Twitter is amongst new media channels that are challenging how we communicate, with whom we communicate and perhaps most fundamentally how we (Marketers) influence people.
Sadly execution and analysis of these new social media channels has been hobbled by old world thinking. When it comes to marketing because of the old world thinking from the worlds of sTelevision and Magazines, and when it comes to measurement because of the world of traditional web analytics.
These new channels, Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Tumblr and, yes, even blogs, are very distinct customer / participant experiences. Stale marketing or measurement thinking applied to them results in terribly sub optimal results for all involved.
So in this post my hope is to share with you what is unique about measuring one such channel, Twitter. The blog post is also sprinkled with my own words of folksy wisdom as to how you should use the channel for maximum impact.
My new book Web Analytics 2.0 covers social media measurement, but I am going to cover something very different in this post.
First: An Ode to New Thinking:
One common thing between the all tools in this post is that they were built by "outsiders".
One of the things I love and adore about Twitter (besides all that connection and conversation) is how its open API has lit a fierce fire of innovation when it comes to analytics. Anyone and their brother and ma-in-law can develop a tool, and they have! Much to the benefit of the rest of us.
Perhaps the most beneficial thing to me is how much out of the box innovation this has brought.
For example just look at traditional web analytics tools, there is absolutely no fresh thinking when it comes to Social Media Measurement. Their constant focus is on "let's figure out how to collect and report ever more data and not bother with a truly immersive understanding of these channels and what makes them unique". That mental model is, sadly, extremely clear in the metrics and analysis they provide with "twitter integrations".
While there is some stale thinking in the new twitter tools, most of them have a lot of fresh thinking from people untainted by Omniture or CoreMetrics or WebTrends or, ok ok ok, Google Analytics.
I consider this massive proliferation of new thinking to be a gift from God.
To all of you developers who are toiling out there, you have my love and gratitude.
In this post four twitter analysis tools that while not yet fully developed show sweet signs of:
1. Truly understanding the medium and uniqueness of the channel and
2. Are not just reporting "hits", rather coming up with clever metrics.
Quantitative Metrics / Analyses.
Most twitter analytics tools just do data puking. They find numbers that can be computed and then proceed to puke at you as many as they can find, with wonton disregard of value being provided or outcomes being measured.
Here is one of the mild ones:
You must pause and think: So what is this saying? What action can I take?
Always, always, always ask that question when faced with tools that simply puke data out at you (twitter or Google Analytics or whatever).
But as I mentioned at the start of the post one of the beauty of twitter's open API is that there are a few pockets of truly innovative thinking.
Here are some that I humbly believe look promising. . . .
Klout. Twitter Analytics.
Klout is a wonderful little tool that measures Klout Score, a proxy for "influence":
It is easy to understand the market demand to boil things down to one number, but this is perhaps the least useful thing in Klout.
While on the surface they might seem useful, I am always suspicious of compound metrics. They can be subjective, inapplicable to many and efficiently hide the insights you need to understand what actions to take. [See more here for Compound Metrics: Four Not Useful KPI Measurement Techniques]
Mercifully there is so much more to Klout than that.
Klout measures a bunch of lovely metrics, specifically applicable to Twitter, that are grouped into four buckets: Reach, Demand, Engagement (!!) :), Velocity.
There are two lovely things about these computations.
1. Joe and team have wonderfully avoided the temptation make these compound metrics (as in Reach = Followers / Total Retweets * Friends + Pixie Dust). The factors used are laid out as individual metrics making it easy for you understand the data and pick metrics that work for you.
2. (My favorite) The metric definitions are not "crap". This seems like such a low bar to meet, sadly far too often metrics out there (not just for twitter) are just plain shoddy.
For example here are some clean definitions from Klout:
# Engagement
* How diverse is the group that @ messages you?
* Are you broadcasting or participating in conversation?
# Velocity
* How likely are you to be retweeted?
* Do a lot of people retweet you or is it always the same few followers?
# Reach
* Are your tweets interesting and informative enough to build an audience?
* How far has your content been spread across Twitter?
* Are people adding you to lists and are those lists being followed?
When I use Klout I simply pick the metrics that are most important to my own twitter strategy.
I would suggest that this is very very very very important, pick what is right for you rather then following a lemmings like strategy of "I am going to use metrics Y & Z that someone recommends".
Here's an example: I don't care about Follower/Follow Ratio. I think it is disingenuous to follow everyone who follows you just for appearances sake when you have no intention of reading what they all say. Why be fake?
As you might have read in the new book I like "Message Amplification" in Social Media, and hence I do care a lot about Total Retweets.
[Sidebar: my favorite twitter metric is: # Of Retweets Per Thousand Followers, it's a measure of efficiency and value provided and people voting with their clicks, all rolled into one!]
I care a lot about Follower Retweet % ("Do a lot of people retweet you or is it always the same few followers?") because I want to appeal to more people than my mom, dad, and best friend!
One of the biggest mistake companies and brands make about Twitter is that they think it is one more "shout channel" like TV and Radio and Magazine ads or Press Releases. Twitter is not that. Twitter is a "conversation channel", a place where you can find the audience relevant to you (and your company and products and services and jihad) and engage in a conversation with them. It is not pitching, it is enriching the value of the ecosystem by participating.
Hence I like the metric Messages Per Outbound Message , as a primitive measure of the fact that you are participating in a conversation and not just yelling.
With Klout I can choose the metrics that best reflect my personal twitter strategy, I can easily find them and I can monitor my progress (using a handy dandy graph) and ensure my strategy is a success.
Your strategy might be different. Walk up to the buffet and pick the metrics that will help you best measure your own success.
[ Contest: Notice the metrics I have deliberately ignored: # of followers, # of retweets, @ mention count etc. Can you guess why? :) The person with the best guess gets a copy of Web Analytics 2.0! Contest closed, thanks for the entries!]
