Archive for the ‘Guides’ Category
Measuring participant influence through amplification on Twitter
We recently upgraded the contributor metrics available in our TweetReach Pro Trackers. Among other metrics we’re now surfacing are new contributor amplification measures, including amplified impressions and an amplification multiplier.
Our objective with these new contributor metrics is to help you find people who are driving conversation and engagement around your campaign or brand. Because, depending on your goals, there probably isn’t one single influence metric that completely captures the contributions of your most important, active participants. So we present you with several contributor metrics:
- Tweets
- Direct Impressions
- Retweets
- Retweet Rate
- Total Exposure
- Amplification Multiplier
RT rate is the average number of retweets per tweet a contributor has posted. This metric is useful for finding people who have contributed to the spread of a message and who have engaged followers. Look at this number in relation to the total number of tweets this contributor has posted.
The amplification multiplier represents the spread of a tweet through retweets. If the original tweet generated 100 direct impressions, and retweets generated 150 additional impressions, then that tweet generated 250 total impressions, resulting in an amplification multiplier of 1.5x the original tweet. For each contributor, this number is calculated as an average for all their tweets in this Tracker. If a participant did not receive any retweets, then that person will not have an amplification multiplier, since her tweets were not amplified. Generally, anyone with an amplification multiplier of 1.2x or higher is doing quite well at spreading conversation. And sometimes you’ll see someone with a huge amplification multiplier – 100x or more. Generally, this person did not generate many direct impressions, but was retweeted by someone with a large following. If a number looks like an outlier, it probably is, so check that person’s other metrics to see what’s causing this spike.
To find influential people in your Tracker, take a look at all of these contributor metrics. Use tweets to find your most active advocates. Use direct impressions to find people with a lot of followers. Use RT rate to find people with an active, engaged following. Use the amplification multiplier to find people with a large secondary audience. Together, you should be able to develop a list of engaged, influential and passionate advocates for your campaign or brand.
You can also drill in to view an individual contributor’s details by clicking on their username anywhere in your Tracker. On the contributor detail page, you’ll find all kinds of information about that Twitter user, as seen here:
What’s the difference between free TweetReach accounts and TweetReach Pro subscriptions?
As you may know, we recently launched our new free TweetReach accounts. Since then, a few people have asked us about the difference between our free TweetReach accounts and our paid TweetReach Pro subscriptions. Here’s a quick primer, but there’s more on our helpdesk and we’re around if you have any questions.
A free TweetReach account comes with unlimited quick reports with our basic metrics, a My Reports archive, PDF and Excel report downloads. Quick reports will include the 50 most recent tweets from the past week.
A TweetReach Pro subscription, which starts at $84 per month, includes unlimited real-time tweet tracking, detailed and comprehensive metrics, full CSV data export, and more pro-level features. The biggest difference between a free account and a Pro subscription is access to our Tracker, which is only available through TweetReach Pro. The Tracker is our real-time tweet measurement tool, which can analyze and archive all tweets about a topic – with no limits on time or number of tweets.
Here’s an overview of the features included in a free account and TweetReach Pro:
A free TweetReach account is perfect for anyone trying our tools for the first time, casual users, personal accounts, small business or consultants with a small social media budget. TweetReach Pro is our professional analytics package, good for companies tracking their earned media conversations, public relations and marketing agencies, social media experts running campaigns for clients, or anyone who needs in-depth and comprehensive metrics.
Of course, you don’t need an account at all to use TweetReach. There’s no signup or commitment required to run quick reports at any time. You only need to sign up if you want to save your reports or download them to PDF and CSV.
Confused about Twitter search? You’re not alone.
There’s one question our support team gets asked more often than anything else – how far back can TweetReach reports go? And it’s no wonder we get this question all the time; it can be pretty damn confusing. How long are tweets available? Why aren’t they available for a week or more? Why does this seem to change from one day to the next?
