It’s fascinating to me be able to watch the response to something I’ve tweeted. It gives me an idea of what my followers want and will respond to. This can be very useful in building your Twitter following organically and evaluating your social media marketing campaign. So thought I’d share this for anyone who hasn’t found this trick, or in case anyone can add to it (if so, please do!).
You can only do this if there is a link in the Tweet (which is probably the only time you’d really care to track the Tweet anyway). If you have used bit.ly to shorten links for Twitter, you may not realize that you can also use it to track the number of clicks, the times, and even geographic locations. To do this you have to just create an account at bit.ly. (Note: if you are running AdBlockPlus in your browser, Disable it for the bit.ly page, weird interactions lock up bit.ly output).
I used TweetLater.com to schedule some tweets for a link I wanted to send out (very handy if you are not going to be able to Tweet at your leisure all day!). I spaced the tweets out every couple of hours over a day, along with a few other tweets. At the end of the day, I went back to bit.ly and clicked on the ‘Info’ link by the shortened link, and noticed that there was a total of 18 clicks (I only had about 750 followers at the time so I think I averaged about 3 clicks per Tweet).
But the phenomenal thing was that by the next day, the stats on the link showed over 115 clicks! Geographically (which you can find within the Info page), these were around 86 from the US, over 21 from the UK, 1 each from Canada, France, Australia, and Brazil, and 2 each from Spain and Austria! Pretty cool!
I understood that HootSuite.com could both schedule Tweets and shorten links using ow.ly, but I didn’t find how to track the links there. Both HootSuite and TweetLater allow scheduling of Tweets to multiple accounts.
Remember not to spam when Tweeting! That’s a pretty sure way to get ‘unfollowed’. Rather, provide a variety of good content, with occasional value that may inspire folks to opt-in to an offer you may have, after your quality tweet!
To Your Twemendous Success!
Hi,
I liked! So clear and positively.
I have just tried Hootsuite this weekend. It did not work once for timing. It did once. I do not know how to track the ow.ly but this is a lot of trouble either way. Tracking can be done on budurl.com also but again it seems to be a lot of trouble.
The article was really good and thanks for the info. Bob
Hi Bob,
Thanks for the comment – yes it is troublesome if you don’t have any need for it. It would only be useful to someone needing to know the effectiveness of their tweets. Anyway, glad you liked the article!
Thanks,
Vicki
I implement these strategies into my campaigns….I love reading your articles…keep’em coming.
Nice article and tips. I actually like hootsuite as a great scheduling tool. The other thing about bit.ly is that some apps (ie. iPhone) allow you to enter your bit.ly credentials for URL shortening and that works well for tracking.
I love twitter, and I tweet probably way more than I should. I’ve followed you on twitter. I use twitter more than ever nowadays and my blog feels abandoned!
Vicki,
I didn’t know about some of these sites. Thank you for sharing!
Blessings,
Joy
You’re welcome Joy! They are really useful – we should be tracking our results to know how our efforts are paying off!
Wishing You the Best!