At the bottom of the Stats tab Klout also includes a handy dandy Analysis table with trend indicators. . . .
As an Analyst it might be of some value to look at the trend pointers at the bottom (clearly I am doomed!), it might be cute to put this into a PowerPoint slide for the HiPPO's who might like the Chinese fortune cookie messages for each metric group.
Ok, ok, I am just teasing the Klout team, I know it is very hard to "wordify" and programmatically make valuable recommendations. :)
GraphEdge. Twitter Analytics.
The reason I believe GraphEdge is interesting is that it has a set of really cute metrics that help bring a different perspective to measuring Twitter.
If want to contrast the difference in thinking applied compare some of the metrics below with, for example, what Omniture is touting with its Twitter "integration". The difference between the old web analytics thinking and a new person's could not be more clear.
[Allow me to rush and add that while Omniture has a hack to bring some twitter data into Site Catalyst to do something, Google Analytics has nothing. Not even something that is not useful. So perhaps GA stinks even more.]
Here are some, IMHO, differentiated metrics. . . .
Legitimate Followers:
If you have spent any time on Twitter you know that spam accounts are a problem so it is very nice that the first thing you see in GraphEdge is not a follower graph but rather their attempt at telling you how many legitimate followers you have (and the trend over time, cropped out in the image below). . .
To identify "legitimate" they use the following filters, direct quote:
Any of your followers who are following more than 2,000 people are considered not-Legitimate… they’re probably not really monitoring your feed, so we don't count them as "Legitimate".
Users who have been suspended by Twitter can’t read your tweets (and probably weren’t interested in the first place!). We don’t consider these Legitimate Followers.
It is ok to argue with their filters, but it's a fine start and I think good enough.
Klout also measures something called "Reach", which is also their way of identify if you've got people or bots following you.
Churn Rate:
In my days at DirecTV one of the metrics that the company was obsessed with atleast then and rightly so, was Churn Rate. It reflected the value of not just going after new customers but doing all that was possible to take care and love the customers we already had. Makes sense?
So I have always had that obsession with tracking Churn, simply to try and understand why people quit. The hope is if I can understand why then I can do something to fix the problem.
[By now I am sure you get the feeling that I am treating twitter analysis like I would business analysis. Twitter is my brand channel and I take this very seriously. It is perfectly ok to use Twitter to tell people where you are and what you are doing and not care about analysis.]
I have not really found any decent tool to track unfollows in twitter (yes I have tried the normal ones and they are either flaky or just outright stink). Hence I was happy to have this in GraphEdge. . . .
Yea!
Actually ouch! 291 un-follows!! So sad.
Atleast now I know.
It is nice to have the over all trends on the right in the above image, as well as for the period you choose smarter metrics like growth rate.
GraphEdge will also show a list of your new followers and un-follows (so you can send them bad vibes! Kidding, Kidding. :).
[Qwitter was one of the first tools I used to track unfollows, sadly it does not work any more, and it had a great feature: It would try to guess and report on which tweet resulted in the un-follows. Nice.]
And here's what we were on the quest of. . .
I will admit to not being charmed by having three different lines above, they clutter the left and the right, and get in the way of understanding the data. But you I suppose you can learn to ignore two of them.
Here's the definition from GraphEdge for Churn:
The number of removals (un-follows) over the average size of the existing base (followers) during the period measured:
Drops / (Current Followers – ((Adds – Drops) / 2))
As always look at the trends, the longer term the better. And remember that history is littered with companies that were growing just fine but they still died a painful death because of Churn Rate.
Loyalty:
Slightly along the same lines GraphEdge has a metric called Loyalty. At the moment I think it is too limited in what it actually measures, and it only starts measuring once you join GraphEdge. But there is kernel of promise in the metric, keep an eye on it.
Lastly… while most people overestimate their "twitter power" (I can bring you down with a single bad tweet Avinash!) I think a few people also underestimate their reach, if they participate in twitter in the right way.
Looking at the second level report can give you a feel for your network size.
Followers' Friends is an "incestuous" number, it shows all your followers and the people they are following. If you have ten followers and they all follow each other that's 100 Followers' Friends. Feel free to be proud of this number, but then promptly ignore it.
Unique Names is are the unique twitter account id's in the network, less the "illegitimate" ones. Think of this as something close to, but not the same as, the Unique Visitor concept in web analytics.
This is a useful number.
Think of it this way: If you say something of incredibly profound :) . . .
. . .and a whole lot of other people who follow you think that and retweet it then you have a theoretical capability to reach 1.2 mil people (Unique Names in your Second Level network).
Now the reality is that that will rarely happen, if ever, but in our profoundly hyper connected world Unique Names is a good number to keep on your horizon.
Remember success in twitter comes from participating in the conversation and giving something of value, not by running "social media campaigns". If you don't internalize that be ready for a reality where both your Followers, and Second Level Network size, to be small potatoes.
Qualitative Metrics / Analyses.
Now let's tackle the much much harder analysis to do in any filed, analyze the data from a qualitative perspective.
Linguistic Analysis:
I have given up on "Sentiment Analysis". Well atleast for now. Everyone over-promises and massively under-delivers.
On paper it seems like such a great thing to want to have, this is a social / conversation medium after all. But most tools I have had the good fortune to try are simply either glorified versions of Google Alerts even if they promise you buzz metrics and the moon.
Now sentiment analysis is a very hard problem to solve. For example I just analyzed my account using an expensive "social media sentiment buzz analysis tool" and it marked this tweet from today as Negative:
avinashkaushik: There in nothing quite like AC power in your seat for a 10 hour flight. Oh and 20 hours of pending work to do.
Perhaps the tool does not find my dry wit as funny as I do, but it's hardly "negative"!
