NEED TO JUSTIFY ROI & FOCUS YOUR TIME?
HERE'S HOW TO FIND & USE TWITTER ANALYTICS.

I've been having more and more fun tweeting lately. I'm so late to the party (I wish I would have understood the platform back in 2007 and how I could leverage it to build an audience), but it's still going great and working well.

And for the most part, I say just be authentic and relevant, let it fly and have fun. You'll hear this from just about every solid digital strategist, however...

And this is a big "however," all truly solid business people - I mean business people who have actually been held accountable for the success or growth of a company (any shape or size) know that we have to justify every penny and every second spent on, around or thinking about a tool or platform or initiative.

So while Twitter is still one of the top seven-10 ways for brands to build and engage with an audience, you still have to justify it.

And how do you think I'm going to say to do that?

OF COURSE! THERE'S A FREE ANALYTICS TOOL THAT HELPS!

Analytics.Twitter.Com. Just log in and see all you really need to know about audience engagement, follower growth and opportunities on Twitter.

1. Track your follower growth - this is likely the start of what those around you will care about. "How is it helping us connect with others and grow our audience and influence?" This is your top of the funnel activity.
2. Track your website's backlinks - Of course I love Google Analytics, but using Twitter Analytics for this might be easier for some of you. I love how this tool is so easy to use. This is your mid-funnel activity.
3. What's working best? For example, if you "view all Tweet activity," you can scroll through all of your tweets and compare Impressions, Engagements and Engagement rates. Looking for trends like "when I post a picture in a Tweet vs. a Tweet with no picture, how well does it do?" Or, "when I tag someone, how well does it do?" etc. I found an interesting one about automated tweets from Instagram posts that is at the end of the video embedded into this post. You should check it out. This is how to make the best use of your time while using the platform, which is key.

My favorite part of all of this, is that you don't need a fancy tool - it's free - you've got your own data already. You just need to know where to look to find it.

Thanks for reading /watching and have a great day!

Paul Hickey has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.