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  • [UPDATED] Free Twitter Analytics Tools - with views from experts

[UPDATED] Free Twitter Analytics Tools - with views from experts

 

Sign up for Free Social Search and get unlimited access to real-time conversations in 187 languages across all major social networks

Twitter becomes X

Twitter has recently rebranded, to become X. However, this hasn’t changed how Twitter analytics work. Platforms such as Talkwalker can still track X data, and you can analyze it alongside analytics data from multiple social channels.

You can learn more about X social listening here.

Table of contents

What are Twitter analytics?

Are your social media messages working? Are users engaging with them? Twitter analytics will show you whether you're being listened to or ignored. Whether your marketing messages are hitting their target.

You're going to need a tool. A powerful Twitter analytics tool. There's way too much social media data to handle manually. So... quick shout out for our Free Social Search.

Yes, FREE! Forever!

 

Talkwalker's Free Social Search user interface showing Twitter Analytics tool

Use Free Social Search to track your brand, campaign, hashtag or event in real time, across Twitter and other social media channels.

Using Twitter analytics tools means you'll have access to stats and insights that'll measure your Twitter performance. So you can analyze and boost your impact on Twitter. Your impact, and that of your competitors.

Insights include...

  • Engagement rate - posts earning retweets, replies, follows, likes, love
  • Type of engagement - retweets or likes - value vs appreciation
  • What time of day users are most engaged - clicks, retweets, replies
  • Which day of the week users are most engaged
  • Best posting time to maximize tweet impressions - when most will see a tweet
  • Influencers sharing your content
  • Hashtag comparisons - which hashtags are performing well
  • Average tweet performance for benchmarking - hitting your targets
  • Followers' interests - target your content
  • Trends - peaks and troughs - causes
  • Overview of monthly performance - top tweets, mentions, followers

Here's some resources you'll find useful when creating your social media marketing strategy...

  • 23 social media tips for marketers - 23 social media tips to create the best social media strategy and drive ROI - content plan, goals, audience persona, tone of voice, influencer campaign, competitor analysis, and more.
  • Social media trends report 2021 - collaboration with HubSpot - 70+ experts reveal the trends to power your social media strategy & ensure your brand survives in rough times.
  • Free Social Media Certification course - collaboration with HubSpot Academy, so you can equip yourself with the knowledge and tools you need to become a social media marketing expert.

Why are Twitter analytics important?

The more you know about your performance on Twitter - your audience, your competitors, engagement, conversion rate - the better you'll be able to leverage the social media platform's immense power in your online campaigns. You'll also increase engagement and ROI.

Using Twitter analytics tools will reveal...

  • How many users are seeing your tweets
  • If your paid promos are working or bleeding money
  • How users are engaging with your tweets
  • Which style works - image, GIF, video, long, short - copy the winners
  • Your followers - interests, location, gender, language, who your followers follow

Speaking of paid social, you may want to take a look at my social media advertising guide.

"Getting your content noticed is harder and harder. Search engine ranking factors. Social media algorithms. Not to mention the constant stream of new content.

Here's the solution… social media advertising. Put down some cash and get those paid SMA ads live."

Know your followers

You want your content to hit home, but how will you know what to target if you don't know your audience? Age, job title, gender, language, time zone, income. To increase engagement, you need to be creating content that resonates with consumers. That helps them learn new things, solves their pain points, makes them feel good.

You can also target segments of your followers according to their profession, interests, device, behavior, and keywords.

What content works?

Just because you can use 280 characters, doesn't mean you should. There's no limit to how many hashtags you can use, but don't get trigger-happy. Find what works for your brand and for your audience. 

  • Keep tweets short and simple, despite the increased character limitation. Ideal length is 20-40 characters with an image or video.
  • Tweets with images get 150% more retweets, and increase click-through by 18%
  • Tweets with one hashtag are 69% more likely to be retweeted than those with two
  • Users are 25% more likely to retweet if the URL is in the middle of a tweet

When should I post?

