April 13, 2012 64 Comments

Stats I Really Want From Twitter and Other Services

Numbers

Numbers are a tricky business. I was just thinking about Twitter, and asking myself what would make it more valuable. I’m curious if you agree on these ideas, so I thought I’d put it out:

Stats I Want from Twitter and Other Services

  • Top 10 people talking about me.
  • Top 10 people talking about my product (or search term).
  • Top 10 people responding and engaging with me (measured via # of replies in a set amount of time).
  • Top 10 people I talk about.
  • Topics I talk about most often.

Why do I want those stats? If I’m MolsonCoors, I now know who’s excited about my beer, or who hates my beer. If I’m the UPS Store, I know who’s talking the most about printing needs, so I can service them. If I’m Dollar Shave Club, I can try to gauge how many people just talk about me versus how many people are bought in.

It seems that the least useful stats are followers and following, don’t you agree? Who cares how many people follow me or how many people I follow? That’s a test of relevance, but it’s also something easy to game, as evidenced by people who show up and three months later have more followers than I’ve amassed in over five years of organic growth.

When Will Stats Grow Up?

When will we start getting useful statistics that let us measure business? If Twitter and Facebook and Google+ and others are touting how great they are for business users, why don’t they provide more ample reporting the way enterprise technology vendors are required to deliver? The last thing I care about is how many thumbs up I got on my YouTube video, but I’d love a report that shows me which URL people chose NEXT after watching my video.

Heck, MOST of us would PAY for this. It would be a revenue stream for these companies.

Am I wrong?

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  • http://socialtriggers.com/ Derek

    Or, even better…

    Brands can start hosting a monthly “Here’s our biggest fan.” 
    Then, people will compete with each other to see who can talk about their favorite brand the most.

    • http://mattreport.com Matt Medeiros

      Unfortunately, I think they want the stats all to themselves! But this is a great idea. 

      • http://twitter.com/AndrewAllsop Andrew Allsop

        Surely he was joking? What person would want to compete to see who could talk about a brand the most? Is this what our world has come to? 

        • http://pmerrill.com/ paulmerrill

           Actually, Chris Penn does this with his email newsletter – successfully, from what I can tell.

          • http://andrewallsop.wordpress.com/ AndrewAllsop

            A number of brands do it on Facebook.

        • Hector Millan

          Strangely enough,
          there are product fanatics out there dying for exposure and recognition. 

        • http://socialtriggers.com/ Derek

          I wasn’t kidding. People rage for that sort of stuff. 

          • http://waldowsocial.com DJ Waldow

            I like it (a lot). If anything, it would show who your biggest fans are … or who will do anything for free stuff. I guess that’s the rub. I’d much rather know who is talking most about me/my brand/my industry without my direct prompting.

          • http://about.me/TVAmyWood amywood

             I use booshaka and post it on my wall as a  shoutout to top ten and top 100 fans on my facebook friend and fan sites and it has not dramatially increased engagement or created competition. People enjoy making the list but it does not seem to be impacting their behavior significantly.  It’s still great to know who your most engaged folks are.

          • http://youtube.com/user/tommyisastrategist Tommy Walker

            Klout has an app like that don’t they? 

  • http://about.me/KariRippetoe Kari Rippetoe

    I’d want to know reach of a particular tweet – an amplification metric. I’d also want to see the other topics people are talking about in context of my brand. For instance, for a conference where attendees are tweeting, I’d want to know the big topics they’re talking about at the conference.

  • http://raulcolon.net Raul Colon

    I could not agree more. 

    I think that is where they miss the boat on how everyone can really have more loyalty on a platform towards each other. 

    :) 

  • http://cashwithatrueconscience.com/rbblog Ryan Biddulph

    Hi Chris,

    Word of mouth stats, yep, that’s what we want.

    Because word of mouth advertising is the most powerful form of advertising. Negative feedback? Great! Where you can improve, which is a good deal too. People talking about you, get metrics on that, and as you note, stats will have grown up in a big way.

    It’s less about face value stats and more about what’s happening behind – or beyond – the stats. Money insight Chris, thanks for sharing.