First, a bit about how TweetReach reports work. Our snapshot reports – both the 50-tweet free report and the full $20 report – are generated from Twitter’s Search API. You type in a search query, which can consist of one or more hashtags, keywords, usernames, URLs, and so on, and then we run that search through Twitter’s Search API to find all matching tweets. So our snapshot reports are dependent upon the tweets accessible through Twitter’s Search API.
It probably goes without saying that Twitter handles a lot of data. A lot. Twitter currently processes around 200 million new tweets a day, resulting in more than 350 billion tweet deliveries every single day. By our (very rough) estimation, there have been something like 1.75 trillion unique tweets posted in the past 2.5 years. Without getting too technical, let’s just say that it’s pretty hard to keep a service of this magnitude running. Because of this scale, Twitter can’t possibly keep trillions of historical tweets accessible to anyone at any time. Which is why when you go to Twitter Search or run a TweetReach report, you’re probably only going to find a few days worth of tweets. It’s just too hard to keep any more reliably and consistently available.
One of the things we love about Twitter – or at least that we have long since learned to live with – is that it can be a bit unpredictable. It’s a huge application with hundreds of millions of accounts; there will be occasional fail whales and things are probably going to change from one day to the next. One thing we know for sure is that it will continue to get harder and harder for Twitter to make older tweets available through search. The good news is that we’ve been doing this for a long time and have a number of ways to deal with these inevitable changes.
- Every day at TweetReach, we look at hundreds of reports to understand how far back search is going on that day, and we post current search conditions on our helpdesk so you can always be up-to-date.
- We are experts at constructing search queries so we can get the most and best possible data from Twitter.
- We built our Tracker to monitor and archive your tweets so that you don’t lose them after a few days.
- We’re here to help you figure out how to find the tweets you need. When in doubt about a search or a report, ask us!
This brings us back to the most frequently asked of our FAQs – how far back can a TweetReach report go? The simplest answer is that our one-time snapshot reports – both the free and the full $20 versions – go back as far as Twitter’s Search API does. And right now, the Twitter Search API goes back a few days (the exact number varies, so check here for current conditions). The more in-depth answer is that, if we know about your event, campaign, or promotion in advance, we can use our TweetReach Pro service to track and save your tweets for weeks, months or even years. TweetReach Pro comes with Trackers, which connect to Twitter’s real-time Streaming API instead of their historical Search API. This means we can actually save your tweets on our own servers the moment they’re posted to Twitter, and then you can access them later because we’re not dependent on Twitter keeping those tweets available.
So, if you’re confused about your search results or curious about what tweets you can retroactively access, let us help you. Seriously, we’re here if you have any questions – just ask!
Photo credit: Search. by Jeffrey Beall
What is reach and why does it matter?
We often get asked about reach. How is reach calculated? Why reach? How can you really know how many people were reached? These are great questions and a big part of our business – we even named our product after it! At TweetReach, we think reach is one of the most important, but also one of the most misunderstood, metrics in social media. Our reach metric calculates the size of the potential audience for a message and this metric is an essential measure for any earned media campaign.
How TweetReach calculates reach
First, let’s talk a little bit about what we mean by “reach” and specifically how we calculate reach at TweetReach.
Typically, reach refers to the capacity or range of something. In the case of earned and social media, reach is the size of the potential audience for a message. What is the maximum number of people who could have been exposed to a message? In newspapers and magazines, reach is measured through circulation numbers. In television, we use Nielsen ratings to understand a TV program’s reach. For social media, we have TweetReach.
So when you run a TweetReach report, the reach number in your report reflects the size of the Twitter audience for your search query. Our reach number is a count of the unique Twitter accounts that received a tweet about your topic. It’s an actual computation of unique Twitter IDs, with duplicate recipients removed. Our reach metric is not an approximation or estimated ballpark figure, nor is it total impressions or exposure; it’s the real size of the potential audience.