With all that context I think TweetPsych holds a lot of promise.
Tweet Psych uses the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) method and the Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) method to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their last 1,000 tweets.
Dan Zarrella, founder, says: "I think the possibilities of a system like this are enormous, from matching like-minded users to identifying users that exhibit certain useful or desirable traits."
I am not sure I understand perfectly how it works (I need to send this to Joseph Carrabis!) but the analytical techniques looks very promising. . .
Hmm… interesting. I do like talking about "learning, thinking, knowing etc"! :)
As always rather then looking at my data in isolation I compare / contrast it with my friend who is a web analytics twitterer. . .
Now I understand a lot better how I am doing and how he is doing.
Remember there is nothing wrong or right here, we are both just very different people with different twitter strategy and what Tweet Psych's linguistic analysis algorithms helps us understand if our psychological profiles are aligned with our twitter goals.
Tweet Psych also provides you with Primordial, Conceptual and Emotional Content analysis, here's mine. . .
Nice.
Use this type of analysis to understand at a deep level what attributes are being associated with your brand, and if they are reflective of the goals that you set for yourself.
Content Visualization with Stream Graphs:
Stream graphs can be very good at visualizing data, content specifically. Twitter StreamGraphs is delightful for:
1. its visualization of highly associative words with the word you are querying and
2. viewing streams (tweets) for any associative word (hence sweet filtering, something so darn hard to do with twitter content)
Here's today's view of the data for my account (searching for @avinashkaushik). . .
Please click on the image for a higher resolution image.
You can choose the associative word stream that you are interested in most, click on it and at the bottom you can see the tweets. The size of the stream and shows you strength.
Once you choose the stream you can also click on the dates on the x-axis to filter down to the tweets for that particular stream for that particular date.
Sweet.
The stream graph for avinashkaushik would be different, as it looks for mentions. . . .
Please click on the image for a higher resolution image.
It is analyzing the last 1000 tweets and such a great way for me to understand the content, and filter down and review the relevant tweets easily.
Twitter StreamGraphs helps you visualize content in a very unique way and solves a very important problem to boot.
Parting Words of Wisdom.
I hope if there is one thing I have convinced you of then it is that you need to be a lot more critical when you think of analyzing these new media channels.
It is important to put aside stale (certainly current web analytics) thinking.
It is important to participate in these mediums so that you'll truly appreciate what their real strengths are.
It is important to question metrics that have cute names, dig one step deep, just one single solitary step, to check if the metric definition passes the BS filter.
It is important to choose the metrics that help you measure your unique goals.
Finally it is important to realize there are no short cuts. Be willing to work hard. Be willing to put in the sweat equity. Be willing to try 45 things (tools / metrics / strategies) to find the 3 that work for you.
Good luck!
[Missed the contest? Go back and look for the red parenthesis, you'll win a copy of Web Analytics 2.0! Contest closed, thanks for the entries!]
Please share your feedback on this post via comments. Got any other tools that you love and adore? Please share them – with a quick comment on Why you love them. Got a piece of analysis that you think is profound? Please share that with all of us as well.
Thanks.
Via 
Wonderful collection of tools Avinash, thank you!
(I love neoformix work, too bad it doesn't seem to catch Hebrew words)
More tools in the microcosm of social measurement!
Love what the community is doing in developing the latest and greatest reporting for the platform. As time goes on, these only get more and more sophisticated. It's exciting to see how things are evolving to quickly.
Twitter Streamgraphs was a new one for me, thanks Avinash. Interesting stuff.
Regards,
Garry
Avinash, thanks for the post. We have struggled to change the way we think about analytics when it comes to our social communication platforms, including Twitter and our blog. These tools certainly have hope of becoming useful and I'm hoping some of the bigger analytics players out there pay attention to what these companies are doing.
/kff
Howdy,
Thanks for the nod, Good Sir. Interesting stuff, to be sure. My concerns are the amount of input required to come to conclusions. People are psychologically "static" for brief periods of time and applying the information presented here denies cognitive v emotional decision making which is highly dynamic.
My processes for purchasing a book are highly personal, for dinner-fixings are highly social (family). The static personality of "me" shifts for each purchase event and must be addressed and communicated with separately for each event.
And never the less, interesting stuff.
Thanks for the nod. – Joseph
Thanks for your insight into these tools. There are so many out there, crunching numbers, with little analysis of their usefulness.
You might also check out http://www.analyzewords.com/index.php which @TheNextWeb just reported on.
Thanks for the great post, Avinash.
I would have loved to know more about your thoughts on metrics using Twitter Lists, for e.g. Lists/Followers ratio. A preliminary analysis I performed to assess correlation between L/F ratio and Klout score yielded surprising results (http://bit.ly/1gxcZx).
Avinash, once again your level of analysis makes people want to further improve their understanding and skills. It also makes it very clear that using tools you can work smarter with the data and spot points and trends that might not have been noticed without a tool.
The GraphEdge app looks awesome, im going to give it a try.
I have found twitalyzer.com does have some Google Analytics integration but unless you are actively promoting your website/blog and tracking with GA it doesn't usually have enough data to be significant.
Also congrats on the new book!
Avinash,
Well thought out post on the challenges facing businesses/marketers trying to analyze Twitter. At the core you need to know who are you reaching and does it help improve your business revenue? At the end of the day, customers need to buy for companies to thrive, regardless of how much you may be participating.
And try not to give up on sentiment analysis. The amount of text used in analysis is a huge part of how automated sentiment works. 140 characters is not a lot of text, and people tend to be very forthcoming with their sentiment right out the gate. They don't have the space to explain, elaborate or get distracted from their main point. Tweets like "XY is the best product ever" doesn't get lost in translation. But they do love their sarcasm which can be a big challenge for computers.