    Ryan Biddulph

  • http://www.marcensign.com/blog Marc Ensign

    RIght on Chris.  How many people are ACTUALLY listening?!?!  Having a bazillion (that’s a real number by the way) people following you, liking you, subscribing to your feed, etc. are great…but are they really listening to you?  If you are a musician you get immediate feedback from your fan base by audience reaction, radio charts, stats on downloads and streams, reviews in magazines, etc.  As a blogger you get a tick in your stats when someone “reads” your blog post on their RSS feed, but how do you know they aren’t just marking it as read or scrolling past it? 
    Of course, it’s nearly impossible to gauge this…perhaps the only way to is by gauging who is talking about you, sharing your stuff and just generally engaged in your media as you mentioned above.  The only problem is that that’s such a small window into what is really going on. You send your blog post out to thousands and get 30 or 40 comments and a bunch of Tweets and Retweets.  Does that mean you only touched 100 people?  Nope…there are a lot of people quietly reading your blog, buying your books, spreading the word about you that you will never know about. How do you monitor them?  They are equally as important as those with a megaphone aren’t they?

  • http://twitter.com/menoob Eric Pena

    We do the first 3 everyday and the next two can easily be done using the same tool–Radian6.

  • http://CreativeJourneyman.com Nando

    I think (I hope) we’re getting over the emphasis on “engaging, meaningful conversation” kumbaya talk. Seems to me Social Media is just now maturing into recognizing business needs.

    In my experience, one of the things that frustrates small business owners the most about social media marketing (and marketers) is the lack of useful, concrete talk: strategy, plans, metrics.

    (Widely available) stats like you mention would help small business a lot.

  • http://www.spindows.com/ Clay Hebert

    That’s why I like the “clicks per follower” metric. 

    Like a click-through rate (CTR) for social. Not only does it immediately differentiate your audience from the johnny-come-lately’s with a bunch of bots, it also shows if your brand is retaining the engagement level as it grows it’s fan / follower base.

  • http://www.ChristopherSPenn.com Christopher S. Penn

    Radian6 and a bunch of other data monitoring services will do that for you.

  • http://www.shouldidrinkthat.com spoon

    If you’re MolsonCoors I’ve already lost you to the dark side :)

    The most frustrating thing for me has been trying to answer those questions for management. I love what I was able to see with Radian6 but the cost doesn’t fit into our budget.

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  • http://www.socialsavvygeek.com Laura E. Pence

    There are ways of getting this information, but they’re either cumbersome or expensive  (and sometimes both). It would be nice if these stats were available from the service providers themselves in an easily accessible format. 

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  • http://www.argylesocial.com Tristan Handy

    Yes…yes…and yes. Although, my guess is that you won’t get these numbers from the platforms directly, as they’re actually derived statistics (rather than raw data). TW, FB, G+ have enough to do with just getting raw data right–one day I MAY be able to get an impression count for a tweet, but until then I don’t want Twitter releasing derived stuff that I can calculate myself.

    This is where the data you get from your SMMS comes into play. Buddy, Sprout, Argyle (disclaimer–my employer) can all give you data like this. It’s simply a matter of sucking in available data and running it through some number-crunching super robots.

    While you’re on the topic of stats, my favorite one that never gets enough attention is Clicks per Follower. It’s the closest you can get to a click-through rate for social media. You can do a lot of good things if you know your average CPF–norm your performance against industry benchmarks, track trends over time, and correlate with posting behavior to see what’s working best.

  • http://www.3hatscommunications.com/blog/ davinabrewer

    It is interesting that a lot of people are mentioning 3rd party service providers like Radian6. Every time I’ve read or written about the ways to fix Twitter (make it more sticky to users, profitable to the company) I have included this: analytics, numbers, data that’s useable. As you say we’d pay for that (those w/ the budget) – and yet it’s someone else doing it.

    This data would be more useful that follow counts; I still want to see motivation metrics, get a better sense of why something is liked, RTed, shared, plus1. Knowing where were they before, what did they do after, what video they watched next, might tell me why they were there. FWIW.

  • BlogTyrant

    I totally agree with that. It’s strange that Google hasn’t integrated Youtube stats a lot better into Analytics. Surely we could set up some video goals like we can with Aweber, etc.?

  • Terry Brock

    Absolutely, Chris.  That would be very valuable information — worth paying for.  Also, it would be good to see how many RT and breakdown of demographics on those RTs.  People who take action (using an RT) are more valuable.  Great content, Chris.  Thank you for this and keep it coming! 

  • http://www.knealemann.com Kneale Mann

    The campfire, hold hands, sharing is good, it’s all about the conversation chatter will only work until you get a business owner or executive needing quantifiable measurable actual metrics.  

    Clearly the braniacs at these portals must know something that we don’t because companies would absolutely pay for actual real measurable – did I mention actual, not estimated – data. That’s call research and business has been doing it since we scratched rocks on cave walls. 

    We all know relationships take time but someday isn’t a response you can use forever. 

  • http://twitter.com/tonymariani Tony Mariani

    Great post Chris. 

    Now can someone please tell me what a “like” is worth on facebook?

