll be an old pro by the end of this post.

Ready? Let's do this.

Twitter Card Metrics: 3 High-Level Metrics to Track

When you first click through to the Twitter Card analytics dashboard, you'll see the three basic metrics you can track at the top of the page:

These metrics capture traffic and activity to your site from tweets and interactions from any Twitter user, not just your company's account. So this means that in our account, URL clicks, install attempts, and retweets don't just measure the success of HubSpot tweets -- it measures the success of almost all tweets about our website's content from any Twitter account. 

All of the data collected in these reports is for actions taken on Twitter clients only, which include Twitter.com, mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for iPad, and Twitter for Android. You will not be able to track any of these actions people take through a third-party Twitter client like TweetDeck.

Here's a quick breakdown of what each of those metrics means. 

URL Clicks

According to Twitter's glossary, URL clicks measure clicks on a URL in a tweet or a Card that points to your website content -- not clicks to any URL you tweet.

Install Attempts

This metric only matters if you have a mobile app -- otherwise, the data won't populate. This is how many people clicked the install app link while on mobile. Keep in mind that an app install link only shows on Twitter for iPhone, iPad, and Android if the user doesn't already have your app installed. If they have already installed the app, there is no link, thus it won't be included in this metric.

Retweets

Just like URL Clicks, Retweets only measures retweets that include URLs to your site.

Within each of these top-line metrics, there are seven reports you can investigate further. Let's check 'em out!

Twitter Card Reports: A Deep Dive

These reports are the same across these three metrics -- though they populate with different data -- so we'll just go over them in general. Each metric will populate different data and actionable tips in each report, so definitely click through your own account to test it out.

For any of these reports, you can choose the date range you'd like to investigate. We're going to look at everything from the past 28 days, but you can choose time ranges of "Yesterday," "Last 7 Days," or "Custom Dates." Here are the different reports you can investigate.

Snapshot

This is supposed to be a quick look at how your Twitter Cards are driving traffic to your website. You can see the overall pie and the slice your account contributes toward three different metrics: tweets, impressions, and whichever top-line metric you're investigating. 

There are two important things that need to be clarified with this report:

1. Impressions: Each one is counted every time a person -- in one of the Twitter clients mentioned above -- views a Tweet in their home timeline. This does not count people viewing tweets on your profile page.
2. The Multiplier and Conversion Rate Percentages: Those numbers are for all of the tweets -- not only those for your account. If you want metrics for just your account, you'll have to do the math yourself.

If you're a HubSpot customer, you should be able to easily track the success of URL clicks within Reports -- the rest of the information in Twitter Card analytics Snapshot report can give you additional context.

Change Over Time

In the next report, Twitter graphs those Snapshot metrics against each other over time to see how they've grown in comparison to each other. Keep in mind that the y-axis shows percentage growth -- so that's why the URL clicks line might be above impressions (which is actually impossible). 

Card Types

Next, you can dive into the types of cards you are using to see how successful they are. Compare your own card formats against each other and see how you stack up against other Twitter Accounts. Don't get too discouraged by the latter, however -- they aren't segmented by industry or number of followers. Take it with a grain of salt to help you optimize your Twitter Cards.

Influencers 

This is one of my favorite reports -- you can see the top accounts that drove URL clicks, app install attempts, and/or retweets to your content. These are the folks you should be tapping into to grow your Twitter account. Now that you know their name, try making a Twitter list to follow and engage with them all.

For HubSpot customers, you can take this information to the next level with Social Inbox. Create a stream of that Twitter list, and you can see exactly where these influencers are in your marketing funnel. Depending on which stage they're in, you can nurture them with valuable content to be even more connected with you.

Tweets

In this report, you can drill down to see which specific tweets (not just from your account) drove the most URL clicks, install attempts, and retweets. I'd view each tweet individually to see if you can notice any trends -- were these all sent at a certain time of day? Are they about specific topics? Do they all fall under a certain number of characters? This report can give you some nice information to inform the rest of your marketing strategy.

Sources

Last is the Sources report -- basically detailing which apps, widgets, and websites your influencers are using to send you traffic. Not my favorite report in the bunch, but it could be helpful in some technical instances. If you're a HubSpot customer, you should be able to see all of this information as well in your HubSpot Sources report in addition to the rest of your social media traffic data.

And that's pretty much it! These reports give you some great basic data to optimize your Twitter presence, but there are a few key areas where you're going to need more helpful data if you want to grow your business through Twitter.

Why You Need More Than Twitter Card Analytics

These Twitter Card analytics are great for one thing: gauging some very specific Twitter metrics that may have impact on your business' bottom line. Sure, they can be indicative of other metrics like leads and customers, but you really need an integrated marketing platform with closed-loop analytics to track that. 

Because these metrics aren't integrated with a contact database, you have no idea what happens after people click and if the people who click would be valuable to your business. It's incredibly helpful to have Twitter-specific data, but in the end, you'll need more data to make more strategic (and smart) decisions about your social media and marketing strategy. 

Do you use Twitter Cards in your marketing? Will you use this new analytics dashboard? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!