Using Twitter’s Analytics to Create More Engaging Content

So this year I’ve been spending a lot of time analyzing the analytics that Twitter provides me for my tweets.  You can click on that link and find the analytics for your own account.  It shows you the Impressions, Retweets, Favorites, and Link Clicks for your tweets.  It’s also a great tool to help you understand how to create more engaging content.

One of the many things I like is that Twitter shows your monthly and daily totals for engagements, retweets, favorites, links clicked, etc.  It’s a great way to see how your content does on average, but it also shows you how your content is trending from an engagement perspective.  On the right is a snapshot of some of the information on my account as of this morning.

Another feature that I like is Twitter shows you how many ‘engagements’ each tweet is getting and the type of engagements.  This is very helpful and can teach you a lot about what type of content drives engagement on Twitter.

Here’s a simple example: I went back and checked the tweets I had left this month.  I was looking specifically for tweets where I included a link to a blog post I had written.  Some of these tweets included a picture along with the link, some did not.  I picked an equal number of each, and then figured out the average engagement rate for each.  Here’s what I found:

Average engagement rate for all tweets – 1.2%

Average engagement rate for tweets with a link to a post I had written, without attaching a picture to the tweet – 1.0%.

Average engagement rate for tweets with a link to a post I had written, with a picture attached to the tweet – 1.6%

So that means that for my tweets, attaching a picture results in a 60% boost in engagement!  It also shows that tweets with a picture are 33% more engaging than all tweets.

I love Twitter’s Analytics section because it can be a wonderful teaching tool for you.  So much of content creation is simple trial and error.  You need to repeatedly create content to learn how to become better at creating content.  This can also be applied to sharing content on Twitter.  Experimenting with different ways of sharing content can help you understand how to create more engaging tweets.

Here’s an example:  Lets say you have a new blog post that you want to promote on Twitter.  Here’s 4 ways you could promote that post:

1 – Share the headline and link

2 – Share the headline, a picture, and the link

3 – Share a quote from the post, and the link

4 – Share a quote from the post, a picture, and the link

You could share the link each of those 4 ways, then see which way drove the most engagement.  Keep repeating this experiment with other posts and you may begin to realize the best way that you should craft a tweet in order to increase engagement.

Remember, it’s fine to get advice from ‘experts’, but the best way to learn is to do it yourself.  Start playing with Twitter’s analytics for your account and see what you learn.