If you use email as part of your online marketing strategy, then naturally you monitor a variety of metrics after every email you send out - how many people are subscribing and unsubscribing to your emails, what links are being clicked on, forwards, etc. By doing this, you can make decisions regarding your email content and/or your overall email marketing strategy.
Now let's think of this in terms of social media, specifically Twitter. If you have a Twitter account for your business and use it regularly to connect with your customers, post links to valuable content on your site, etc., then you should know how to monitor certain metrics, the tools available to you for this purpose, and how to make decisions based on your available data.
Measuring Follows vs. Unfollows
Your Twitter account should already be set to alert you by email when someone starts following you. If it's not, then please do it now: sign in to your Twitter account, click on Settings at the top of the page, click on the Notices tab, and check the box for New Follower Emails. Check the box for Direct Text Emails while you're at it. Go ahead - I'll wait while you do this.
Done? Good. Let's move on.
Now for monitoring unfollows. You can't do this through Twitter; however, you can use a free tool called Qwitter. This tool will send you an email when someone unfollows you on Twitter, which also includes the specific tweet you sent when they stopped following you.
Now, just because someone someone stopped following you after a specific tweet doesn't mean that they stopped following because of that tweet. It will be hard to determine why someone stopped following you; however, you should pay attention to how many people unfollow you after a specific tweet. If a tweet causes a mass un-follow exodus from your Twitter account, then this may be a sign that you should re-evaluate what you're posting.
Clickthroughs
When you post links to Twitter, what URL shortener are you using? Does it give you click stats? If not, you'll want to change your shortening service to one that gives you access to click data. Here are just a few:
BudURL - this URL shortening tool was designed specifically for business, so they provide you with a robust set click stats, including referring domains and IP addresses. You can even create custom "vanity" URLs and multiple URLs pointing to the same page - which means you can test and measure different URLs. For now, this tool is free; however, they will soon be charging for different levels of service.
Twurl - also known as Tweetburner, this tool is free to use and allows you to track your 5 latest URLs, as well as referring domains.
Traceurl - you'll need to create an account, but Traceurl will provide you with detailed click and referrer stats and allow you to create custom URLs. If you have a Box.net file storage account, you can even upload documents and create shotened URLs to those.
Retweets
A retweet is the Twitter equivalent of an email forward. If someone finds your content valuable enough to share it with their network of followers, then they'll retweet it - and this is viral marketing at its best. According to a recent post by Shel Israel, "Retweeting allows the power of the network to take over."
Sometimes they'll copy your tweet (with the URL you created) and retweet that, and sometimes they'll create their own URL from your original page and tweet that. There aren't any tools currently available for measuring retweets (at least, none that I know of at the moment; but I expect to see someone develop one in the coming months). You can, however, use Twitter Search as a rudimentary measurement tool. Try the following query types :
- RT yourusername OR Retweet yourusername OR R/T yourusername
- yourusername -from:yourusername
- "title of your tweet" -from:yourusername
- Your shortened URL -from:yourusername
Here are some more advanced Twitter search techniques you can use.
What I recommend is using Tweetdeck as your Twitter posting platform, then plugging in one or more of these search queries. You can have these queries open constantly on Tweetdeck so you can monitor each in real time.
As more businesses begin to see the value of using Twitter as part of their customer engagement and content marketing strategies, more tools will become available to help those businesses better track their efforts. Right now, though, the important thing is that you stop the guesswork and start tracking real Twitter stats.