Why reach matters
So, why go through all the trouble of calculating reach? Why does it matter? Because reach helps you understand the full impact of your tweets. Reach provides context for other engagement metrics. Reach quantifies the size of your message’s universe and helps you understand if your campaign is successful.
Think of reach as the denominator in your measurement equations. Use reach with action or engagement numbers like clicks, retweets, or replies to calculate an engagement percentage. Of the possible audience for your campaign, how many people participated? Reach helps contextualize other engagement metrics.
Other reach resources
Obviously, this is something we think about a lot. If you’d like to hear more, we have a few ideas about how you should use reach to contextualize and interpret your campaign’s success. We’ve also written about the relationship between reach and overall impressions. Finally, here’s more detail about how we calculate reach, exposure and other metrics. So, what’s your TweetReach?
Learn more about your impact on Twitter by understanding retweets and retweeters
One of the best ways to measure engagement on Twitter is by understanding how your tweets (and tweets about you) are retweeted. There’s a lot more to it than just how many retweets you’re getting or what day and time you get the most retweets. You might also want to investigate:
- Repeat retweeters. Who are your top retweeters? Who retweets you most often? These frequent retweeters are likely your biggest advocates – how can you reward and engage them better?
- High exposure retweets. What tweets reach the most people and generate the most impressions? Sometimes just one retweet can result in a very large amplification. Do you know when that happens?
- High influence retweets. Which tweets are retweeted by influencers? Influence isn’t just about who has the biggest following, but also about who can make an actual impact. Klout is one good way to measure influence, but there are many others.
- New retweeters. Has someone recently retweeted you for the first time? This could be great opportunity to start a conversation or learn more about how someone learned about you. Engage with new retweeters.
An interesting note about retweets – did you know that Twitter will only show you up to 100 retweets per tweet? If you’re getting more retweets than that, there’s no way to find out how many – and who they’re from – from Twitter.com. You could be missing retweets!
Let’s look at an example tweet. This tweet was originally sent to 2,173 followers, and after retweets it resulted in more than 22,000 impressions.
This tweet was retweeted 6 times. Now depending on your particular benchmarks, 6 retweets might not seem like very many, but in this case these few retweets generated an additional 20,000 impressions, thanks in part to contributions from @rickoshea and @iia. That’s nice amplification! Plus, @pkellypr has an impressive Klout score of 56.
Truly understanding your impact on Twitter requires more than simple quantitative measures like the number of retweets of your tweets or the number of followers you have. There’s a wealth of informative and actionable data just waiting to be explored. Try digging a little deeper into how and by whom your tweets are retweeted.
If you’re tracking tweets with a TweetReach Tracker, then you can quickly and easily get answers to all these questions about retweets. We have tons of data about each tweet, retweet, and contributor who mentions your brand on Twitter. And we can track all your retweets, no matter how many there are. There’s a short demo of the Tracker here, and we’re happy to answer any questions you might have.
Track Twitter chats and generate transcripts with TweetReach
Hosting a Twitter chat or Twitter party? TweetReach is a great way to:
- Track chat participation
- Measure reach
- Generate transcripts
- Determine most retweeted and highest exposure tweets
Our one-time reports are perfect for smaller Twitter chats. For $20, you’ll receive a PDF report of all tweets that include your hashtag, along with a set of summary metrics – the chat’s overall reach, total impressions generated, tweet volume, number of contributors and more. These one-time reports are limited to the most recent 1,500 tweets in the past five days.
If you host a weekly chat or are expecting a high volume of participation, try TweetReach Pro. Our Pro accounts include the TweetReach Tracker (pictured), which will monitor all tweets about your hashtag over time, with no limits on the number of tweets or the length of time. With the Tracker, you’ll have access to myriad in-depth metrics, including reach, volume, contributor influence and so much more. You’ll be able to compare trends over time, print PDF reports, and export your data to Excel.
Give it a try – run a quick report for free to see the most recent 50 tweets about a hashtag.