    • http://www.thewritedesignco.com/ Marcie_Hill

       I would like to know HOW MUCH  each “like” is worth for the creator.

    • http://sevenroots.com/ Tiyo Kamtiyono

      It won’t get the exact number of value, because it will depend on who like that, what kind of word/comment to the content that can trigger user to go to the page and to what kind of persons that liked item will be shown up.

  • http://www.thewritedesignco.com/ Marcie_Hill

    Better analytics would be great. And the easier they are to decipher in the least amount of time, but still be accurate, the more profitable they would be. 

  • http://sevenroots.com/ Tiyo Kamtiyono

    Who talk about us and our product? That will be terrific. 
    The only feature I like right now on twitter now is similar persons as it help me find great persons and resources to follow. I agree with you Chris :)

  • http://www.jondale.com Jon Dale

    Chris,

    I’m pretty sure that PeopleBrowsr Kred will do all of this for you. If not reach out to @WingDude (Jodee Rich) and I’m sure he’ll add what you need.

    We use Kred all the time to do this sort of analysis for Catalytix clients.

    Jon

  • http://www.MikeWilliamsPro.com/ Mike Williams

    There must be some underling reason. It should be obvious to the various social sites these statistics are necessary for businesses and personal brands, but I believe as a person it is just easier to like and follow instead of adding any substance. The social sites leave the tracking and monitoring to third parties. When will stats grow up? That is a good question. Only time will tell.

  • http://my168project.com/ Matches Malone

    As usual, you’re not wrong. It’s not clear to me that numbers that I currently have access to from the various services you mention are even meaningful, relative to what I do….

  • http://www.donnamaria.com/ Donna Maria Coles Johnson

    Super post, and I don’t think you’re wrong. But absent all the things on your list, a simple word search now and then helps me see some of the latest conversation about me and my business. It’s not detailed of course, but I’m not sure I really care much about those details. Perhaps I should.

    Maybe I don’t because I serve a very specific vertical niche. I’m a part of several groups and “social extensions” where my members and prospective members and customers hang out, so I generally keep a finger on the conversation that way. It’s takes a little extra work, but it always results in keen insights that I would not get from statistics, no matter how detailed. It’s also somewhat instructive to see what Twitter Lists I am on. That provides far more insight than a follower number.

  • http://profiles.google.com/witt.cassie Cassie Witt

    Very insightful post! Honestly, though, I think the reason the stats haven’t been upgraded to something more useful is that people are so hooked on them. And because not enough of us have requested something different.

    I had to endure someone I just met the other day asking me if I had more followers than him (since I am a social media specialist). I knew by the number he threw at me was going to be way more than the followers I have, even though I didn’t know my exact number of followers off the top of my head. We were in a meeting at the time, and I didn’t have the time to tell him that it wasn’t all about followers. It’s more about the conversation and what I actually get out of my twitter account. Which, decidedly, is not much at the moment, since I don’t do much with twitter.

  • Billy Van Jura

    Thank you, have honestly been debating hiring/paying to get my “followers” up.  Screw it, I am going to earn them instead.  I will now pay more attention and engage real followers than manipulate my way to more.

  • http://www.facebook.com/donna.merrill Donna Merrill

    Hey Chris, I must agree.  To me they are only numbers that mean nothing at all. Some people play the number game but what are they actually gaining?  I’m on all the Social Platforms because my business is Social Media. 
    The only way I measure people is when they come to my blog and leave a good comment.  I won’t publish a one liner nor do I publish anything automated.  I’m an automation snob when it comes to that.
    Within the past two years I’ve been on social platforms, my business has grown organically and I enjoy the people who really are reading my blog, responding like a human being to my  Facebook, G+ and the rest.
    Thanks for making me feel sane, when so many people in my niche are going after the numbers.  I have to kick out most of people who are “following” me. 
    Told you I was a snob lol
    Blessings,
    Donna Merrill

  • http://twitter.com/SneakyMedia SneakyMedia

    Hi there, Facebook insights actually offer a really useful set of metrics – not quite as in-depth as GA but hey, it’s getting there!

    Twitter and Facebook have got a history of direct competition and many features are starting to pop up on both platforms (tagging people is just one example). With that in mind, I would suggest that fairly soon Twitter will publish something along the lines of ‘Twitter Vision’ or another clever name for some built in analytical system – at least I hope so :)

  • http://ericbrown.com Eric D. Brown

    Chris – How do you define “top 10″?   

    For example, for the “top 10 people talking about me” stat, are you looking for the top 10 people in terms of “mentions” (e.g., the people that talk about you the most) or are you looking for the Top 10 people in terms of reach? that would be a different number and a different meaning.

