Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Official Twitter Analytics: Most Hidden Ever

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Christopher S Penn
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Warning: this content is older than 365 days. It may be out of date and no longer relevant.

Over the weekend I was playing around with the different ad platforms for social networks and discovered something interesting: my Twitter account was fully enabled for Twitter analytics. So was the SHIFT Communications account and half a dozen other accounts that I help to manage. Here’s how to find it, in order to save you some time.

First, go into your settings menu and find Twitter Ads. Notice that there’s no mention whatsoever of Analytics.

Twitter / Interactions

From the Ads homepage, go to Analytics and find Timeline Activity.

Advertise with Twitter - Twitter Ads

What you see here is the first of two pages of Twitter Analytics. The data you get is fairly thin. You get follow and unfollow counts over the last 3 days, you get mentions, and then you get the ability to see Favorites, Retweets, and Replies. Links that you share also get you a bit of click count:

Timeline Activity - Twitter Ads

What’s annoying is that the CSV download contains none of the follow/unfollow data. You only get Favorites, Retweets, and Replies, making the use of third party tools like link shorteners still mandatory.

The last section you get is a brief overview of your entire Twitter history:

Followers - Twitter Ads

That’s all you get for now from Twitter. It’s a good start, but it’s not nearly enough if you want to go crunching serious numbers to find out Twitter’s impact on your marketing efforts. For that you’ll still need to heavily rely on third party tools.

UPDATE: Due to what I suspect is high volume, you may see errors when you try to load it. Let the little birds warm up their servers some more and try later if you get an error.

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Comments

10 responses to “Official Twitter Analytics: Most Hidden Ever”

  1. adelemcalear Avatar
    adelemcalear

    That is if you can get Twitter Ads activated on your account. 🙁 Is it because I’m in Canada? Or because of budget size?

    Reply
  2. Gift of Life Mich Avatar
    Gift of Life Mich

    It won’t show me any data on followers, but I get 9 months’ worth of RT/Fav/Mention data. (@adelemcalear:disqus , we’ve never used Twitter Ads, but we’re in the USA, if that helps clarify anything.)

    Reply
  3. Karlyn Avatar
    Karlyn

    So if I dont see Twitter Ads then I must not have enough followers to have this option?

    Reply
  4. Don Wyatt Avatar
    Don Wyatt

    No Twitter ad link in settings …. 🙁

    Reply
  5. Andy Traub Avatar
    Andy Traub

    Great find Christopher. Congrats on the mention on Techmeme too. I can’t access it even though I have a Twitter Ads button but I’ll keep trying. Thanks for paving the road ahead of us.

    Reply
  6. Phone Source Avatar
    Phone Source

    Thank you very much, Christopher Penn. I have just started using the Twitter analytic tool.

    Reply
  7. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    This is really great info – thanks! Unfortunately, I’m either doing something wrong, or mine’s broken. :0) At first, while on the home page, the Twitter Ads option didn’t appear in my settings options. I went to the Connect page (since that’s what shows in your screen shot) and tried, and still nothing. I happened to then go to the Discover page, and voila! There’s the Twitter Ads option. So I clicked it and was taken to the Twitter Ads home page, but now, there’s no “Analytics” tab at the top. Only “Ads” appears at the top. Any ideas?? Thanks again for passing this discovery along!!

    *Update: Once on the Twitter Ads homepage, you have to click on the “Account and Billing” drop-down menu in the upper right corner. From that menu, select “Account Settings.” It’s on the Accounts Settings screen that the “Analytics” option appears in the upper left corner. That’s where you click to then select to view “Timeline Activity.” UNFORTUNATELY, when I click on Timeline Activity, it takes me back to the Ads homepage. So…some progress was made, but not quite there yet. Any help to get me to the finish line is greatly appreciated!!**

    **ANOTHER Update: FINALLY – We have take-off! Under “Account and Billing”, I instead selected “Billing History”. Of course, there wasn’t any. (And I apologize for the sketchiness of the rest of this – I admit I wasn’t really paying attention as I was clicking because I assumed there was no possible way this thing was buried in Billing…) Anyway, I think on the billing history screen, there was an option to view all or something. I clicked that. And at some point, I came across the option to “Switch to Advanced”. When I clicked on it, it was a comparison of the Basic Twitter vs. Advanced Twitter. Advanced didn’t appear to cost anything so I made the switch, Once I did that, the analytics stuff magically appeared as explained in the blog and the timeline data appeared. But then it wouldn’t let me undo what I did so I could re-trace my steps to share here…. I’m very sorry.

    Reply
    1. Gorta.org Avatar
      Gorta.org

      I followed your steps Rhonda but unfortunately there was no option to “Switch to Advanced”. I have emailed Twitter help about the analytics issues. It looks like you have to a paid Advert account before you get access to analytics. 🙁

      Reply
  8. Eman Sayed Fathy Avatar
    Eman Sayed Fathy

    I have got Twitter Ads options on my Business Account, but when I reach to the website, it only asks me to start Advertising and I see no Analytics. Does that mean I need to advertise with Twitter in order to get the chance to access the analysis sheet?

    Reply
  9. Mardielyn Perez Avatar
    Mardielyn Perez

    is this for free? I mean the twitter ads/Twitter analytics?

    Reply

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