How To Access Organic Twitter Analytics (For anyone, for free)

Just yesterday I published “Predicting Content Success With Twitter Analytics“. And then wondered why not many seemed to find this as exciting as me. Then I realized. Folks are still confused about how to even get Organic Twitter Analytics. I’m not surprised. I just spent the last 45 minutes trying to activate it for another Twitter account of mine. It was kind of frustrating, so I wanted to share the steps I took to set up organic tweet analytics (hopefully they will be the same for you). And then you can go read my post from yesterday 🙂

Note: I am showing you the process below on a secondary Twitter account. This is not my primary Twitter account @dan_shure. I wish I could remember how I originally got access to Twitter Analytics with that account. I don’t remember it being this confusing, and I have data going back to October 2013.

Part One – Make Sure Your Account Is Set Up On Twitter Ads

You won’t need to run any ads, or pay for anything. But you do need to be set up there. Logged in, just go to: http://ads.twitter.com/user/*/tweets. You will be redirected to this screen;

Go ahead and make your selections from the two menus. Click next.

Part Two – Enter Credit Card Info

Again, you will not be charged, and you do not have to run any campaigns. But this is what finally seemed to “turn on” Tweet Analytics for me.

You should be in https://ads.twitter.com and click “set up credit card payment”;

Check out this suggestion for a way to add “credit card” details very risk free with a VISA gift card. Very clever!

Part Three – Visit analytics.twitter.com

Once you’ve gotten set up on Twitter Ads, go to http://analytics.twitter.com. This is what I saw just after setting up the credit card info;

But there was no data in there. The message seems to imply (for this account) I will only get data moving forward from new tweets (after I had signed up for Twitter Ads – which I had just done. My main twitter account somehow has data retroactively).

Part Four – Tweet Something

As I inferred from the message above. Maybe I am supposed to tweet something, and I’ll get data only moving forward. So that’s what I did and voila!

Yay! So this seems to indicated, if you do not show retroactive data in the dashboard, at least you will have it moving forward. I want to note that this test account I am using is relatively new, inactive and has less than 200 followers. So perhaps accounts more active will have more data. Try it!

Part Five – But Wait! Export For Past Data

However. I did export the CSV file. To my surprise, was retroactive data;

I had noticed even on my own account that some impression data was missing. I had previously reached out to Buster last week, who seems to be one of the lead people on the Twitter Analytics team, and here’s what he had to say (about my primary account @dan_shure);

You can read our whole conversation here, as he reveals some interesting things about how they calculate impressions.

Optional? – Register At Twitter Business?

I have no idea if this is required, as I had registered there during my test earlier. But if the above still does not work for all of you, go to https://business.twitter.com;

1. Click “let’s go”

2. Fill out the simple two part form

When I did this, it just kept redirecting me back to Twitter Ads.

What About Twitter Cards?

Try not to confuse Twitter Card Analytics with Organic Tweet Analytics. They are two different things. Twitter CARD analytics gives you data around your website (how your website content is being shared via anyone on Twitter). Organic tweet analytics gives you data around your Twitter account (impressions, clicks, profile clicks etc).

The test account I used above has no Twitter Cards associated with it (that I know of) so I do not think this is a required element of getting set up.

Summary

I don’t recall this being as tricky for my primary account, which is partially why I was surprised others were not as excited about Twitter Analytics and I and others were.

The main points seem to be;

• You need to have your account set up for Twitter Ads. You do need to enter billing info, but you do NOT need to pay or run any ads.
• You may need to get set up on Twitter Business. This was not entirely clear
• You may only get data moving forward (although I somehow had it retroactive for my main account)
• You may be able to get retroactive data by exporting to CSV

But I’m pretty confident Organic Tweet Analytics IS available to anyone. The specifics just may be a little different. If I’m wrong about that, hopefully someone will correct me!

And now you may find my post from yesterday a little more useful!