Twitter. X. Whatever you choose to call it, it is still the world’s town square.
With millions of conversations happening every year.
It provides a critical insight into consumer thoughts. But to get those insights, you need X / Twitter analytics tools. Here are our favorites.
In 2023, Twitter rebranded, to become X. However, this hasn’t changed how Twitter analytics work. Platforms such as Talkwalker can still track X data. And you can analyze it alongside analytics data from multiple social channels.
You can learn more about X social listening here.
Since Twitter rebranded, users are still struggling to accept the rebrand. In the 12 months following the renaming, there were 4.6 million mentions of phrases like “formerly known as X”. Users don’t want to let go of the name, so in this article, we kept Twitter for nostalgia’s sake.
Are your social media messages working? Are users engaging with them? Twitter analytics show you whether consumers are listening, or not. Whether your social media marketing messages are hitting their target.
Using Twitter analytics tools means you'll have access to stats and insights that'll measure your Twitter performance. So you can analyze and boost your impact on Twitter.
Insights include...
The more you know about your performance on Twitter, the better.
By leveraging the social media platform's immense power, you can better understand -
Then use these valuable insights to increase engagement and ROI.
Using Twitter analytics tools will reveal...
You want your content to hit home, but how will you know what to target if you don't know your audience? Age, job title, gender, language, time zone, income. To increase engagement, you need to be creating content that resonates with consumers. That helps them learn new things, solves their pain points, makes them feel good.
You can also target segments of your followers according to their profession, interests, device, behavior, and keywords.
Just because you can use 280 characters, doesn't mean you should. There's no limit to how many hashtags you can use, but don't get trigger-happy. Find what works for your brand and your audience.
Tweets posts are the mayflies of the social media world. When tweeting, picking the optimum time can be the difference between going viral, or going down the pan.
There's no best practice for how many times a day to tweet. But, tweets live a short life. Whatever you do, being consistent is important. Seven times on Monday, once on Tuesday - you'll quickly lose followers.
Use Twitter analytics tools to find out what frequency rate works best for your brand.
Check the location/time zone of your followers to identify the best time of day. Tweeting during sleep time is never going to bring much engagement.
Don't throw good money after bad. Before running Twitter ad campaigns or boosting popular tweets, you need to understand what works.
Paid social ads built & live. Are they working? Track & measure digital campaigns across paid, owned, and earned channels with our feature... Paid Social.
Find your top tweets - most retweets, likes, shares - and understand why they're working so well. Image? GIF? Hashtag?
Okay, let's talk tools...
Analyzing this huge amount of social media analytics can be a pain in the a*s. Native Twitter analytics may be good, but to do it well, you'll need the best Twitter analytics tools on the market.
To save you from trawling through the thousands of Twitter analytics tools available, I've put together a list of the best tools on the market. I've included views from industry experts to help you with your decision.
Let’s start at the top. Talkwalker is a Twitter Official Partner. This means our social listening has all the Twitter Analytics you could possibly need.
And it’s easy to use. Add your query, and you can quickly find every mention of your chosen topic, brand, or product. This can help…
Best of all, Talkwalker doesn’t just do Twitter Analytics. Your audience is likely engaging across a wide range of channels, so you can’t use Twitter in isolation. Instead, Talkwalker combines a range of data sources, including social media, news, podcasts, and more. This gives you a compete picture of your brand online.
Extra tip. If you find managing your Twitter Analytics a bit overwhelming, don’t underestimate the power of AI. Our Blue Silk AI™ can quickly summarize thousands of mentions, saving you hours of work. Or is you need you own social listening expert on hand, trust Yeti to help you pull insights and get more from the platform.
Twitter analytics are great. Being able to put the insights from those analytics into action, instantly - awesome.
Full disclosure, Hootsuite recently acquired Talkwalker. Now you get industry leading social listening and social media management in one platform.
That way, you can pull real time insights from Twitter (and other data sources). And then act on those insights, by quickly making changes to your social strategy.
For example, you can use analytics to find a new trend on Twitter. Then in a couple of clicks, you can create an on-trend, relevent post. Just watch the engagement roll in.
"If you are looking for a tool that lets you manage all of your social media accounts and presence in a single place, and collaborate as a team on them, then Hootsuite should be at the top of your list to investigate."
"The company keeps investing in enhancements to its platform. Hootsuite just keeps getting better. And that’s not always true with products."
Anita Campbell (@smallbiztrends) | Founder and Publisher of Small Business Trends
Twitter Analytics is THE Twitter analytics tool. But is it paid or free? Good question. Twitter analytics is no longer free, but is now included in X Premium.
So it is free but only if you have a paid account. That’s why it’s in this section.
Twitter Analytics only reveals data about profiles you own, so no competitive intelligence. But the breakdown of month-by-month top-line stats is a great way to track how you’re performing over time.
Click on the "Tweets" tab and you’ll get an in-depth view of how your tweets performed, month on month...
"Being a writer who spends every waking moment flitting between writing, researching and tweeting it’s great to have such an easy and accessible tool.
With Twitter being my biggest outlet for sharing content it’s vital that I can see which posts are well-received and gain the most engagement so that I can more effectively alter my strategy regularly to meet the needs of my readers. With one click of a button you can see all the metrics you need, which is worth its weight in gold.”
