Knowing the Value of Your Twitter Profile

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How many times have you heard people saying their follower count has exploded or that the number of likes to their clever tweet has gone through the roof? Or something to that effect. My point is, most of us pay close attention to how many likes and retweets our tweets get. Vanity metrics—it’s only natural to be slightly obsessed with them. That said, however, it’s even more important to pay attention to key performance metrics that indicate the overall value of your profile.

Does that mean the number of retweets has no value? No. It absolutely does have value. But it’s also vital to understand how the retweets to a particular tweet stack up against other tweets and what about that one tweet made it so attractive. That’s where analytics and Brie come in. This week on #TwitterSmarter, we asked the founder of BEAST Analytics, Brie Anderson, to talk to us about assessing the value of our profiles.

Here’s a summary of our chat.

Guest: Brie Anderson
Topic: Knowing the value of your Twitter profile
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.

Q1: What does it mean to analyze your value on Twitter?

To Brie, analyzing the value of her Twitter profile is understanding how much business she has received because of the relationships she’s developed on Twitter.

Adding to that definition, Julia from NOW Marketing Group stated that analyzing your profile is essentially looking at follower growth and engagement, and understanding how much value your audience is getting from your content. The more engagements and conversations you generate, the more involved your audience is with what you have to say. Which in turn increases your social value.

All that said, though, what you consider value might be different from what someone else considers value. For example, though engagement rates are crucial, for some handles, follower counts and tweet impressions mean more than actual engagement. It also depends on the content you’re sharing. For example, the health department may not care how much engagements they’re getting for as long as their tweets are being viewed by a large audience. They may not necessarily look for active engagements because their primary goal is to spread important health advice, and they can do that with organic and promoted tweets. Acknowledge that your value is based on the goals you set for yourself.

As Joana outlined, there are many types of value as well. What matters to you depends on what you think is most valuable to your brand. If you’re trying to establish your credibility in a specific field, being a guest on Twitter chats is a great place to start. That’ll increase your reach, help you gain new followers, initiate new conversations, improve engagement, and earn new leads.

Q2: Can you get any non-monetary value from Twitter?

Definitely. Most people on Twitter gain only non-monetary value. That’s not to say they’re not making the most of Twitter. Rather, it shows that social media can give you indirect and longer-term returns than just money. As our guest said, the relationships you develop on Twitter can be instrumental in your business growth over time. People receive great job offers through their connections and even find life partners on the platform. Social media, and especially Twitter, is an extraordinary way to meet people, share your expertise, and learn new things.

Non-monetary value is social currency, as Chris nicely put it. It increases your credibility and gives you a lot of social proof that you can use to convince potentials and convert them.

Q3: Why is it important to focus on non-monetary value?

For the same reason, we outlined in the previous question. Non-monetary value should be your long-term strategy. Not only does it give you instant non-monetary value like new information and friendships, but it also leads to lead conversions and purchases further down the road. That’s why it’s important to focus on non-monetary value—it’s an investment for your brand on social media.

Jim made an excellent point about why you should focus on non-monetary value. It’s because social media is designed to be social. Sure, there are ways to earn money directly on any platform, but the foundation of social media is human-to-human connections. To get the most out of a platform, you have to comply with its purpose.

Q4: Which metrics indicate the overall value of your Twitter profile?

Which metrics reflect your value depends on your goals. For example, for most of us, value is the traffic we get to our website, leads, referrals, and relationships we make through your Twitter profile.

For Christine, as for many people in our chat, engagement is one of the most important metrics. She even said her engagement rate is more important to her than the number of impressions her tweets gather. It all depends on what you want to make of your Twitter profile.

Q5: How can Twitter analytics help measure value?

Twitter’s built-in analytics combines many important statistics in one place. As Smitha indicated, not only does it help you track vanity metrics like likes and follower count, but it also gives you more detailed information, such as popular links and content you share and the content formats that perform well.

It’s essential to pay close attention to your Twitter analytics because as Madalyn said, understanding the growth trend helps you plan how you should change your strategy and get more out of your efforts.

Q6: Why is it important to track click-through rates from Twitter?

Click-through rate or CTR is the rate of times that someone has clicked on a link you shared on Twitter and landed on the page you shared. For example, if you post a tweet about the specific type of service you offer with a link to the webpage that explains more about that service, you want people to click on that link and read through that page. Your goal here is to have people click through to your website. This is an important metric because it’s an indication of how convincing that particular tweet was in making the viewer click. You can also do a range of tweets with the same link to see which type of tweet gets more clicks.

That said, CTR is not just an indicator of clicks to a service page where you’re trying to convert your viewers. As our friends from Biteable mentioned, CTR is also a good way to find out which types of content your audience genuinely wants to read. For example, if you share two different blog posts on the same day at the same time, and one blog gets more clicks than the other, you’ll know that your audience prefers one topic over the other. Of course, it’s also worth remembering that in this scenario, Twitter’s algorithm and the hashtags you use can also impact the reach of those tweets. When you’re comparing two tweets to understand the effectiveness of your content, account for the difference these variables can cause.

Q7: What’s Twitter’s role in developing your overall brand value?

Our guest gave us a great example to illustrate the value of Twitter in developing your overall brand. When she speaks at an event, people don’t instantly engage with her and her content because they may not be familiar with her yet. However, when she’s got an active audience following her speech online and encouraging her, that helps her in-person audience connect with her more.

Alyx spoke about how Twitter helps her and the Charlie Appel Agency brand showcase the human side of insurance. For most of us, insurance isn’t an interesting topic or casual banter. However, Charlie and Alyx have been using Twitter as a way to learn, gain new experiences, and resonate with their audience as individuals.

Q8: Are there any tools to help analyze the value of your Twitter profile?

Aside from the default analytics Twitter offers, Sparktoro is a good tool to identify influential Twitter handles and also to know how your own handle measures up against others. This feature is called Spark Score and Jelle introduced it to many of us on the chat. Take it for a spin: https://sparktoro.com/tools/sparkscore

Joe also talked about how sometimes the most important tool is not the tool itself but how your audience engages with your content and their feedback.

Well, folks, that’s all from me this week. Thanks so much for reading through, and for more great insights from our chat with Brie, have a look at this Twitter Moment that Joana put together. And if you have some spare time next Thursday, join us live for our next #TwitterSmarter chat. We’ll be on from 1pm ET. See you there!


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About me, Narmadhaa:

I write all the things—technical and marketing copy to fill the pocket; haiku and short stories to fill the soul. A social media enthusiast, I’m a member of the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and always happy to take on writing gigs.

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