The best sentiment goal may be to strip away the neutral to focus more time on the really positive and the really negative about your company. And without a doubt, accuracy can never be 100% with either humans or computers.
Enjoyed the post. And you are right, there are no short cuts for any of it!
Regards,
Christine
Great post, thanks for sharing these tools!
Thanks for the analysis and round-up, Avinash. I've thought about the Twitter analytics problem for quite some time, which is why we built Tweeb.
Tweeb is focused on individuals and provides a simple Twitter analytics dashboard. Because of the mobile nature of Twitter, we wanted to initially launch on the iPhone, so that people's stats can travel with them.
The app has currently been submitted to Apple and should *hopefully* be approved this week. Follow @tweebapp to keep posted.
I havn't read your complete post yet but couldn't help myself to react on your contest…
sorry for the spelling, I am not native english
The metrics you ignore are "just" metrics. They have to be analyzed knowing all other things that happen to your stream.(and who knows everything? Not me and I guess not even you Avinash)
One example: Are there a lot of phony followers ? (they don't read or react to your tweets)
that number may varry intensly over time (both the exact number and the % of the total followers)
My guess is you don't want to measure the quantity of x (followers,messages,….)
but rather the quality of your messages.
for example: you said you like # Of Retweets Per Thousand Followers.
what is the difference with # of retweets some might ask?
well it is HUGE!
as you gather more followers, is is only logical that # of retweets would increase. If 1000 followers retweet 2 times you might expect 2000 to retweet 4 times (mind you, this is a estimate)
But that is not nesscacarrily so for # Of Retweets Per Thousand Followers. That number might actually go down!
the number per 1000 will only go up if you said something interesting.
It measures the willingnes of your followers to retweet and not the # of retweets.
And that willingness is a metric you can compare over lots of time as is.
And that is something verry interesting!
to be short the metrics you avoid have no value(meaning) on themselves over time. And there are metrics that have value over time on themselves.
It is those meaningfull valueable metrics that are interesting! And those are the metrics we should pay attention to!
now, off to read the rest of your post!
Great post. I jotted down those apps and I'll give them a try.
As far as your contest, you are looking into engagement, not fluff like followers and false sense of reach.
Per contest: # of followers and # of retweets does not measure for engagement but only measures the distribution of message. There is no conversion metric in # of followers and retweets, meaning it does not give an idea of the conversations being built. The commodity is in the engagement, otherwise they may un-follow you. That's my best guess. I am currently reading your first book and greatly look forward to the second! Thanks!
Thanks for this rundown of some quality tools, metrics and visualizations. It seems like every day there is a new analytical program popping up and some times its hard to cut through the hype and look past the pretty diagrams.
I think you ignored # of followers, # of retweets and @ mention counts because in isolation these metrics are meaningless. If I said I had 2000 followers, what could I do with that?
None of these metrics give a sense of the quality of my twitter audience. Ratios and percentages using these building block metrics are much more informative. I could have 2000 more followers than another guy and think I'm doing swell, but if my goal was around engagement, the number of followers isn't a meaningful measurement of engagement.
Perhaps if we compare the percentage of followers that retweet, his might be higher and therefore he followers are showing greater engagement than my much larger follower base.
Avinash,
As usual,great blog post!
My guess as to why you have left out the metrics #of followers, #retweets and @mention count is that these metrics are meaningless just by themselves and without context, and cannot be used for comparison across different profiles. They do not indicate anything about the users engagement on twitter. We cannot compare two users just based on these metrics, and draw insights that because one user has higher numbers for these metrics they are engaging better on Twitter.
For instance # of retweets does not indicate much without taking into acount your number of followers, and a KPI like #of retweets per thousands followers brings in greater context and is great for comparing a profile to a benchmark.
Similarly #of followers will be more useful if used in context again with other metrics like follow/#followers, and your reach.@ mention can be factored in with a KPI like@mention per thousand followers.
So we can use these numbers to create fantastic metrics but on their own they can be quite misleading!
A very practical and useful post Avinash! The most interesting blog post on Twitter Analytics I have ever read. It will add tremendous value and guidance to my Social Media Analytics adventure. Thank you always Avinash.
Avinash – this was a very interesting (and useful) read indeed. I totally agree with you on the need to change our 'way of thinking' from the previous mental models we have on analytics.
One thing I have noticed in terms of tools/metrics vis-a-vis measuring Social Media is that most [not all] tools out in the space currently are what I call "Vanity" tools — it tells you how cool YOU are, how strong YOU are, how much power YOU have etc. What we need are tools and metrics that are more 'humble' and stresses the true quality of one's interactions and engagements with their customers/followers(both ways) — of course, for the sake of completeness, we should have some vanity metrics too. Anyway, that is why I found your post intersting — definitely some new perspectives in there.
On the cognitive aspects — it is a difficult concept to fathom (maybe easier at an individual level or a dyadic level). But from a practical business standpoint, I think there are two barriers to surmount – one, folks shift their cognitive behavior constantly depending on the context, interaction, influences etc. and two, the law of diminishing returns dictate that we have to make sense of how a collection of individuals are behaving towards your business (call it cognitive segmentation).
Enjoyed the post.
A decent article Avinash, although I wonder how long you've been playing with Klout before you wrote about it (sometimes its satisfying to people like me to know about a beta tool – then watch as an industry great writes about it and compare the failings we have with the failings he/she had).
# of followers/# of retweets/@ mentions/etc: useless by themselves because each of these items lack CONTEXT.
You ignore # of followers, # of retweets, @ mention count etc because they’re just numbers – numbers in a report. You need to ask a second question to really begin analyzing.
