All of us are a bit obsessive about our analytics. We want to know all of the following all of the time:
- We want to know how many people read our Tweets
- We want to know how many people re-Tweeted our Tweets
- We want to know if we’ve added any followers
- We want to know where our followers are
- We want to know the best time to Tweet
- We want to know all of the Twitter activity of our competitors
- We want to know which of our followers remain active and which have gone inactive
Of course, this obsession has an important purpose. We need to know if our content marketing campaigns are successful, and Twitter is a part of those campaigns. And there are lots of people who have developed analytics tools for us to do just that – thousands in fact – but with so many it is difficult to know which are truly reliable. Here are 10 free analytics and visualization tools that really provide reliable, easy-to-read visual information that can help you analyze your success in social media and identify where you need some more work.
- Twitter Analytics
Prior to July, 2014 Twitter only provided analytics to businesses. Now anyone who has a Twitter account can access the analytics dashboard. The analytics site is divided into three categories – your Tweets, your Followers, and Twitter Cards.
- You can click on any Tweet and give a visual of clicks received, retweets, replies, etc.
- The Twitter Cards, as you know, let you add media to posts so that you can increase traffic to your site. You can analyze the growth in clicks and re-tweets as a result of your using media.
- In the “Followers” category, you will be able to view long-term behaviors of your followers their locations, and their demographics. Of course, you can do the same for your competitors.
- SocialBros
Lots of different ways to analyze your network with this great platform. And in addition to the analysis reports, you can use SocialBro to schedule your Tweets for Buffer or Hootsuite from your dashboard. Just a few of the great features include the following:
- Full exploration of your community, with detailed information of who they are, where they are and what time they are on
- Identify influencers and arrange to follow them
- Target groups or categories of followers for specific campaigns
- TweetStats – It’s All About Timing
This is probably the easiest tool to use and the easiest reports to read. Basically, you enter your username and click “Graph My Tweets.” You will get tracking of your Tweets by hour, day, or month as well as the reach of those Tweets. You’ll also get reply statistics.
The other cool use for this tool is to track your competitors. By entering their usernames, you can get the same information, know when they are posting, how many replies that get, and how far their reach is too.
If you would like to find out what time your competitors are posting, the days of the week, the average number of Tweets etc., then TweetStats is probably your best bet.
Here are typical graphs you can expect to get:
- Twtrland (Now Re-Branded as Klear)– Finding the Influencers and Much More
You won’t get any numbers with this tool. What you can get, however, is the results of research on the influencers in your business niche, the demographics of your audience, and a solid visualization of the people connected to your account.
You will also get a visual display of your tweets that have been the best performers, so that you can perhaps re-purpose them for re-visits, and a listing of the most shared domains on your profile.
You can get all of this information on your competitors – good to have.
With the re-branding of this tool as Klear has come some enhanced analytics. Now, if you have other social media profiles/pages, you can see comparison data. Right now those comparisons are confined to Facebook and Instagram, but plans are to expand to for comparisons with Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+ soon.
- TweepsMap
At first this tool looks just like fun. You get a visual of our Twitter network distributed over a map, reported by percentages. Clearly, this is just fun to see, but you can dig much deeper and get all kinds of great information:
- Data can be also be confined to state or city
- Report on those followers who have been inactive for 3 months or more
- Provides information on best times to Tweet by regions
- Data on growth or decline by regions
- Intelligent publishing to give you quick highlights of conversations your audiences are having; tweets from top influencers; data based upon keywords and hashtags
- Twitonomy – The Key Stats you Want
Robust and easy to use, this tool offers a variety of methods of analysis for both your and your competitor’s accounts. Sign in with your Twitter account for your own reports. Identify your competitors’ handles and get the same info as well as some great comparisons. You will get the following:
- You can get Twitter lists that are common to both you and your competitors
- You will get a listing of your most popular Tweets as well as your competitors’
- You will get tracking of dialogue by keywords, lists, or users.
All of this data is provided in easy-to-read graphs.
- Mentionmapp – Growing Your Audience
Map your own network and then map the networks of your network.
You’ll get a map of hashtags and usernames of those individuals with whom you have been engaging most recently. Then, you will get see the people with whom those individuals are conversing – you have an entirely new potential audience to reach out to.
- Twitter Counter – Looking at Growth of Following
How about being able to see your follower growth and compare it to that of two competitors, even on a daily basis? This simple tool lets you do this and much more. The information you get is basic, of course, but there is a browser plugin that gives you much more – performance overviews, average interactions, and even recommendations based on the data collected.
- Twitter Reach – How Far Can You Go?
Here you will get a breakdown of your last 50 Tweets and how far they have traveled. You’ll also get a density graph that will show where the largest batches of followers are and, more importantly, when they the largest numbers of followers are engaging.
Another use, available with the free version, is data on the number of accounts you have reached, the number of re-tweets, those who contributed the most and a timeline. Lots of information and all free.
- Foller.me
If you really want to know what your competitors are up to, you can get a huge amount of data from Foller.me. Use it to analyze your own account too. Here is what this tool offers:
What are your favorite Twitter analytics tools? Share your insights below.
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