Tweets posts are the mayflies of the social media world. When tweeting, picking the optimum time can be the difference between going viral, or going down the pan. 

There's no best practice for how many times a day to tweet. But, tweets live a short life. Whatever you do, being consistent is important. Seven times on Monday, once on Tuesday - you'll quickly lose followers.

Use Twitter analytics tools to find out what frequency rate works best for your brand.

Check the location/time zone of your followers to identify the best time of day. Tweeting during sleep time is never going to bring much engagement.

Need to find out when's the best time to post? Download our social media scheduling template.

Are your ads working?

Don't throw good money after bad. Twitter ad campaigns or boosting tweets, you need to understand what's working.

Paid social ads built & live. Are they working? Track & measure digital campaigns across paid, owned, and earned channels with our new feature... Paid Social.

Find what's working, then do it again, and again...

Find your top tweets - most retweets, likes, shares - and understand why they're working so well. Image? GIF? Hashtag?

Okay, let's talk tools...

Free Twitter analytics tools

Analyzing this huge amount of social media analytics can be a pain in the a*s. Native Twitter analytics may be good, but to do it well, you'll need the best Twitter analytics tools on the market.

Smaller companies, start-ups, or businesses looking at how/if social media listening could benefit their business, cheaper or free tools are a great place to start.

To save you trawling through the thousands of Twitter analytics tools available, I've put together a list of the best tools on the market. I've included views from industry experts to help you with your decision.

Just before I start my list, I can't promise that a tool that's currently free will remain free forever. Most do offer free trials, and it's a good place to start.

Free Social Search | Hashtag tracking

Free Twitter analytics tools - Free Search

Free Social Search - take it for a whirl!

Biased? Of course. Honest? Always.

Talkwalker does offer a paid social listening platform, but we also have a cracking free tool that offers what you need.  Free Social Search is the one I'm going to show you today. What does it do?

  • Hashtag tracking - research top hashtags and find the best fit for your content, while keeping an eye on your competitors’ hashtags
  • Campaign tracking - identify where your campaign is making an impact on social media platforms, online news, blogs, and forum - allocate your resources accordingly
  • Event performance - find real-time insights about your event from what's being talked about to the most popular posts by using your event hashtag
  • Brand reputation - reveal KPI metrics that include mentions, sentiment, engagement, and reach over the last seven days, or minute by minute
  • Competitor analysis - compare with your top competitors and the platforms they are using and how

 

 Free Twiter analytics tools - See Free Search in action 

Free Social Search - competitor analysis.

Twitonomy | Track followers

Twitter analytics tools - Twitonomy website home page

User profile stats - followers, following, keywords, lists.

This Twitter analytics dashboard has a free and a paid version.

The free version of Twitonomy has several awesome features...

  • Track your followers - historical data on Twitter stats that monitor the growth of your followers - yesterday, last week, last month. You can also pull insights on your followers and influencers

Twitter analytics tools - Twitonomy

Followers insights - number of tweets, followers, following, lists.

  • Analyze any Twitter profile - analytics on tweets, retweets, mentions, hashtags, replies

Twitter analytics tools - Twitonomy - homepage showing features such as hashtags most used, users most retweeted, tweet history.

Check any public profile and pull out usage stats.

  • Monitor users, lists, and keywords - watch your favorite users and lists, or anyone using a particular keyword
  • Download tweets, mentions, retweets, favorites, and reports to Excel or PDF

As free Twitter analytics tools go, it's awesome! Providing a huge amount of different statistics.

Look at this! All the stats you can learn about your own account, you can find for other accounts... 

Twitter analytics tools - Twitonomy - Starbucks dashboard showing tweet history.

Find Twitter analytics for your account, and other brands. Check out Starbucks.

The paid version brings full access to search analytics for hashtags. It's one of the few tools that shows the evolution of a hashtag from...

  • Number of tweets
  • Potential reach
  • Most influential users
  • Most active users

You'll also find...

