How To Brand Your Business Using Twitter Analytics

Building a brand and establishing a strong brand voice is an essential element of any marketing strategy, particularly in today's social media-saturated culture.

The challenging part, though, is doing so while still maintaining the essence of the brand, rather than revamping it in an attempt to please the masses. The idea is rather, to get a strong sense of what the majority of users are looking for and to build around that demand.

A Look Back

Twitter Inc TWTR analytics was launched in June of 2013, and while some of the bugs are still being worked out, it is a very good platform for businesses to use in order to determine what their customers want. There are several dashboards available, and each one is intended to be utilized in a unique way.

They perform tasks like measuring tweet activity, looking at the locations, interests, and demographics of a business's followers, and providing information about traffic between Twitter and a specific URL in real-time.

These dashboards -- and the information they provide -- are extremely useful for getting a sense of customer demand while building a brand voice at the same time.

Generating Content Ideas

The “Timeline” dashboard contains up to four weeks of tweet activity when viewed in its original context. When the data is exported to an excel spreadsheet file, however, it can show up to three months' worth of activity. This data can then be organized into categories such as which tweets received the most favorites, which received the most re-tweets, and which tweets were replied to the most.

When companies have a solid understanding of the kinds of tweets that are getting the most replies and retweets, they are able to paint an accurate picture of what customers are looking for.

What Are Your Followers Interested In?

Twitter Analytics has a section called "Interests," which itself has subsections labeled "Most Unique Interests" and "Top Interests." These sections show companies the topics and areas that their followers are most interested in relative to a brand.

These interests are, then, ranked in order of "most" to "least" by a percentage and can be utilized to generate targeted tweet messages.

Location, Location, Location

Lastly, one of the most important sections on Twitter Analytics is the "Location" section, which provides companies with a geographical breakdown of user engagement. This information is, put simply, invaluable because it can be used to generate localized marketing campaigns and tweets that are specific to individual cultures and subcultures. 

For example, a company that shows Chicago as a key city for its followers may want to tweet about the area's professional sports teams, or its best hotels and restaurants. A brand with deep penetration in the South can expand by testing how different strategies drive engagement from users in New York and Maine. The possibilities are endless.