Avinash,
Great post. Lots to think about here. I complete agree with the kudos being sent out for the innovation that we are seeing and the fresh perspectives being brought to analytics. I found the Twitter StreamGraph to be crazy cool. congratulations on the creation of some wicked good content that is likely to infest (in a good way) the minds of analysts globally. This is a post will get some great mileage.
There is so much to like that you covered here. My only concern is that we're having to pick and pull from multiple tools to paint the picture that we're trying to paint. (Taking the best of 8 worlds, each with their own version of reality) Many similiar tools report common metrics, like followers, with different values due to methodology differences. I completely buy into the concept of multiplicity to get a more comprehensive view. I get a little nervous when the tools we are pulling from are similar, but one reports a single metric that we want that the other doesn't. I think that this is probably just reflective of the early stage that we are at with trying to measure social media. The dust will settle and we will have fewer and more reliable tools in time.
Can you ask your Google friends to deliver a single tool that gives us all of the meaningful metrics you outlined in your post? :) For Tomorrow? :) :)
Seriously, thank you for consolidating all of this information into a meaningful post. Very good stuff.
Alice Cooper's Stalker
Avinash: As usual, good post with great process of thinking this through.
Curious about part of this post. You state "I am always suspicious of compound metrics. They can be subjective, inapplicable to many and efficiently hide the insights you need to understand what actions to take" You have been pretty consistent in this area which is one reason why I love reading your blog.
Their Influence metric (Score)"is derived from measuring 25+ variables" Does that not contradict your feelings towards large computations?
I liked your comment about "Most twitter analytics tools just do data puking" Have you used Twitalyzer much lately? It is far from data puking :-)
http://www.twitalyzer.com/twitalyzer/profile.asp?u=AvinashKaushik
FULL DISCLOSURE: I work with Eric Peterson on the Twitalyzer solutions. As you know, Eric, like you knows a few things about digital measurement :-)
Hey Avinash – Great and insightful post today and Klout looks really good!
I wanted to know if you could talk a bit more about %Overlap in GraphEdge. Is a high % of Overlap good or bad? Is a low % of Overlap bad or good? Should I even care about that at all?
Let's say that you Tweet about your the launch of your new book, Web Analytics 2.0 (which is awesome BTW). Then, the 25 other followers that I am following who are also following you re-tweet your tweet, and I wind up with a full page of tweets of the exact same thing, over and over, and over again!
I know that kinda combines %overlap and re-tweeting (not necessarily one in the same) but the one frustrating thing about Twitter for me is the constant re-tweeting…I have so much overlap that the same message is repeated 10 times each time. So this is why I'm wondering about %overlap and whether too much overlap can actually be a bad thing.
Thanks again for a wonderful post!
Enjoyed this post.
Twitless is worth a look at for seeing who follows and unfollows on a weekly basis (sends it on a tweet and on an email)
I find it strangely reassuring that the unfollows are people I can understand unfollowing – perhaps they've followed on the basis of a single conversation and been disappointed thereafter at the lack of common ground.
Avinash,
Good post. Some really good information about non-standard Twitter metrics. I do wonder though, if there isn't some way of being able to take into better account the quality vs. the quantity.
I will check out several of these apps.
This is a very helpful post. I don’t have a lot of analytics or number-crunching experience, so some of it was over my head (note to anyone who wants a marketer to buy your analytics products/services), but I’ll try to dig in more later.
I think one of the most important things that analytics tools can offer is a CLEAR definition and description of how they arrive at their stats. Having created about 50 twitter accounts, I can say that not all accounts are created equal and you would want to analyze each based upon your goals for that particular account.
In some cases, link click-throughs might be all that’s important (which makes me wonder why none of the analytics tools have created their own URL shorterners w/ stats such as Bit.ly or Cli.gs). For another account, conversation threads might be the biggest measure of success. In still other cases, retweets and pass-alongs could be the primary objective.
What I see missing from the analytics tools is a plain-English explanation of how non-analytics pros can use these tools to their advantage, i.e., to demonstrate how tangible goals have been met (or not) to clients or employers. Marketers are likely the intended audience for these tools, so analytics tools should address their pain points.
@CarriBugbee
Social Profiles: http://www.carribugbee.com
Unlike the world and thier mothers it seems, we still have not got heavily involved with twitter yet.
I think it certainly suits some businesses and types of 'information givers' but can also be detrimental to others I believe. (I conclude that when reading about what some company director has eaten for lunch)
In reality there is only a small team doing all the website stuff and sitting there writing 2 line posts and reading another hundred 2 line posts that I often have no idea what they are actually about seems quite a chore. It seems another position is needed in company now just to sit at pc all day twittering.
I always thought I was 'quite' up to date with seo etc but nowadays with the boom of all this social media we have got a bit left behind in some areas. (better to do 3 things right than 10 things average?(!)
Fortunately now there are tools that collate a lot of this info so If a new post is made on the blog for example then it gets mentioned in twitter etc so it will interesting to keep my eye on this avenue as a potential income stream.
Your new book got delivered today (or at least they tried) so hpefully I will reading this over the coming weeks and seeing where exactly I am missing out (if at all).
Maybe then some of these tools you mention can be added to our arsenal with genuine direction.
Hey Avinash,
Thank you for taking the time to look at what we are working on here at Klout. We like to think our Klout Score is a helpful benchmark for individuals/companies to understand the relative impact they are having across Twitter. I agree with you though that by looking at the individual factors that make up the score and really thinking about what you are trying to accomplish you can fine tune your behavior and be most successful.
I also wanted to say thank you again for the feedback you've given both publicly and privately on our metrics. It's been a huge help in shaping the way we think about measurement.
One side question, we've been capturing social graph data for the last 18 months and have often debated about showing churn (especially who the most influential people that have unfollowed you are). Our concern has always been whether or not that data was too painful/confrontational. I feel like it can be nice to know who unfollowed you but sometimes you don't necessarily want someone to know you unfollowed them. Curious how people feel about churn/unfollow data in general.
