5 Questions to Determine if You're Winning on Twitter

The results of social media campaigns can be difficult to measure in the short run, so how can you know if your efforts are successful? It’s all about data, baby! Social media, like all marketing, is data-driven, and you should be using that data to drive strategy, decisions, improvements, and reporting. Define realistic goals Measuring the success of your tweets is a little tricky. Rarely will you see an immediate uptick in sales or rush to sign up to your mailing list. The traditional revenue-per-customer metric simply doesn't track. Instead, success is measured in the esoteric values of brand awareness and tracked using engagement metrics. To determine whether your twitter campaign is working, you'll need to answer a few questions: 1. Is your follower base growing? Your first metric tool is right on your Twitter account. Successful Twitter accounts grow steadily. For the rare wildly successful Twitter account that captures the public's imagination with relentlessly clever banter, the rise in followers can be meteoric. But most Twitter accounts have a steady upward growth. If your account plateaus and stagnates, you're probably boring your audience. 2. Are you tweeting enough or too much? What about activity? Are you even tweeting enough? Once you have an audience, how much is enough? What’s too much? How much is enough isn't the easiest question to answer. It depends on your level of engagement. A flood of one-way tweets gets old really fast, but chatting with followers is almost always welcome. 3. Are you earning retweets and replies? Twitter Analytics is a great tool to track your Twitter stats, but to get in-depth analytics on all your social accounts on one page, try Sumall's new report tool. With it, you can track engagement metrics for retweet reach, regular reach, influencers, and more. You can also see your the "best posts" for the week and learn who your top contributors are. 4. How do you stack up to the competition? It's not only important to know how your tweets are working, but how you compare to your competitors. To find out, check out Rival Iq's new Twitter tool. You can add up to five competitors with a free account and compare such metrics as number of followers, average number of tweets per day, and engagement rate per tweet and per day. But the coolest thing is that you can click on the high points of your competitors' timeline and see the tweets that proved most successful. To test it out, I loaded ten companies pretty well known for successful Twitter accounts and looked at the spikes. You can look at your market, and totally copy the strategies driving the most engagement. They also just added Twitter Mentions, where you can see which influencers are talking about you and your competition on Twitter and the potential reach. With a huge following and an average engagement rate per tweet of 458.92, @Marvel wins for overall performance. Not surprising, since they tweet out this level of awesomeness: Applebees has a fraction of the followers and doesn't get the same number of retweets, but their engagement rate is consistently high...probably due to the personal nature of their responses...and the fact that they tweet out luscious photos of food. Food always wins. If you're wondering about Charmin's big spikes, well, they regularly have some good, clean fun with hashtag chats. Yep. Poop jokes. They really own it. #tweetfromtheseat 5. Are people talking about about you, your product, or your industry? Indirect mentions are another opportunity to engage. When people compliment or complain about your service or product, a personal answer can go a long way. It's also a great opportunity to win fans by offering advice, information, or physical perks (Klout actually mails you stuff, I LOVE that)... and introduce new or lesser-known products. Warble is an easy way to track keywords, hashtags, @ mentions, and phrases you specify. They'll send you a daily email with everything you missed, so you can accurately gauge how much buzz your industry, brand, or product is generating. Social ROI can be expressed in terms of brand awareness and customer response. Knowing if you're doing it right -reaching your audience, sparking influencers to advocate, developing a positive brand image- is about monitoring your progress with the right tools...and about knowing what to do with the information you gather. How do you use metrics to improve your tweets? Sherry Gray is a freelance content writer from Key West, FL, currently suffering the burbs of Orlando. She's a science geek, a political junkie, and a hopeless social media addict. Top image courtesy of Tsyhun / Shutterstock.com.

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5 Questions to Determine if You're Winning on Twitter

The results of social media campaigns can be difficult to measure in the short run, so how can you know if your efforts are successful?

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