As a marketer it is very important that I am able to measure the effectiveness of the marketing I do for clients. I need to know what is working, and what isn’t, and tweek or stop a particular activity if it is not encouraging leads or sales.
I use a range of tools (some free and some paid for) to provide meaningful data and today I was really excited (I know, how sad is that?!) to hear that Twitter is about to roll out a new web analytics tool. It is currently still in beta test but will be widely available within a few weeks.
So why am I excited about this?
I know from experience that Twitter generates web traffic. How do I know this? Two of the measurement tools I use are bit.ly – which shows the number of clicks on the bit.ly links I have included in my tweets, and Google Analytics – which identifies the traffic to a website from Twitter. This new tool will enhance the data available as it shows:
- how much of your site’s content is shared on Twitter
- how much traffic to your site is generated by Twitter, and
- how well the tweets buttons on your site are performing
Woo hoo! I am in analytics heaven :0)
Why should news of this new tool get you excited?
Hopefully, if you are using Twitter to promote you and your business you know why are doing this. You have a social media strategy for your business, don’t you? You know who you need to target and have actively sought them out. You know what you need to say in order to drive traffic to your website to encourage sales/promote your expertise, or whatever the aim of your social media activity is. Right?
If you have answers to the above and know exactly why and how to use Twitter then measuring the results is the next step and will tell you whether the time and effort (and perhaps money) you spend promoting your business this way is being effective. By analysing this data you will know whether to continue what you are doing in the way you are doing it, tweek what you are doing and monitor the results for a few weeks/months, or stop doing it altogether and try something else to promote your business.
If you haven’t worked out why you are using Twitter and what you want to achieve. how do you know if Twitter is working for you? I guess the lick-your-finger-and-stick-it-in-the-air approach will be what you need!
If you want guidance on how to measure your social media activity to find out whether it is right for you (shock revelation … social media is not right for everyone!), or how to improve the effectiveness of the time you spend on Twitter, then get in touch to find out more and book a one2one consultation with me. The consultation can be over the phone, via Skype or in person – whichever suits you and your way of learning.
Don’t just play with Twitter – measure, learn and get results.
