Measuring Twitter - You Gotta Be Kidding Me

Here's the scenario.  You launch a twitter account around a product launch.

It takes off like wildfire. But how do you go about showcasing the reach and re-tweet activity?  Laughable, right?   There are so many great tools out there.  How hard can this be?

Boy was I surprised.  Not that there aren't an insane number of tools.  Just that none of them appear to be 100% up to this task. So I set out on a quest to answer this question.

My Task:  Be able to showcase unique tweet and retweet activity (engagement) by day, week and month as well as the ability to tally up final reach.  So I want to know the WHO, WHEN and the total reach.

Here is the final tally.

The Fails = 7
The Partial Wins = 1
The Wins = 0

(Click to enlarge all screenshots below.)

#TheFails

RetweetRank (link) Score: F

I have no idea what scenario would enable this tool to be helpful or effective.  Though it's so awesome to know that my twitter account is in the 97.87 percentile.  Huh?  But hey, at least it's free.  Unlike the next one.

Tweetreach (link) Score = C-

Okay.  This gives us a total reach number.  And this was part of the ask.  But where did this number come from?  Over what time period?  What content was retweeted over the others?  What percentage of users participated versus not participating?  It's possible that the pro account would provide this but I'm hesitant to try it as the pricing escalates pretty quickly into the hundreds a month.

TweetStats (link) Score = C+

I feel really bad placing this service in the #fail category.  This tool really impressed me.  It's well done, free and an interesting way to explore your twitter activity in a profile.  I was able to see who I reply to more than others, when I tweet more during the week and even explore the clouds of my tweet content.  But I was unable to pull up any evaluations on what tweets were most retweeted or what my total reach might be in a time period.

TweetEffect (link) Score = F

WARNING!  Avoid this service like the plague.  It tries to show you what tweets you made that led to people following or not following you.  The graph at the top is so lacking in any insight that I literally laughted out loud when it loaded.  Again, looking at the list of what tweets "caused" people to leave may cause the stats addicts out there (like me) to lose way too much sleep.  Avoid at all costs!

Twitalyzer (link) Score = C [updated]

At this point I think I've given 30 tools access to my Twitter account and the design of this site made me really question whether I should grant access once again.  But I soldier on!  This service touts hundreds of reports. Um.  Really?  I'd say there are a few dozen reports.  Sadly, not one of them could give me the data I was searching for.  Their retweeters tab just said "Unfortunately we don't seem to know any of @passitalong's retweeters! Believe it or not we don't know every person who uses Twitter."  Sigh.  Fail.

UPDATE:  Per Jeff's comment at the bottom of this post, I went through each of the reports he outlines.  I have to say that some of the data points we would be looking for are here.  But it always remains a graph with the inability to drill down and see the data points.  And we would have to run a high number of reports to then pull each number into another spreadsheet (again, with the actual mentions being counted not being visible in the report we're looking at).  As many of the numbers are there, however, I updated the scoring for Twitalyzer to a C.

Twinfluence (link) Score = F

Someone needs to help all these services come up with a name that is not a variation of Tweet or Twitter.  That aside, this one was so bad it almost became my favorite.  I will have you all know I am "ranked in the of all twitterers!"  What?  Beat that!!  I think they left out a percentile number and we know how valuable that measure is!  oy.  Fail.  Next.

TwitterCounter [link] Score = B-

Okay.  TwitterCounter deserves an honorable mention.  Their solution is clean, effective and fast to repsond.  More importantly, they are proposing a paid service that will provide what I am looking for.  See image below.  But this remains vaporware at present.  It does not currenlty exist.

The one thing potentially missing from the paid service is the ability to identify unique retweets/twitters.  But if they manage to roll out this new service, I would move them up into partial win or higher.

#ThePartialWins

Radian6 [link] Score=B+

(Note:  Fake data in above image, but this shows the types of reports I used)

Radian6 remains one of my favorite tools.  I can see activity, trend it over time and even compute total reach achieved.  But what I can't easily do is pull up everything associated with a single twitter account.  I have to do a keyword search.  So what I did was do a search for anyone mentioning my twitter account.  But if your account is not, let's say, a unique word, then you're in for a lot of fiddling. 

I can't limit it to just looking at one source, because I want to see all mentions across the twitterverse, etc.

That said, I was able to pull unique mentions.  And I was able to pull a total reach number.  But I couldn't easily pull unique mentions by day, week or month.  This means I would have to run every report for every day and then tally it in Excel.  Not exactly fun.

Also, while I could pull unique mentions (choose : Unique Source Count as shown in image above) I can't easily tell what was a retweet or what was a mention without compounding significantly the number of reports I would have to run.

#TheWins

I got nothing.

But I know what I want.  I want PostRank for Twitter.  But more on PostRank later.

Know of a killer tool that would have made our life easier?  Ping me or comment below.