Twitter Analytics: Must Have Apps
With over a half million users worldwide, Twitter has come a long way since its early days as a curious epigram delivery service through which you can continually answer the question "What are you doing?" As Twitter increasingly becomes a news breaker, celebrity haven and corporate PR tool, it's not surprising that there are now hundreds of analytics services to help you determine if you're getting what you need out of Twitter. Here are a half-dozen that are free and relatively easy to use that no serious tweep should be without.
Other People Are Reading
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Klout
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Perhaps the most famous of analytics tools, Klout measures your online influence using a scale from 1 to 100. Although the scale system behind it may be simple, Klout uses billions of data points to measure influence. The exact formulas aren't publicized, but Klout does say your influence is based on things like how active you are, how many people interact with you, how often you generate unique content and how often that content is then shared by others. Not limited solely to Twitter, Klout also measures your social-media influence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google+. Data is calculated daily so you can review your progress on the Klout dashboard, which will also explain why your score may have gone up or down.
Twitter Counter
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Twitter Counter has been around since the frontier days of social media -- all the way back in 2008. Once you log in, this website provides you with a series of graphs showing the number of your followers, the number of people you follow and the number of tweets you make over the course of weeks or months. These basic statistics are free. For hourly stats, downloadable reports and other perks, premium services begin at $15 per month. A free widget for your website will also keep track of who has visited your site from Twitter, provided they log into the widget while they're on your website.
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Friend or Follow
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If you've ever noticed your follower count has dropped and wanted to know who unfollowed you, Friend or Follow is a good tool to have in your Twitter toolbox. Friend or Follow gives you a list of all of your followers, a list of all the people you mutually follow, and a list of everyone you follow but who don't follow you back. You can sort the lists several ways, including alphabetically, by location and account age. Sort lists by the most recent tweeter to see who hasn't been active in a long time. The lists use profile pictures so you can quickly scan the lists to look for familiar faces. With a premium account you can also download the report to a CSV list for spreadsheet use.
Twitonomy
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If you're looking for a one-stop analytics service that will give you the scoop about your tweets, followers and follower activities, Twitonomy may be the only tool you need. Its elegant dashboard displays your number of tweets, retweets, replies, user mentions and retweets over a given time period. It also gives you a one-glance report of all your latest tweets, which you can download for archiving purposes. If that's not enough, the service also tracks the clicks your tweeted links get, as well as a timeline of your activity over the past three months.
TweetsMap
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As the name suggests, Tweetsmap gives you a world map of your followers, showing you where your followers are most concentrated. Zooming in, you can also see where your followers are from, based on their states or cities. Clicking on an icon shows you the percentage of followers from that location. For the more statistically minded, you can also use the list view, which gives you a color-coded pie chart of your followers' locations and a list of their countries, states or cities with percentages beside them. To get a detailed map, you will have to send a tweet from the site, but you do get to edit the tweet before it goes out to your followers.
The Archivist
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If you're more interested in finding out what others are doing on Twitter rather than tracking your own account, the Archivist is another tool worth checking out. Once you sign in to the service, select a word or a phrase you want to keep tabs on, like a name or an event. The service will then begin scanning Twitter for any tweets using those words. The Archivist can also show you top users, top words, top website links and the ratio between tweets and retweets on what you are archiving. You can keep your archive private, or you can make it public if you want others to see how popular the phrase you're tracking has been.
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