Tweet, Tweet…Anybody there?

Guest Blogger: Rachelle Morris, DEMA Membership Marketing & Communications Coordinator
 
Developing a strategy for your Twitter marketing efforts is one thing, but how can you tell if all your time and planning is paying off? Well, like most things related to marketing and social media, there isn’t a simple answer (I am beginning to sound like a broken record). There are all kinds of ways you can track your Twitter insights, however, allow me to share with you how DEMA is tracking the success of our Twitter efforts and perhaps you will find some of these methods useful.

DEMA finds the following insights are beneficial in determining how well our Twitter efforts are paying off and areas that may need more attention:

Followers 
We track these numbers to make sure we are 1) increasing our following, which would indicate that our content is valuable and 2) not losing followers which would raise a red flag that we are doing something wrong.

Following 
We track the number we are following to make sure we are making a continuous effort to find and follow new people who are able to provide us with valuable information that we can then pass on to our Followers.

Weekly Retweeted 
Having someone retweet your Tweet (in other words, share your content with their followers) is one of the highest levels of engagement on Twitter. It means that your content is not only valuable, but valuable enough that someone else found the content worthy of being passed along to their followers. Think of that saying, “Imitation is the highest form of flattery…” yeah, it’s kinda like that.

Weekly Clicks 
Having someone click on a link provided in your tweet is another high level of engagement. Clever writing and high quality content are just a few ways to experience a high click-through rate.

Weekly Mentions 
When someone uses “@[yourTwitternamehere]” they are engaging you in their conversation. It can also be a way to tag you in a Tweet so you can find who is talking about you.

To keep track of these insights, we use 3 different applications:

1 ) Twitter

• Used to track: Followers & Following 
• Information Available Via: Twitter profile page 

2) Hootsuite

• Used to track: Weekly Clicks 
• Information Available Via: Hootsuite’s custom reports 
• Methodology: We make sure all DEMA Twitter postings are posted via Hootsuite and that all links are shortened using the Owl. ly shortening tool. This way, Hootsuite is able to track how many clicks each of our links receives on a weekly basis and reports this statistic for us via our custom-made click report. 

3) Twitonomy 

• Used to track: Weekly Retweets & Weekly Mentions 
• Information Available Via: Mentions & Retweets panel 
• Methodology: On a weekly basis, we count up how many times @DEMAorg is mentioned in the Tweets of others and also how many times someone has retweeted our content each week. 

Follow DEMA on Twitter to connect with the Dive Industry and stay in-the-loop with everything happening WHEN it’s happening at DEMA Show 2012!

 Are you looking to learn more about Twitter and how to set up your business or brand’s Twitter presence? Consider reviewing this Twitter Guide Book that I’ve found to be a good overall resource to get you started!