How to use advanced Twitter search queries
Twitter supports a number of advanced search operators and filters that allow you to customize your search query and find exactly the tweets you’re looking for. Here are a few of our favorite Twitter search operators and how to use them (with tons of examples).
Find one keyword OR another
First, Twitter does not require an AND or + operator to search for multiple keywords. So don’t include them. Just type together multiple keywords into your query and Twitter will return tweets that include of those terms. For example:
However, sometimes you might want to find tweets that include one keyword or another keyword. Use the OR operator to separate those terms and your report will include tweets that mention one or the other.
You can also chain together multiple keywords to create a more complex query. The OR operator will attach to the word that immediately precedes it, very much like order of operations in algebra. For example, the following query will find tweets that mention social media metrics or social media analytics, because the OR links to the metrics and analytics terms.
social media metrics OR analytics
@Username queries
There are several ways to learn more about the reach of tweets from a particular Twitter account, depending on the type of information you’re looking for.
- Tweets to, from and about an account - tweetreachapp
Run a report for a username but do not include the @symbol. This will return all mentions of that Twitter account (including retweets and replies), as well as all tweets from that Twitter account. This is the most comprehensive set of reach stats for a specific Twitter account. - Tweets to and about an account – @tweetreachapp
Run a report for a username and include the @symbol. This will return all mentions of an account, but not any tweets from that account. This report will let you know how many people are talking about a certain Twitter account, and the ways they’re talking about it (including all retweets, replies, and mentions). - Tweets to an account – to:tweetreachapp
Run a report using the to: operator and a username. Do not use the @ symbol. This report will return only direct replies to that account (where the username is the first word in the tweet). This reports is useful for learning more about how people talk to that account. - Tweets from an account – from:tweetreachapp
Run a report using the from: operator and a username. Do not use the @ symbol. This report will return only tweets from that account. This reports is useful for measuring the reach of an individual Twitter account, and for learning more about the kinds of tweets that account is posting.
Date filters
You can filter your search results to a particular time period by adding the since: and until: operators to your search query. Use these date filters to narrow down your results. And since you can access up to 1500 tweets per query, if you run a report for each day of a campaign using date filters, you can find more total tweets. For example:
social media since:2011-09-24
@mashable until:2011-09-26
You can use one or both filters in a query. These dates correspond to around 12:00 a.m. UTC, so since filter dates will include tweets from that date, but until filter dates will include tweets up until that date. And no matter what, snapshot reports can only go back about a week, so you still can’t use these filters to access tweets older than a week.
Exclusions
You can exclude certain keywords from your search by adding a minus sign (-) before the keyword. This will filter out all tweets that include that keyword. This is particularly useful if your company/brand/client/product has has a common name and want to exclude mentions of others with that name.
And more…
These are some of our favorite filters and operators, but here’s the full list of advanced search operators if you’re interested in more. One word of advice – Twitter handles fairly simple queries really well, but tends to break with longer and more complex queries. We recommend that you only add in a few advanced operators per query and try to limit the total number of keywords and characters in a search query. Keep it under 5-8 words and 60 characters and you should be fine. And definitely run free TweetReach reports to test out your more complex queries and see what kinds of tweets they find.
If you ever have any questions about search queries and how to get exactly the data you need from Twitter, just ask us! We’re big Twitter search nerds and can help you figure out even the trickiest search queries.
Take a tour of the TweetReach Tracker
If you’re considering signing up for a TweetReach Pro account, take this quick tour to see some of the great Twitter analytics features available through the TweetReach Tracker.
Setting up a TweetReach Tracker
If you’re new to TweetReach Pro, check out this short video about how to get your first Tracker set up. And there’s more information about setting up a Tracker on our helpdesk.