    The ability to find this information is available with the Twitter API but the definitions of ‘top 10′ would need to be fleshed out more.

  • http://www.printmeashirt.com/ printed t-shirts

    This seems to be one of the strongest aspects of twitter from this point of view.

  • http://waldowsocial.com DJ Waldow

    This is one of the (many) reasons I’m such an advocate for email marketing. Most email service providers can tell you who is reading your emails the most often, who is ignoring them, clicking the most, buying the most, etc.

  • http://emuaforte.wordpress.com/ Anthony Forte

    Spot on man. I love all the things you list. Top 10 people talking about me, the very first one you listed, is awesome because I think it fills the paranoia we all have about who is saying what. Top 10 people I talk about would also be really cool to have and extremely special for someone who finds themselves mentioning a lot of different people in their tweets. 

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  • http://www.robcottingham.ca/ Rob Cottingham

    Chris, have you checked out SocialBro? It may not quite work for you in the free version (IIRC, it tops out at 5,000 followers), but it gives me a lot of information about Twitter users chosen along any of several dimensions (whether they’ve tweeted a particular search term, whether a keyword is in their bio, what they list as their city of residence, how long since their last tweet and many, many others).

  • http://possesocialmedia.com/ TB. Alves

    Chris, I have to agree Genesis isa nice little WP platform however it still falls short in many areas when compared to Catalyst. From its new responsive web design to HTML5 this really is WordPress on Steroids! Now,  it may not be for the novice at first but once you get into their great video series as well as the support forum… you can be up and running in no time. Simply there in no turning back for us Catalyst Rocks…just my humble opinion! Go Bruins!

  • http://twitter.com/dalialasaite Dalia Lasaite

    Hi Chris and everyone! Sorry for the shameless plug but could not resist, as this is exactly what we are working on in Campalyst. In fact, we are about to launch a free version of our service, which identifies the top five influencers on Twitter based on the visits and pageviews they refer to your website, so if anyone of you would like to have an early access, please let me know!

    Otherwise, a great post. Actually, in their developer meetups, Twitter regularly lists analytics services as a high priority area for third party developers. So I believe they do realise their limitations in that area. Facebook, on the other hand, seems to try to establish itself as an alternative to TV in the eyes of advertisers and promote Nielsen surveys and reach / frequency metrics, instead of conversions. 

  • Kristen E.

    I would agree. It seems logical to want to have stats that are more useful, particularly for business purposes. Knowing the number of followers/following doesn’t really tell you anything. The way to get to know your audience/customers is to know what they like/hate and what they’re actually talking about. By knowing what people like/hate or say about your product you would be able to use that information to market your product better and serve your customer better.

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  • Carla

    Hi Chris, Great article. Some of these stats are easy to get though via your ORM tools. Granted they are not for free, but it would answer some of the above questions! Especially for those companies that care about stats and want to use them to better their product and services.

  • http://www.digitaltomorrowtoday.com Jamie Riddell

    Chris, we are working on something 

  • http://auntbertha.com/ Mozart

    Powerful post, Chris. As much of work emphasizes: This post reminds me to consider the process not product first and to build relationships instead of contacts. Whether you post once a week or every day I’ll be here ready to listen to further insights and to share my own!

  • Dariusbanks

    you can get that info from twitter directly

  • http://www.facebook.com/sozensho Brian R. King

    Thank you so much for this Chris it is very validating. As  I grow in my own influence I’m constantly receiving requests to swap posts to help others gain publicity only to do my part all out and they do theirs with unapologetic mediocrity. 

    I’ve learned so much from you and one of the best lessons I’ve learned is represented in the tone of this post – “Be real.” This business can be a roller coaster and the most successful learn to ride it. You show me the way in every post and I am eternally grateful for you and your humanity.

  • http://cyberlinkmedia.com/ Vasko Tashevski

    Great post Chris!

    There are tons of apps and companies build around Twitter eco-system that really add value to our overall experience as Twitter users.
    Perhaps Twitter should learn a bit from the most popular of them.

  • madjr

    good comment and link.

    I also believe that if brands did it intentionally, then it would be no different than getting people to spam for you, like they do with affiliate links.

    stats would not be real either.

  • theadamgray

    Spot-on. Some time ago you pointed readers at 20feet, which turned out to be quite useful. Since then I’ve discovered SproutSocial which is also good (great graphing and easy to understand data) but like you said about your missing metrics, none of the platforms seem to offer exactly what you want.

    Perhaps the answer is to build your own?

  • pjperez

    You are SO right. Which is why every time a client asks about “follow” campaigns or other gimmickry, I roll my eyes, and think about that time you said “likes don’t pay bills.”

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