  • Top related hashtags
  • Interactive map
  • Most retweeted/popular tweets
  • Most favorited tweets using a particular hashtag
  • Geolocation of your audience
  • Analytics about your followers and the accounts you follow

"Twitonomy App is by far one of the most valuable Twitter analytics tools I’ve ever used. It gives you everything you need to analyze what is working and not working. It gives you everything from mentions, replies, lists, most influential users, and even the time that you get the most engagement.

The best part is it allows you to pull all of the data and put it into visual graphs. It analyzes your followers as well so that you can use the data to increase engagement."
Jack Kosakowski - Social selling eBRANDgelist and Regional Sales Manager at @ActOnSoftware, Social Media Advisor for Chill Puck.com

Twitter Analytics | Profile data

 

Twitter analytics tool - Tweet activity in Twitter dashboard

In built analytics tools mean you can be confident the data is accurate.

Twitter Analytics is THE Twitter analytics tool, and one of the best things about getting data from the social network that produces it, is that you can be confident the data is accurate.

Twitter Analytics only reveals data about profiles you own (no competitive intelligence – DOH!) but the breakdown of month by month top-line stats is a great way to track how you’re performing over time.

Click on the "Tweets" tab and you’ll get an in-depth view of how your individual tweets have performed, month on month...

"Being a writer who spends every waking moment flitting between writing, researching and tweeting it’s great to have such an easy and accessible tool.

With Twitter being my biggest outlet for sharing content it’s vital that I can see which posts are well-received and gain the most engagement so that I can more effectively alter my strategy regularly to meet the needs of my readers. With one click of a button you can see all the metrics you need, which is worth its weight in gold.”
Kerry Butters (@kesbutters) - Founder and CEO of markITwrite Digital and a prolific tech and digital marketing writer and influencer

N.B. Kerry passed away in 2016. A tribute to her can be found here.

"Twitter Analytics gives you fantastic insight into your audience and the content they value most. It provides data on clicks, engagement, impressions and also offers demographic and interest data on your followers so you can get an excellent snapshot of who is connecting with you or your brand."
Laura Click (@lauraclick) - Founder & CEO of Blue Kite Marketing

Mentionmapp | Discontinued

 

Twitter analytics tools - Mentionmapp Analytics - influencer networking

Mentionmapp showed connections to user profiles and hashtags that have been mentioned by the central user.

Mentionmapp Analytics provided a different, way more visual form of analysis compared to a lot of Twitter analytics tools. There were numbers available, but it's great to be able to see who’s interacting with your tweets and who’s interacting with the tweets of your top influencers. You could create an influence map of your Twitter feed and those that you interacted with.

This Twitter Network Visualization Analytics Tool showed how to maximize the impact of your Twitter activity. Bonus!

You could look at the activity of any Twitter feed. This meant you could get a clear picture of the activity surrounding your competitors.

Twitter analytics tools - Mentionmapp Analytics - retweet cloud.

Retweetcloud showed user profiles that have retweeted the current user in focus - red = positive, green = negative, & neutral.

"Mentionmapp is an excellent network exploring tool to see how people are interacting and what hashtags they are using. Once logged you can search for a specific Twitter user and then you will see a highlighted map that shows a web on who they are engaging with and what hashtags they are using.

This tool is a great asset when you want to find and follow social influencers in a specific industry. It can help you find a community around your product or service."
Shane Barker (@shane_barker) - Digital Strategist and Social Media Consultant, shanebarker.com

Foller.me | Analyze competitors

Twitter analytics tools - Foller.me - stats for your account or a competitor.

Real-time data about topics, mentions, hashtags, followers, locations, etc., for any public Twitter profile.

Foller.me is a Twitter analytics tool that helps you understand what topics your competitors are talking about. It also provides other statistics that include:

  • Profile of user - join date, location, tweets and followers' stats
  • Topics - tag cloud showing words used by users

Twitter analytics tools - Foller.me - stats for topics, hashtags, mentions

Drill down for more Twitter analysis.

