Analyze your Twitter profile

Welcome to Twitter Tuesday. Every Tuesday we will post about Twitter. Stop by for advice and how to's for marketing professionals. Every other week we will post our AppQuest Edition featuring a review of twitter applications.

What’s the best way to get analytics on your Twitter profile?

As you try to build your Twitter profile and find new people to follow, it’s important to track how you use Twitter. Odds are you’re doing things with your account that you’re not even aware of. By using analytics, you can discover not only what your Twitter habits are, but the Twitter habits of your friends as well. This is important info when you want to get a lot of exposure for a tweet or launch a Twitter campaign. There a lot of websites that provide one aspect of user statistics or have a gimmick to measure popularity, but today we’re looking at sites that provide thorough user statistics. In the future, we’ll cover user trends and ranking.



I sat down with my co-workers and created a wish-list of qualities that we as marketing people want in a Twitter account analyzer. Of course, all the apps have to be free and require no downloadable client. Beyond that, we wanted to be able to:

• have an easy-to-use interface
• get the hang of it quickly
• see how many daily tweets are added
• see how many daily chats we have
• analyze subjects we tweet about
• see the hashtags we use most often
• see our online follower growth rate
• see the location of followers
• see who is retweets most often
• see who we contact the most
• see who mentions us the most


The evaluation method was simple. I visited each site and registered. After my profile loaded, I took a screenshot of the interface and then spent about ten minutes looking around the site. A decent site should be able to explain itself in that time. After using the application, I rated each site against my wish list.

Twitter Grader is best known for its Twitter user account grading. What people don’t realize is that it also has analytics. Well...sort of. They can analyze followers within their site, meaning that if your followers or followings are registered with Twitter Grader, they can be analyzed. Of our 3,681 followers and 2,705 following only two people were found. 

Twitter Grader’s best feature is its user history. This is a quick chart that shows how your follower rate compares to your following rate. You can also register with the site to get more functionality, but I didn’t see any after registering. While it’s not a very good analysis tool, the site’s account grading is still the best bragging rights tool available.

PROS: You can grade your account against other Twitter accounts with a tangible grade. You can also see how many people follow you and you follow.

CONS: None of the other metrics really work or have any meaning. While the grading is a good indication of how well you use Twitter, none of the other metrics are useful.

RATING:




Twitter Analyzer is a great free tool that provides over 26 different analytics, and more are in the works. If you need to know specific information about your Twitter habits, this is it. From the number of times you tweet a day to what groups your Twitter followers fall into to the friends you mention most in your tweets, Twitter Analyzer covers all my analytics needs and then some. It is easily the most thorough free analytics tool available today. The best part is you don’t have to register with the site to use it. This means you can also check out the Twitter usage of your friends as well. Analytics like “the friends you’re most in contact with” can help you identify the people that influence the people that influence you. This can be incredibly helpful in building your online network.

PROS: If you need to know something about your Twitter habits, this is the place to go. I’m looking forward to seeing what the ‘Trends’ and ‘FUN’ tabs will add to the experience.

CONS: Some of the analytics get a little confusing. Under ‘Mentions’, it’s hard to tell what exactly the difference is between the mentions. What is the difference between “the friends you mention the most in your Update Messages” and “the friends you mention the most”? Since the results can be slightly different, some deeper explanation of the functions would be appreciated.

RESULTS:

Twitalyzer measures your Twitter profile against five analytics: Influence, Signal, Generosity, Velocity and Clout. The concept is similar to Twitter Grader – your profile is measured on a scale of 0-100. The grading is rather harsh, so you really have to work on your account to bring it up. Each of the five areas go into more detail and offer up suggestions on how to improve your score. This can be very helpful if you’re trying to be more influential on Twitter. A nice additional feature is the use of time-based analysis using Google Motion Charts and the ability to set benchmarks to work towards. Finally, if you’re weak in one area, Twitalyzer provides the top 100 people in each of the five components you can follow and learn from.

PROS: Simple to use and provides lots of details. While it doesn’t hit many of the criteria I set out to find, the information it does provide empowers you to create a superior Twitter account.

CONS: It takes several uses to remember exactly what the five components do. Even after reading each one, I found myself returning to refresh my memory. There are also some loading issues. When you click on any of the analytics under “Recent Activity”, it either takes a very long time to pull up the information or it just hangs in limbo forever.

RATING:

TweetStatswas the first Twitter analytics tool I ever used. It’s bright, colorful and simple to use. Not much has changed in the time I’ve been using it. There are eight graphs and two tweet word clouds. From time of day to who you reply to and retweet the most, the graphs give you a quick overview of your Twitter activity. As for the Tweet Cloud, this gives you a great breakdown of which words you use the most, the top five words you use and the top five hashtags you use.

PROS: Simple and colorful. The Tweet Cloud is a great way to see what you’re saying online.

CONS: The site needs more analytics to deliver real impact. If you need a quick breakdown with graphs you can use in a report, TweetStats will do in a pinch.

RATINGS:

Xerfer serves up your Twitter usage. You can find the times you most often tweet, reply and which days and hours you’re mostly likely to tweet. This is a useful function, but considering that other sites have this as one part of a bigger package, it just isn’t enough. Sure, you can research anyone on Twitter, but you can do the same thing with other sites.

PROS: Easy to use and simple to understand but with useful graphics.

CONS: Doesn’t provide much past the one chart. With other sites doing the same thing and providing more content, it’s hard to recommend this site.

RATING:

Klout is another grading site, but with much more statistical analysis. Using five key analytics – reach, demand, engagement, velocity and activity – Klout allows you to not only  see who you influence and who influences you, but also shows who is losing influence and who is gaining influence. The site feels very similar to Twitalyzer in look and feel. There is no explanation for what their five analytics mean or how to influence them. Klout’s current offer is a good start, but still has some growing to do.

PROS: Lots of analytics that provide a good deal information. The influence tracker is a great feature to find out who is most influential in your network while helping you build your own influence.

CONS: Little explanation of any of the analytics used. Klout could easily rip off what Twitalyzer does to create a better experience, but for now they are living their shadow.

RATING:

CONCLUSION: While TweetStats and Twitalyzer both have very useful analytics, neither comes close to the depth and variety of Twitter Analyzer. Twitalyzer’s benchmarking tool is a great way to set goals for yourself. Combined with Twitter Analyzer, you have all the software you need to mount a Twitter campaign and measure its success. Because the analytics are live, you can make course adjustments on the fly to optimize your Tweeting.

What tools do you use to analyze your Twitter profile?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

Download the Slideshare version of this blog post.

Comments

[john mccallum]

Great stuff, thanks for the reviews, very helpful.