Comparing social media tools: Monitoring, workflow and measurement solutions
Liza Sperling recently wrote a great guest post on oneforty where she compared various social media tools. She included a useful breakdown to help marketers, community managers and others interested in social media understand when they need what kind of tool. While Liza’s taxonomy is really helpful, we think about it a little bit differently. Here’s the way we like to classify social media tools:
If you’re managing brands or clients in social media, there are probably three functions that are of primary importance to your work: monitoring, workflow, and measurement tools. Many tools will fall clearly into one category or another, but there are an increasing number of applications that overlap multiple categories. There aren’t really any tools that do all three things very well, however, so you will probably need to use more than one to accomplish all of these activities, at least for now.
Workflow
Workflow, or engagement, tools help you coordinate multiple social media accounts with multiple authors, allowing you to assign tasks and post updates. These are the communication tools and Twitter clients; if you manage any social media accounts, you’ll probably spend a lot of your time using these kinds of tools. You could also include social CRM applications in this category, as those help organize customers. Our favorites in the workflow category include CoTweet, TweetDeck and HootSuite, but there are tons more in the business dashboard category on oneforty. Many of these workflow tools provide some simple metrics and basic monitoring capabilities, but for more in-depth and comprehensive statistics or listening features, you’ll need to look at tools in the other two categories.
Monitoring
Monitoring (also known as listening and brand tracking) tools help you cut through the mass of social media conversations to get at the ones that mean something to you and your clients. These tools are great for keeping track of what people are saying about a topic, and which conversations are important to participate in or respond to. There are a variety of brand tracking tools listed on oneforty. Many monitoring tools provide some sort of measurement, often through content analysis in an attempt to understand concepts like sentiment and influencers. On the flip side, some measurement tools provide monitoring capabilities; for example, TweetReach Pro is used by a lot of our customers for monitoring brand mentions.
Measurement
Finally, measurement tools analyze social media conversations to put numbers to the chatter. These are all the metrics, statistics, and analysis tools. TweetReach is primarily a measurement tool. This category is probably the most diverse of the three overall social media tools areas. Metrics can be calculated in so many ways for so many stakeholders that each individual measurement tool provides a slightly different spin with its numbers. Because of this, it can be overwhelming trying to choose which metrics tool to use for your particular needs.
And this is why we find it helpful to further break the measurement category down into three more specific areas: paid, owned, and earned media. Forrester recently published research that explains the differences between paid, owned and earned media. I definitely recommend this post if you haven’t read it, but here’s the gist.
- Owned media refers to the sites a company runs – its website, Twitter account, Facebook page, and so on. Owned media metrics tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights help you understand how people are interacting with official sites.
- Paid, or bought, media refers to any advertising or sponsorship, like a sponsored Twitter trend, a Google ad, or any other paid social action. Usually you get some metrics from whomever you purchased the content (like Twitter’s sponsored trend analytics).
- Finally, earned media refers to all the conversation generated from those owned and paid media. This includes word of mouth, spontaneous customer opinion, and any kind of buzz about a brand, product or company that you didn’t pay for or create yourself.
A digital campaign will include elements of all three media types, but you only really control the owned and paid messages. With the earned media conversation, you can simply monitor, respond and measure. Earned media is where TweetReach comes in. Our goal is to help you understand the impact of conversations that spring up in social media about your clients, whether it’s related to a specific campaign or event, or whether it’s the general ambient chatter about a topic that occurs in spaces like Twitter. We want to help you answer questions like:
- What was the reach of a conversation?
- How many people are talking about a topic?
- How many people could have seen tweets about a topic?
- What tweets are generating the most buzz?
- Who is generating the most buzz about a topic?
- How does this week’s buzz compare to last week’s buzz? How about this month’s buzz?
- What conversation did a particular paid campaign spark?
Different measurement tools will provide different metrics in different formats. And many of them can be used in combination with each other and with monitoring and workflow tools. It can be difficult and time-consuming to pick the right tool for your particular needs, but the good news is that the tool you need probably exists. Again, we’ll refer you to oneforty – they currently index nearly 250 social media analytics tools (including TweetReach, hint hint).