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Quite a few authors have set up fan pages on Facebook, and the new Google+ has tech heads in a swoon. But I still spend most of my social media time away from my blog on Twitter.
Twitter remains the nervous system of the social media world and, increasingly, of the regular media world, too.
I’ve long thought of Twitter as a kind of utility, like gas or electric service, but piping in the real-time thoughts, jokes, links, wisdom, meetup plans and everything else being blasted 24/7 into the Twittersphere.
However, remembering that book publishing is a business leads me to wonder exactly what I’m getting for all this engagement. Granted, Twitter is the easiest place to meet like-minded people, to get the latest links of interest in your niche, and where content can go viral.
Even Apple has voted for Twitter by integrating the service right into the upcoming iOs 5 for the iPhone and iPad. This will allow all apps to be Twitter-enabled.
I’ve rounded up a bunch of websites and services that provide Twitter tools can help you evaluate two important aspects of using Twitter:
- The effect your marketing efforts are having,
- The profiles of other Twitter users
Some of these services have both free and paid capabilities, but I’ve avoided anything you have to pay for. Here are the free Twitter stats and analytics tools with a few notes. Enjoy.
Twittercounter.com
Twittercounter shows statistics in attractive charts that are customizable to some degree. The site also offers predictions on when you’ll hit certain targets, and follower badges that update in real time for use on your blog or website.
Tweetreach.com
Tweetreach offers a great analysis of your last 50 tweets so you can see what your actual reach is. Here you can see it’s calculated my last 50 tweets reached over 55,000 people. This is clearly one of the reasons that Twitter is the second-largest source of traffic to my blog.
Tweeteffect.com
Tweeteffect‘s claim to fame is that it analyzes recent tweets and correlates them to the exact time people either join you or abandon you as followers. It’s difficult to see any correlation between tweets and follows or dumps, so this seems of little utility to me. Your mileage may vary.
Topsy.com
Topsy Analytics, part of Topsy’s extensive social media analysis products, gives you “Mentions That Matter. We only show those mentions within Twitter that are significant and valid. Significant to us means a tweet that’s been retweeted or contains a link.” The tool also shows individual tweets with a variety of metrics.
Tweetstats.com
Tweetstats is unlike the other programs here. For one thing, it took almost 5 minutes for the site to process the data from Twitter and draw the beautiful charts it then presented. It’s when you realize these charts are all interactive and can be clicked-through to more detailed displays you realize how much data the program is handling.
Twitalyzer.com
Twitalyzer measures your Twitter performance against all other users and comes up with an “Impact score” and a list of influencers. The most interesting feedback from this site was: “Based on sampled data from Rapleaf, @jfbookman’s network skews female and is composed primarily of 35-44 year olds followed by 45-54 year olds.” I’m not sure how much I believe this, especially when I notice they have my location off by about 220 miles.
Tweetgrader.com
Tweetgrader, a Hubspot tool, also grades your performance on Twitter. In this case it comes up with a numeric score (scope out my perfect rating!) and a keyword cloud based on recent tweets.
Backtweets.com
Backtweets, although it has been purchased by Twitter and may be merged into their other functions, still has a web presence. Backtweets shows yet another scoring system, but also includes lists of your most-shared sites, the people who influence you, and the people you influence.
Owly.com
Owly.com isn’t a Twitter stats site, of course, but the home of Hoot Suite, the useful and free social media dashboard. I use Hoot Suite for a lot of my Twitter things and it includes a link-shortener. When you use these links the program provides a growing suite of analytical tools for examining the effect of your tweets. It tracks clicks, regions, popular posts, top referrers and allows you to create and save your own reports.
There you have it. I don’t think you need to spend a lot of time looking at stats, but a familiarity with analytics is one of the most powerful information tools you can have in your arsenal if you’re going to be marketing your books online.
Find one or two of these tools that give you the information you need to evaluate your Twitter use and you’ll be ahead of the game.
Thanks for sharing these Twitter resources. helped me a lot.
Good collection of sites. I just launched my own Twitter Statistics website that has some fun and unique metrics. Can you please add it to your list? You can check it out at http://www.wordcurl.com.
Thanks a lot! I was looking for ways to look at twitter data!
Thanks for sharing these great Twitter resources. I was looking for a way to analyze our Twitter account.
Great information. Thanks. The one item I would add is at which day during the month do you reach break even. The faster you reach break even every month the more capital you have to work with for R & D. Always invest in your good idea, product, or service. Like my old friend A. L. Williams used to say, “Pay yourself first” John Zarlino CEO/Founder Cover Your Assets II, LLC
Thanks for the list. It seems Twitcounter is broken?
Anyone know of a tool to analyze your current followers / friends: I want to know which have the highest Klout score…
great sites I’ll try them out thanks
Great information I will take a look atbsome of these and see which helps me the most. I am a newbie and would like to see what is working, what is not working, and to work on
Thanks
Jodi
joel, do you ever use bitly to track your clicks? if you register for an account (free), it will give you analysis of how many people click on your links. i was wondering if you preferred it to owly for any reason. and keep up that great work you’re doing! :)
Great information, Joel! Thanks! I hardly use Twitter at all because I really can’t figure it out. I think one of my business goals should be to use Twitter — I know it can be very useful.
Arlene, I think anyone who can figure out the rules of grammar can figure out Twitter. It’s deceptive in its simplicity. Try this:
10 Steps for Authors Who Want to Get Started on Twitter
Good luck!
Joel
I think this is an excellent piece and thanks for sharing. I can’t seem to find a RT plug-in to share to my Twitter followers (@Ju_Summerhayes @0neLife). The shareholic plug-in went a bit crazy and logged me into my account. Sorry.
Julian
Maybe I’m just pathetically old-fashioned, but I never tweet or read others’ tweets. (I also don’t drink coffee or Tang, or eat anchovies or guacamole).
Maybe I simply don’t think that I or anyone else can squeeze anything important or entertaining enough into a mere 140 characters to build a following.
Maybe I’m unnecesarily cynical, but I think most tweeters (not you, Joel) are of the intellectual level of Sarah Palin, and can’t write more than 140 characters without a ghostwriter.
I recognize that Twitter can provide some useful bits of information (such as the location of a mobile taco maker). But, if the president decides to use Twitter to announce that all American troops are leaving Afghanistan on Thursday, I’ll find out about it elsewhere.
For now, I’ll put my own words in books, blogs, websites and Facebook.
Michael N. Marcus
— http://www.BookMakingBlog.blogspot.com
— http://www.BookFur.com (information, help and book reviews for authors)
— http://RentABookReviewer.com (pre-publication book assessments)
— Create Better Books, with the Silver Sands Publishing Series: http://www.silversandsbooks.com/booksaboutpublishing.html
— “Stories I’d Tell My Children (but maybe not until they’re adults),” http://www.amazon.com/dp/0981661750
Here’s another one for you to add to the list – Chirp-stats.com, free twitter statistics that doesn’t even require you to login! Give it a go and let us know if you’d like any extra features added, and we’ll do our best to implement!