The winner of our little contest is E. Mills!
His/Her answer was very close to my own thought:
I don't like those metrics is that they are aggregated metrics that simply report on "activity" (and they don't even do that in context) and don't report either on customer behavior or outcomes. The latter two are the most important to any business (and hence to me). Overall atleast if they had some context perhaps it might add some marginal value (like increase in # of followers per day, rather than total).
E. Mills gets a copy of my new book, Web Analytics 2.0.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the contest entries from Romy, Alli and Tony. All three of them were close and were it not for the time stamp of their comments any of them might have won. Thanks so much for playing along guys!
Avinash.
Liz: Nice find!
Analyze Words seems to use one of the two algorithms that Tweet Psych is using, LIWC, but the output is differently organized.
I am not happy that is says my "Arrogant/Distant" is High! But "Spacy/Valley Girl" is Low. :)
Mahendra: Lists are too new to be incorporated into computations of various twitter tools, but I am starting to see it being mentioned. I did not include it because I am not sure there is a good use of it yet.
That said my working hypothesis is that Lists are a great "vote of confidence" by the community and in as much it would not be unusual if being on a high number of lists correlates with higher "influence".
Christine: I am actually surprised that sentiment analysis, or simply clustering the data, has not made a lot more progress..
For example there is a keyword tree for one word referring traffic to my blog: https://kaushik.net/avinash/juice_ga_keyword_tree.png
I has uploaded about 10k words and even this simple tree for one of those keywords, "Avinash", is pretty cool in understanding the data.
I am surprised something simple like this does not exist! :)
Jey Pandian: I have been using Klout for around six months. I first ran into an early version somewhere in Q1 of 2009 and included it in my book, written mostly in July 2009.
I have had a chance to talk to Joe, the founder, a few times during these months and share my feedback on how to evolve it. I have been happy with the changes and they have many more cool things to be released in the future.
Everything in the world of Twitter measurement is in Beta. The whole darn ecosystem is in beta! :) That should not stop us from making the right moves even this early on. Tools like Klout, Tweet Psych etc are making those right moves. IMHO.
Alice Cooper's Stalker: I am afraid we don't have a choice. We have to embrace the fact that we won't have "one tool" for the conceivable future.
Trust me, this is very hard even for me to accept. I come from the traditional business intelligence world, our daily quest was to get to the "single source of the truth".
It is simply impossible on the web because the world is changing too fast.
Success will now come from having people who have flexibility and ability sown into their their DNA, people who can do a rapid analysis of data is captured in each tool, how the metric is defined and then go use the data today to take action, even as they know in their heart they might have to quit that tool in three months.
It is hard. But it is not impossible.
Jeff: Hmm…. I am confused…..
I said under the picture with their formula this: "It is easy to understand the market demand to boil things down to one number, but this is perhaps the least useful thing in Klout." And then as you'll note I don't talk abut it at all in the post and focus on other metrics they compute that I find interesting.
It was my subtle way of saying… don't use this influence thing.
Perhaps I should have been even more obvious.
Like everyone else I have used Twitalyzer!
Joe Teixeira: A large overlap indicates a more "incestuous" connections in your network, i.e. your followers (and you!) are just following each other.
This is good in the sense that it is a more cohesive community (and you might not need a lot of "pimping" to reach everyone! :)).
It is bad in the sense that a large overlap shows a limited 2nd-level reach (limits the value of a retweet – which you really do want to spread your awesomeness to new people).
I would much rather have a low overlap.
Joe Fernandez: I understand your concern with id'ing unfollows.
I am more of a tough love kind of guy but in the grand scheme of things it is not super super important to know who unfollowed. But that's a different issue from measuring churn rate. You can still show the churn rate and suppress the names of people who churned. I think that the metric is worth having so people can get a holistic view of success.
Thanks everyone!!
-Avinash.
As usual, great work and great finds Avinash. Thanks!
Nikki
My 2 cents (with humility and some apprehension)
*Number of retweets per thousand followers is a good metric.
However, due to the nature of twitter-
this would probably not be fair to someone who tweets less Vs someone who tweets more often.(Assuming ceteris paribus).
So if A has 1000 followers and sent 10 tweets a day out of which 1 gets RT-ed, my ratio is 0.1 RTs pe thousand followers
and if B has the same 1000 followers and send 100 tweets a day of which 10 gets RT-ed, my ratio is 1 RTs pe thousand followers
I think (number of updates / number of retweets*100) could be a good indicator.
In the above example, this percentage would signify that A is actually equal to B-
because the propensity of his tweets to spread is equal to B- irrespective of the number of followers (that is 10%)
This number would signify more closely what is the propsensity of messages to spread and perhaps also the quality of tweets sent (a larger score would mean more of my tweets are found valuable)
"I don’t care about Follower/Follow Ratio-
I think it is disingenuous to follow everyone who follows you just for appearances sake when you have no intention of reading what they all say. Why be fake?"
Quite true. On its own self this ratio is probably not so useful. But maybe this is not a metric to be seen in isolation- rather in a combination with other metrics.
At the least, it could 'flag' certain cases:
*There could be some more ways to interpret this metric- significantly more people following you then you following them could denote less 'socialbility' but more 'authority'. I mean if I am a celeb/authority – I cannot meaningfully listen to all- so I have a high follower-follow ratio. On the flip side, a low ratio could imply a twitter-er who follows people recklessly (in the hope that they would follow you back)- and in turn follows a significantly larger number of people than other people follow them.
This metric- coupled with a metric like, say- "rate of follower adoption" could give more meaningful insights into the "genuine authority/sociability" IMO
It is quite simplistic yet not entirely useless IMO- if we know what are we using it for (like most other metrics)
Shalabh
Chasing The Storm
Very well explained Avinash with pics and examples. Great post
Avinash, great post. Tried to retweet but the button does not seem to be working.
