Is a Twitter analytics package worthy of your time and money?
Posted by Lauren Potgieter on 28 Jun 2010 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
So if you haven’t already heard, Twitter has recently bought over and now has the rights to their very own web analytics company, Smallthought Systems. Through this, it is likely that Twitter will soon offer their own analytics service and this recent business move has brought the issue of Twitter analytics to the forefront.
There has been an ongoing debate as to whether acquiring a Twitter analytics package or system is worth it as many feel that free tools and general knowledge will let you do your own analytics for free. There is however a few Twitter analytics packages that will help you track as well as store and save all your related Twitter information under one roof.
I quite like Tweetmeme analytics. Basically, they track all of the links that get posted on twitter daily and through your Tweetmeme’s recourses, you can see what’s hot and what’s not as well as what stories are making waves. The data that Twitter collects and what you see in your Tweetmeme package is not only for trending topics though, Tweetmeme analytics also uses this information to find out how exactly those particular stories became as influential as they did. Tweetmeme analytics can also see who clicked on the “hot” topics on Twitter as well as who retweeted them. A highlight of this package to me is the retweet section where you can see exactly how your particular story spread as well as how influential your retweeters are.
Tweetmeme works pretty much like other analytics packages, so just as you cross reference keywords with rankings and other influences like you do in Google analytics, so does Tweetmeme analytics need a fair amount of lateral thinking. This package is only one of many that offer Twitter analytics as well as Twitter trends. Another great tool is Trendistic, which kind of like Google insights for your Twitter account. Type in a keyword and Trendistic will give you a graph as to how popular the topic is as well as a list of real time Twitter results.
I think that this using a Twitter analytics service will prove fruitful for individuals who rely on Twitter as their social media gateway to their customers and fans and for those who need additional analytics information as to how their social networking is succeeding or failing. Many are arguing that Twitter analytics is a waste of money as there are numerous free tools which can give you the same results but all know that you can never have too many resources, can you?
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Tags: Trendistic, Tweetmem, twitter





July 20th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Hi Lauren. It’ll be interesting to see how twitter analytics packages develop in the next few years. Although there are ideas about how best to monitor social media, I think its different for every account so sometimes a package doesn’t quite fit the job and there’s still enough grey area for non-believers to give it any credibility.
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:38 am
Hi Gareth,
You are right there, everyone seems to have a different opinion on how to measure social media as a whole, services like Klout look at influence and reach for example, while other companies may be looking at how their social media efforts effect either sales (conversions) or at least the brand presence. Think we still have a long way to go when it comes to social media & Twitter analytics tools and measurement