Kerry Butters (@kesbutters) - Founder and CEO of markITwrite Digital and a prolific tech and digital marketing writer and influencer
N.B. Kerry passed away in 2016. A tribute to her is here.
"Twitter Analytics gives you fantastic insight into your audience and the content they value most. It provides data on clicks, engagement, impressions and also offers demographic and interest data on your followers so you can get an excellent snapshot of who is connecting with you or your brand."
Laura Click (@lauraclick) - Founder & CEO of Blue Kite Marketing
For an instant overview of what the world's talking about with Trendsmap, a Twitter trends count tool. The tool used to have a free version, but is now subscription-only.
It shows you the most popular hashtags in every country and region, globally and in real-time. Like a Twitter hashtag count. You can then zoom in to find the exact view you need.
Looking for trending hashtags in a specific location? Use the hashtag location map where you'll not only find the most popular hashtags, but users and keywords too.
Features include...
Just before I start my list, I can't promise that a tool that's currently free will remain free forever. Most offer free trials, and it's a good place to start.
If you’re a smaller company, start-up, or business, social media listening can still benefit your business. Cheaper or free tools are a great place to start.
Biased? Of course. Honest? Always.
Talkwalker also has a cracking free tool that offers what you need. Free Social Search is the one I'm going to show you today. What does it do?
Foller.me used to be a Twitter analytics tool that helped you understand what topics your competitors are talking about. Now it finds the social profiles of various people.
"Foller.me is an exciting tool that will review a Twitter users profile and latest tweets and put them in “tag clouds” so you review and see which are most popular. This is helpful when you’re growing your community and need the influencers that like your products or services. You can then engage and start a conversation know what that influencers like to talk about and when to engage them."
Shane Barker (@shane_barker) - Digital Strategist and Social Media Consultant, shanebarker.com
Followerwonk - now a part of Fedica - lets you analyze any Twitter account. That includes competitors. Find out what's working for them and optimize your Twitter marketing strategy. Identify new influencers in your industry and engage them.
Features include:
There's a free plan with limited access, plus paid plans with additional features to meet your needs.
Followerwonk data gives you insights that'll help you optimize your social online presence, or increase brand awareness and customer loyalty.
If you wanted to see how a hashtag spread globally, #onemilliontweetmap was it. The best part about this tool was the level of granularity it gave through intuitive filtering options. The map view was clear and from a visualization standpoint, you could find mentions in real time.
However, the tool is on pause at this time, so current data isn’t available. I’ve kept it in this list, as it provides an interesting snapshot of Twitter from the past. And can still give you some idea of how people share certain hashtags across the world.
Hopefully, we’ll see a revival of the tool one day.
We’ve included these tools for prosperity (and a little bit of nostalgia).
This Twitter analytics dashboard had a free and a paid version. Although the page is still live, it appears Twitonomy is discontinued.
The free version of Twitonomy had several awesome features...
"Twitonomy App is by far one of the most valuable Twitter analytics tools I’ve ever used. It gives you everything you need to analyze what is working and not working. It gives you everything from mentions, replies, lists, most influential users, and even the time that you get the most engagement.
The best part is it allows you to pull all of the data and put it into visual graphs. It analyzes your followers as well so that you can use the data to increase engagement."
Jack Kosakowski - Social selling eBRANDgelist and Regional Sales Manager at @ActOnSoftware, Social Media Advisor for Chill Puck.com
Mentionmapp Analytics provided a different, way more visual form of analysis compared to a lot of Twitter analytics tools. There were numbers available, but it's great to be able to see who’s interacting with your tweets. And who’s interacting with the tweets of your top influencers. You could create an influence map of your Twitter feed and those that you interacted with.
"Mentionmapp is an excellent network exploring tool to see how people are interacting and what hashtags they are using. Once logged you can search for a specific Twitter user and then you will see a highlighted map that shows a web on who they are engaging with and what hashtags they are using.
This tool is a great asset when you want to find and follow social influencers in a specific industry. It can help you find a community around your product or service."
Shane Barker (@shane_barker) - Digital Strategist and Social Media Consultant, shanebarker.com
The SocialRank tool pulled in your audience profiles, and then provided analysis to understand how they worked. The insights about your followers helped find, monitor, and engage with the best people on Twitter.
Features included:
“Users can receive monthly reports on how their top 10 followers in each category have changed, as well as set up filters to distinguish between brands and individuals.”
"The combination of swag and influence measurement might remind you of Klout Perks, but again, SocialRank is less concerned with measuring general influence and more with finding the value in the people who already follow you.”
Anthony Ha (@anthonyha) - Author, TechCrunch
Twitter is a valuable resource for all marketers. And the data produced on Twitter will help you understand the impact that your Twitter activity is having. And, the impact that your competitors are having.
You'll be able to pull out insights that'll give you what you need to improve your online marketing campaigns. To engage more with your followers. To prove ROI. Using these Twitter analytics tools, you're sure you’re never out of the loop.
When it comes to Twitter analytics tools, there isn’t as much choice as there used to be. But Talkwalker still offers comprehensive Twitter analytics.
You can -
To learn more about Social Listening, just click below.