I really enjoyed reading this post and totally agree with it.
Hi Avinash,
Very informative post. But I would like to add two cents of my own.
Agreed, the accuracy of linguistic analysis tools is not cent percent; yet there is a lot of work being done on it. Matter of fact, there are researchers working on extracting more subtle sentiments (e.g. in your case, wit, in other cases, sarcasm). It might take a while before it hits the mainstream; but it cannot be written off.
And it was refreshing to know that people are working on psychoanalysis of a person based on his written work. That is something that holds a lot of promise. Just thinking about it from the perspective of an HR person/recruiter.
PS: Even twitter was written off; now there are companies earning their livelihood just by using twitter APIs.
Another informative blog post – thank you. I appreciate the detailed exploration of Twitter measurement tools. I have also purchased a copy of your latest book and look forward to reading it.
Admittedly I did have a few issues with understanding parts of your post due to your sentence construction. These issues decrease your blog's readability and thus impede understanding of your (quite valuable) message.
The reason I'm taking the time/effort to note these issues is out of hope that you will both correct them and also proofread more thoroughly in the future. I can only assume that you are as eager to post to your blog as we all are to read your posts.
Here are a some samples:
1. 'The in their thinking from all the constant …'
[I am not sure what you are saying at all.]
2. 'In this post four twitter analysis tools.'
[This is not a complete thought. Perhaps 'In this post I discuss four Twitter analysis tools.']
3. 'Each while not yet all developed yet show sweet signs of..'
[This is a bit convoluted]
And some minor issues…
1. 'Mercifully there is so much more to Klout than the that.'
[extra 'the']
2. 'atleast'
[Is two words not one. This appeared multiple times.]
3. Please capitalize proper nouns: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr [unless the particular company does not itself capitalize it own name]
hmm… based on the high level of thought required around detailed analysis who really cares for a few mistakes.
@jhay feel free to go thru my blog posts and correct them if you have that much spare time…
Its always preferred the data is correct and accurate as for some of the issues highlighted are secondary.
Avinash your knowledge is much more important than correct use of capitals for nouns and we appreciate your time to get data correct and useful.
Seriously if newspapers and media companies can type mistakes it must prove we are all human.
@Avinash as you know the community appreciates your efforts to share knowledge and best practice and a I know of several people are already very appreciative of this particular post.
Your presentation is excellent. I found your analysis is reasonably correct. It is really great post and gives me to think in the direction which you aimed for. Thanks Avinash.
Jon: Thanks for pointing out the errors in sentence construction, they are terrible mistakes!
The only time I have to write is late in the night and with my many jobs and (one :)) family the posts tend to be rushed.
My goal is to just get something out on time, but of course it should not be at the cost of quality. I've fixed errors.
Once again I appreciate the help.
-Avinash.
Great post, Avinash. Thank you for the information! I agree with you on Follower Retweet % but what do you think is a healthy % to achieve? I understand that the important thing here is to be able to monitor progress over time but still wanted to know.
Also, I have used Twitalyzer and have found it useful. What is your take on that?
Nice post – very comprehensive. I want to try them all!
Would love to know your take on The Whuffie Bank.
Slightly different take on measuring influence, and more about social value capital.
http://www.thewhuffiebank.org
Aerin :)
Aerin: The whuffie bank is a very interesting idea, not the least because of their noble non-profit motivations.
From a measurement perspective it is simply yet another Compound Metric like "clout" or "influence" or …. Whuffies. There are five different things that go into computing the metrics:
http://www.thewhuffiebank.org/static/faq
(Click on How is Whuffie Calculated)
But I am unsure of the comfort levels with some of their assumptions (I do not believe having a hashtag in a tweet makes it any more valuable or simply the presence of a link in a tweet means your tweet is of high quality!). Other assumptions are good and now universally accepted (ex: retweets are good).
In the end I think about how to use the information provided to be better (for a personal gig or my business) and in that sense it is very hard, very very hard, to know from compound metrics what to do. My whuffie balance is 4,027. What do I do? There is a trend included but I am not sure how to parse out how to get better. Atleast without the underlying data.
This is not a problem unique to The Whuffie Bank, you'll see it in most twitter analytics tools. But one must give them credit for trying to take a very unique approach to monetizing reputation.
Avinash.
There is actually now some GREAT tools for tracking Social Media effectiveness, example radian6.com can help show all the different places that your viral campaigns reach.
This has become very effective in transparency for clients ( and we know how much they love that…) and also to price up your work!
Jimmy
Great article – twitter analytics simply explained, without the hype.
Loved the post. I am myself trying to write a post on manually getting to know how important a person's tweets are. Maybe then my group can automate the same process
Avinash,
Great post with an incredible amount of information. Thanks for your insight and I appreciate your no-nonsense humor!
Avinash,
I'm learning a lot from your blog. I love Twitter and recommend it to our clients. It's taking time for many people to understand it's value. So thanks for this info.
~Wendy
Your post provoked a lot of thought about Twitter Analytics. As I had already told, I went on to write about some factors which can be considered while designing a tweet weight calculating tool.Thanks a lot to this post, my way of thinking about tweet weights have changed.
Hello, Kaushik. I am your big fan. I read so many your blogs. Thanks your work.
Can I ask you a question? My question is about Google Analytics.
My company's website change its track code , the code is following:
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ?
'https://ssl' : 'http://www') +
'.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
ga.setAttribute('async', 'true');
document.documentElement.firstChild.appendChild(ga);
})();
The result is the whole wensite data is growing rapidly, however the data of sub domain have not growing, even some of them decresed. I am totally confuse, and I don't know why. Can you fingure it out? Thank you very much.
