Twitter tracking
Twitter, the short message Service, which allows posting text messages in the length of maximum 140 characters, is an essential part of many Social Media concepts. One may ask: “What traffic does it bring?” Twitter tracking answers that.
Twitter tracking can be understood in two different ways. First, the number of visitors who land on your website through tweets you posted can be measured. Second, Twitter tracking also acquires data about the success and the range within Twitter network.
How many visitors come through Twitter – tracking on your website
In order to find out how many users came to your website after clicking on a link posted on Twitter, you actually only need to select the source “Twitter” in your web analytics tool. But what if your link has been seen on Twitter and then published on, for example, Facebook? Then the source is not Twitter anymore, but Facebook. In order to exclude these cases in Twitter tracking, one should add a campaign code to allow the web analytics tools to list the link details. Google Analytics™ offers the URL Builder: It joins a source, a medium and a campaign name to a link. With this, Twitter tracking can also include links from external websites such as Facebook.
Tracking Twitter activities
For corporations who use Twitter, it is also important to track the activities in the network itself. Various Twitter tracking tools deliver information on the development of followers, lists, an evaluation of re-tweets, mentions and “favorite”-markings as well as a conversion rate which arises from the number of tweets, the replies (@) and the self-posted re-tweets.
Thus, Twitter tracking can be a great starting point for optimizing activities in this microblogging system. But tracking alone is not enough: Detailed analysis and optimization are needed to incorporate Twitter into your overall Online Marketing plan.
