While many B2Bs are still figuring out whether and how best to make use of Twitter, the trailblazers with active and maturing programs are already struggling with the problem of how to measure the effectiveness of their Twitter campaigns.
The good news is that the measurement tools are also maturing rapidly… to the point that you can measure just about whatever it is you need to. Which leads to the question… so just what do we need to measure?
In a post over at MarketingProfs, Evan Gerber suggests that the goals of your Twitter program should determine… the things you need to measure: “Start by envisioning what success looks like. What are the key things that would happen? … List those goals and then worry about how they will be assessed.”
Now it’s a matter of finding tools that will provide the metrics you’ve just determined you need. Evan’s post thoughtfully includes a review of several of them:
- twInfluence lets marketers track not only how many listeners they have (also called reach), but also how concentrated their audience is (centralization) and their campaign’s rate of growth (velocity), among other metrics.
- Twitalyzer enables users to measure their popularity (influence) and how many times they are being cited (clout); this is particularly valuable to those seeking to become a thought leader and propagate their messaging. Twitalyzer also enables users to tie into their Google Analytics account; this enables marketers to collect information on site traffic directed from Twitter, which can help craft a compelling overview of how a Twitter campaign is influencing the digital-marketing channel.
- TwitterFriends provides detailed insight on who is interacting with the brand on Twitter, who is responding, and the nature of the brand’s tweets …everything from a map indicating where one’s followers are to the average length of a given tweet.
- Trendistic provides a visual interface to understand how a particular keyword is being referenced in the space over time …up to 180 days’ worth of information.
- TweetEffect gives the user an excellent way to see what is and isn’t resonating with followers; you get a summary view of changes over the past, as well as the specific adds or losses based on specific tweets.
In a comment to Evan’s post, Sean Ferguson opines that Klout “…is by far the best Twitter influence measurement tool I’ve seen.” We haven’t checked it out ourselves yet, but were intrigued by this “Klout for Business” blurb on its website: “People trust their network and friends more than any form of advertising. Klout can help you identify the key social media influencers who drive traffic and sales for your brand.”
Evan wraps it up this way: “To properly measure a Twitter campaign, the first step is to understand what the key performance indicators (KPIs) are for that campaign’s goals and objectives. … Marketers can (then) select from several tools to garner insight on everything from how the campaign is growing to how messages are propagating and what followers are responding to.”
So get Tweeting …and start measuring! Your Web marketing consultants can help you define a Twitter campaign and appropriate metrics that work for your B2B.