A simple 150 word update in twitter and followers are great. But understanding the true nature of followers is quiet a hassle. I had never even thought about that.
Thank you for such this article.
As a self proclaimed SEO Wannabe (trying to become a SEO newbie) this is definitely information that I needed. In a world where all your SEO interviews end up asking questions about social networking it is awesome to have something more to say than… well I tweet :)
No wonder my DREAM BOSS/MENTOR added this article to my recommended reading. You have definitely inspired me to get up and head over to B&N for a copy of your book.
If your writing style is anything like what I see here, I am sure it will be a great reference.
I'll definitely be back. *adding you to my SEO bookmarks*!
Thank you again.
– The SEO Wannabe
Did I mention who have a new follower to add to your analytics? :)
Hi Avinash… have been reading the your blogs … they are quite informative … thanx.. for putting so much effort and give us insights about social media…
are you speaking at the eyefortravel "social media strategies for travel" I think they and the travel industry need your guidance on SM .. big time…
Thanx again….
Great article avinash, I wish there was a clear way to consolidate all this information!
Great article avinash, I wish there was a clear way to consolidate all this information!
Social Media for sure has a growing influence with the rise in influence, use and exposure of major websites such as Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and other social websites with other uses. Through these platforms, we are now in an age in which you can keep more and more up to date with both people and businesses.
It also has a significant value in the amount of traffic it can bring to businesses websites.
this is a great post Avinash, and we very much enjoyed your presentation at Twtrcon.
would love to somehow entice you to update/reprint this post on our blog at http://oneforty.com/blog, or to simply build a toolkit of the apps you mention in the post, reusing the copy you have already written about each one.
i think you'll find we're equally in love with Twitter's open API and developer community. :-) we'd love to know how you feel about our contribution to it — we've centralized listings, taxonomy, ratings and reviews for everything in it.
FWIW, currently 250+ of the @TwitterAPI apps that we have claim the category analytics. http://oneforty.com/search?query=analytics
warmly,
@pistachio
Exchanging tweet and maintaining a relationship to several individuals will surely earn you trust and respect. Consequently, once others begin to notice that you are a trustworthy and valuable user, they will surely interact with you, and the virus-like marketing rewards will undoubtedly ensues.
I am not sure I can agree completely with comment 103; we have about a year's worth of data detailing emotional valences individuals have to those they follow and who follow them. There is no question that a relationship is maintained, there is evidence that trust and respect do not naturally follow from that relationship. In many cases relationships are positively or negatively reinforced when personal meetings occur, or when trust inherents are altered within one's social framework.
And, as always, just my opinion (okay, my opinion backed by about a year's worth of data) on this.
Joseph
Joseph: Thank you for pointing out the key nuance between the real world and the social world of limited knowledge about the other person.
I could define relationships in the social world, for the most part, as "relationships", and not really Relationships (at least not as in after getting to know the person with say one in person meeting).
The nice thing is that for brands and people there is an opportunity in the social world to start a "relationship" and if they are authentic about it then convert it into a relationship in the real world. :)
Thank you again, it is such a delight to get your esteemed input into these complex issues.
Avinash.
Howdy,
1) Quite correct. Our data is for individual to individual relationships, not for brands-individuals. Our research was to recognize individuals who actually influenced others to take action versus individuals who…umm…didn't.
2) "…esteemed input…" Me? LOL! Thanks.
I think it is important to be able to measure social media's effectiveness, but I think the alot of web creators are spending too much time on these sites. It all depends on how you use them.
For dialashop I used twitter to announce new pages and useful information. I do not try to get personal. I do get visitors from it, but not a large amount. I think its best to use social media as a platform to announce new imporant pages and info.
If people see the tweets are of quality then they will follow you. If you are trying to work out which is the best, try each one and see which gives the best results. Remember at the end of the day your main site is the most important.
Great post Avinash. Thanks for sharing the Twitter metrics.
Will share this post to my twitter followers.
Suppose I do not have the money to invest on any tools to measure my org's engagement on social media (let us assume, twitter)… is it then worth the investment to 'market' using this channel.
I think your answer may be a big No, in case it is a partial yes, can you tell us a little more about 'how to'?
Kunal: There is a very famous quote: "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."
There might be some corner cases where committing resources to a channel, any channel, without measurement might be ok. I'm afraid I don't see a lot of those. Especially in our current world where some basic measurement is fast and cheap (from both a resource and tool perspective).
So you don't have to have the most sophisticated measurement plan before you jump into social, but not having some plan might not be prudent. Even for the smallest company.
Avinash.
Hey, the article is great. It's really very helpful.
One web tool that I use in my daily work, it may give a brief information and statistic for a twitter account: http://en.whotwi.com/user/avinash
Yan: This is certainly a interesting tool. It presents data in a bit more delightful way than other Twitter tools.
But I have to share that all it does is show "activity" and not "outcomes." My post is all about trying to understand the outcomes. "Are we doing this right?" "Is anyone listening?" "What content is being appreciated?" "What is the impact on the business?"
This tool does not answer any of those questions, but I'm sure the developers are considering that.
Thank you,
Avinash.
Great post Avinash…
I have shared on twitter for my followers to read :)
Wow Avinash, awesome post!
It is a pity I have come across it some years after you wrote it, though what it does do is show how despite the passing of time is still somewhat relevant with how twitter has evolved and analytical tools have not?
I would like to read your thoughts about how you think things have moved on from your original post.
Paul: I've developed a simpler way to think about measurement of social media using four metrics that will revolutionize your understanding of your social marketing.
You can read the post here:
Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value
-Avinash.
Really interesting & useful article, Thanks Mr Avinash for such a great article full of great learnings.
While Graphedge is not available any more the metrics you point out are still valid and I'm working on replicating them using different tools.