Way back in 2011, Twitter announced they were starting to offer Analytics for some Twitter accounts. Finally – almost two years later, they are offering analytics to everyone!
Here’s how you access those analytics:
- Get into your Twitter account (the web version)
- Click the Settings icon (looks like a gear)
- Click Twitter Ads (and sign in again. If you haven’t signed up for Twitter Ads, you’ll need to do that first. No cost associated with signing up, so do it for the analytics)
- Once you’re logged into Twitter Ads, click Analytics (in the black bar at the top of the page)
- You’re in!
What types of analytics do you get?
Right now, there are two choices – Timeline Activity and Followers:
Timeline Activity
The Timeline Activity view provides most of the analytics. At the top of the page is a handy graph showing Mentions, Follows, and Unfollows for the last month. Hover over the graph, and you can see a per-day breakdown of those numbers.
Below the graph are Recent Tweets. This shows individual tweets, going back all the way to your first tweet (I think – I scrolled back about a year)!
For each tweet, you can see these analytics:
- # of Faves
- # of Retweets
- # of Replies
- If there’s a link included in the tweet, you can see how many clicks that tweet received.
For example, I now know my tweet about Twitter analytics (as of last night) was favorited 7 times, retweeted 3 times, and the link included with the tweet was clicked 45 times.
You can also choose which tweets you want to see – All, Best, or Good.
- Best shows the top 15% of tweets with some level of engagement, going back to August 27 (so, about 10 months).
- Good shows the top two-thirds of tweets with some level of engagement, in that same timeframe.
- All shows all tweets in that same timeframe.
This page also includes a CSV download, which provides a list of all tweets with numbers for Faves, Retweets, and Replies.
Followers:
Followers is the second option, and includes some pretty cool stats about your followers. At the top of the page, there’s a graph showing your per-day follower count from day one of your Twitter account. Below that, you are given some interesting topical, location, and gender info, including:
Interests:
Most unique interests – shows the top five most unique interests of your followers. I’m assuming this comes from some data-mining of follower’s Twitter accounts. For my Twitter account, my followers most unique interests are:
- 39% Biographies and memoirs
- 11% job search
- 9% Education news and general info
- 7% freelance writing
- 2% geneology (yes, that’s how they spelled it. Oops)
Top Interests:
The top ten interests of my followers, which include:
- 72% politics and current events
- 58% book news and general info
- 56% business and news
- Etc. Hover over any of the numbers in this section, and you can see a total number for that percentage.
Location:
This shows the top countries and states of my followers (USA, Kansas, New York, Illinois, Ohio, and Massachussets). Also a lot of people from Australia and Canada.
Top Cities:
In my case, they include: Topeka, Wichita, Sydney AU, Melbourne AU, and Perth AU. Alright – you Australians are awesome!
Gender:
45% male, 55% female.
And finally, a Your Followers also Follow list. My followers, unsurprisingly, also follow these Twitter accounts:
- 36% @ALALibrary
- 33% @ALA_TechSource
- 33% @amlibraries
- 30% @jessamyn
- 25% @buffyjhamilton
- 23% @OCLC
- 22% @AtYourLibrary
- 17% @yalsa (I find this one a bit odd, but whatever. Cool!)
- 15% @ALA_JobLIST
- 13% @ALA_Booklist
So that’s that! Twitter – thanks for the analytics! There’s some really good stuff here!
I attended a session on Tumblr and libraries, mainly because I have to admit – I don’t get Tumblr. I use it personally as a blog, but it is HUGE as more of a discovery tool for content, especially visual content. And a bunch of librarians also use it as a discussion/sharing tool (check out 
Before I give you my two cents on this particular session, here are links to two articles that describe the session pretty well:
Patrick Brown
Wow – the 