  • Hashtags - used by users
  • Mentions - user profiles that the user has interacted with
  • Analytis of last 100 tweets - replies, tweets with @mentions, hashtags, retweets, etc.
  • Emoji usage - happy tweets vs sad tweets
  • Activity time - based on most recent tweets - when the user is offline/asleep

If you're someone who loves working with numbers and text rather than graphs and charts, foller.me is the tool for you.

Like Twitonomy, foller.me, lets you analyze the Twitter activity of any account, not just your own. This makes it an ideal Twitter analytics tool for competitive intelligence.

"Foller.me is an exciting tool that will review a Twitter users profile and latest tweets and put them in “tag clouds” so you review and see which are most popular. This is extremely helpful when you are looking to grow your community and you want to find the influencers that might like your products or services. You can then engage and start a conversation know what that influencers like to talk about and when to engage them."
Shane Barker (@shane_barker) - Digital Strategist and Social Media Consultant, shanebarker.com

SocialRank | Discontinued

Twitter analytics tools - SocialRank - for Twitter and Instagram analytics

Understand your Twitter and Instagram accounts.

The SocialRank Twitter analytics tool pulls in your audience and their profiles, then provides analysis so you can understand how they're working. The insights fount about your followers means you can find, monitor, and engage with the best people on Twitter.

Features include:

  • Segment your audience with sorting and filtering
  • Create custom lists and export to CSV or PDF
  • Find most influential followers
  • Find most engaged followers - frequency of retweets, mentions, replies, likes
  • Find best followers - combo of most influential and most engaged
  • Find most followed
  • Filter by bio keyword, hashtag, location, activity

Use cases include...

  • Follower breakdown
  • Audience overlap and comparison
  • Influencer marketing
  • Industry and audience research
  • Historical tracking and measurement
  • Twitter requests and retargeting

The data that SocialRank pulls from Twitter make it a great analytics tool for influencer marketing.

“Users can receive monthly reports on how their top 10 followers in each category have changed, as well as set up filters to distinguish between brands and individuals.”

"The combination of swag and influence measurement might remind you of Klout Perks, but again, SocialRank is less concerned with measuring general influence and more with finding the value in the people who already follow you.”
Anthony Ha (@anthonyha) - Author, TechCrunch

Followerwonk | Optimize Twitter campaigns

Followerwonk - Moz - lets you analyze any Twitter account. Yep, I mean competitors. Find out what's working for them and optimize your Twitter marketing strategy. Identify new influencers in your industry and engage.

Features include:

  • Identify the location of followers on a map
  • Times when an account's followers have been active
  • Search bios for keywords

Twitter analytics tools - followerwonk - analytics for MailChimp

Sign up for unlimited searches, download reports, and compare and analyze larger accounts.

  • Find the social authority of accounts
  • Follower counts

There's a free plan with limited access, plus two paid plans to suit any need. 

Followerwonk data gives you insights that'll help you optimize your social online presence, increase brand awareness, and customer loyalty.

One feature you're going to love is Social Authority scores...

Twitter analytics tools - followerwonk - analytics for MailChimp - social authority scores

Social Authority rates a user's influence and engagement on Twitter. It ranges from 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating a person with greater influential activity.

 

Build Links Like The Pros: 13 SEO Tools That'll Skyrocket Your Rankings

"Some of the best opportunities for link building can be found on social networks." "The first step to using the tool is to find influencers in your niche. After you target these influencers and build a relationship, the opportunity for gaining a backlink is much greater."
Neil Patel (@neilpatel), Co-Founder of @CrazyEgg, columnist for Forbes & Huffington Post

Hootsuite | Analyze social media platforms

Most people use Hootsuite to schedule Tweets. Hootsuite Insights will automatically analyze all your social media platforms - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Also, news sites, forums, and blogs. It'll find insights on influencers, stories, trends, sentiment, and tweet performance and audience behavior.

Twitter analytics tools - Hootsuite Insights home page - make sense of millions of consumer conversations

Listen to millions of consumer conversations about your brand in real time.

