How to Make New Twitter Analytics Work for Your Recruiting

September 15, 2014 at 12:10 PM by Rob Stevenson

For years, sending and optimizing tweets has been an imprecise art. With nothing but the local metrics of twitter-309418_640replies, retweets, and favorites, it was difficult to truly assess the efficacy of what you publish on the microblogger. Equally frustrating is the fact that additional tools offering deeper analytics are expensive and sometimes clunky. That's why I'm thrilled --and you should be too-- that Twitter is now granting you access to an Analytics Dashboard that can provide crucial insight on your Twitter performance. Read on to see how to work your new gold mine of Twitter data into your recruiting.

First, head over to https://analytics.twitter.com and log in. You'll notice a list of your recent tweets accompanied by Impressions (how many times each tweet was displayed to other users), Engagements (retweets, replies, favorites) and Engagement Rate (engagements divided by impressions). What was particularly surprising to me was the low number of Impressions relative to Followers. Even having several thousand Followers does not guarantee more than a few hundred Impressions, and will result in even less in the event that your Followers themselves follow a large number of accounts. For this reason, it is even more important to be looking at your best performing tweets and trying to replicate the conditions that led to their success.

Where the true value in Twitter data is, I believe, in the export feature. Once you've exported all your Tweets into a spreadsheet, you can sort by any number of different metrics. Here's a handful of key places to look.

Engagements

Engagements can be misleading, as they represent a whole host of different interactions, including expanding the tweet in the browser window, clicking your username or avatar, or displaying the picture. You'll notice when you attach an image, this results in considerably more Engagements as most people can't help but expand images to view them in full. This means, when you have the spare characters, don't hesitate to add an image.

Time of Publishing

Depending on the content you're sharing and your intended audience, the optimal timing of your tweet will vary. Start by sorting a sample of your tweets by a specific metric --I recommend Engagement Rate or URL clicks-- paste the top performers into a new sheet, and then sort again by time of day. Then, look into the text of the tweet, and see what types of posts, whether it's sharing your content, someone else's, or a job post, to see when each sort of post is best sent. Learning when your audience is most likely to be scrolling their feed is an easy way to increase your tweet performance.

Follower Intel

Screen_Shot_2014-09-15_at_11.51.57_AMMeanwhile, back on the Twitter Dashboard, you can also view more precise info about your Follower base. In the Analytics dropdown tab at the top of your window, select Followers. Now, you'll see location and gender information, as well as some of the most popular accounts that your Followers themselves follow.Most useful to you, however, is the Interests section. The first display of data will be most useful to you, independently. While the top interests are useful, the interests that are unique to your audience allow to you more accurately define your niche and craft the most relevant content possible.

 

How have you made use of Twitter Analytics? Leave a comment or tweet @EnteloRob!

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