Discover how users feel about your brand, products, and services. You can then filter by location, language, and gender.

You can also monitor by keyword. For example, set up Twitter mentions to show tweets that contain positive sentiment. Use words like - loving it, cool, awesome, thanks, great tool. You can also do the same for emoji - thumbs up, clapping, smiley face.

Twitter analytics tools - Hootsuite Insights home page - make sense of millions of consumer conversations

Get insights that matter, faster.

"If you are looking for a tool that lets you manage all of your social media accounts and presence in a single place, and collaborate as a team on them, then Hootsuite should be at the top of your list to investigate."

"The company keeps investing in enhancements to its platform. Hootsuite just keeps getting better. And that’s not always true with products."
Anita Campbell (@smallbiztrends) | Founder and Publisher of Small Business Trends

Trendsmap | Tweet count & top tweets

Twitter analytics tools - Trendsmap example showing the US

Twitter analytics tracking tool - Trendsmap giving a bird's eye view.

For an instant overview of what the world's talking about with Trendsmap, a Twitter trends count tool. The free version shows you the most popular hashtags in every country and region, globally and in real time. Like a Twitter hashtag count.You can then zoom in to find the exact view you need.

Looking for trending hashtags in a specific location? Use the hashtag location map where you'll not only find the most popular hashtags, but users and keywords too.

You'll be able to check data for the last 7 days. But, if you want to go deeper and have more filtering options, you can upgrade to the paid version. I'd say it's worth it.

Features include...

  • Hashtag analysis – click on a hashtag in the map for simple analytics that include tweet count and top tweets
  • Map zoom feature – you can zoom in/out to check what’s trending in particular location
  • Historical hashtag history – check popular hashtags during the last 7 days

#onemilliontweetmap | Overview of hashtag usage

 Free Twitter analytics tools - OneMillionTweetMap 

#onemilliontweetmap - global Twitter analytics tool tracking hashtags.

It's like trendsmap, with #onemilliontweetmap awesome of your looking for an overview of hashtag usage globally. The best part about this tool is the level of granularity it gives through intuitive filtering options. The map view is clear and from a visualization standpoint, you can find mentions in real time.

This Twitter analytics tool provides a map interface on the home page on which you can change location, so you can learn more about trending hashtags in specific locations. You can also view via a heatmap, with your own selected time ranges.

Twitter analytics tools - One Million Tweets Map - example map

#onemilliontweetmap - heatmap.

Key features:

  • Cluster view – find the cluster area where there is most noise about tweets, with the red point showing the latest tweet
  • Keyword/hashtag search – keywords and hashtag filter if you're searching hashtags around your topic in particular location
  • Time filter – selects the data up to last 6 hours
  • Sentiment view - interactive, real time map showing positive, neutral, and negative values of tweets

 

Twitter analytics tools - One Million Tweets Map - sentiment analysis in real time

#onemilliontweetmap - sentiment analysis in real time.

A clear picture with Twitter analytics tools

Twitter is a valuable resource for all marketers and the data produced on Twitter will help you understand the impact that your Twitter activity is having. And, the impact that your competitors are having.

You'll be able to pull out insights that'll give you what you need to improve your online marketing campaigns. To engage more with your followers. To prove ROI. Using these Twitter analytics tools, you're sure you’re never out of the loop.

Free Twitter analytics monitoring tool

Victim of social media overload?

Creating, curating, scheduling, posting, listening, responding, measuring, analyzing, engaging, planning, testing. Every day. Every week. Every month. Every quarter.

Sign up for a demo of our Free Social Search! 

  • Monitor all brand mentions and listen to what consumers are saying about your brand and products
  • Fine-tune your search based on your location, language, media type, sentiment, and more
  • Find the best influencers for your campaigns, then track and analyze their engagement/reach statistics
  • Discover trending topics and jump into these conversations to increase your reach and reputation

Create Talkwalker Free Social Search account

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