There was an article recently (well, more like a rant) from Jon Loomer that talked about Facebook marketing and reach. The article basically tells the reader, if they hate Facebook so much, then maybe they should just abandon it. I actually really enjoyed Jon's post and he brought up some significant arguments regarding post reach - and he asked the reader to look at their Twitter analytics for comparison...

Well, this got me thinking, how well are my tweets really doing?

And compared with Facebook, how much better or worse does an average tweet do?

Well, for each of us it will differ. It will depend on your audience on each platform - how many followers, how frequently you post, what times of day you post, what content you post, etc.

But how do you find out what your Twitter analytics look like so that you can compare? It's actually so simple!

Log into your Twitter account on your computer and then go to this website:  https://analytics.twitter.com

Seriously, that's all you have to do!!

When your account information populates, you can see a ton of information about your Twitter account.

The page defaults to your Tweets and gives you a 28 day recap of your Twitter activity. The graph shows the daily organic impressions ("number of times users saw the tweet") for your account. If you scroll down, you can get more detailed information for each individual tweet in that time period. This information will include your Impressions, Engagement ("total number of times a user has interacted with a tweet" which includes clicking, clicking a link, favoriting, retweeting, etc.), and your Engagement Rate.

You can change the date range in top right corner to the last calendar month, any select month, or a custom date range.

The right hand side bar shows you the following average data for the date range selected:

• Engagement Rate
• Link Clicks
• Retweets
• Favorites
• Replies

You can review all this information to track progress and trends on a monthly basis. You can also isolate specific time periods if you ran a campaign or other relevant strategy that you want to track. You can see if there was an unusual spike in engagement or clicks and track down which tweet(s) caused that reaction. This will help you better determine what content to post, when to post, and how to engage on Twitter.

If you go back to the top of the page, you'll notice the top tool bar where you can click on "Followers". This will allow you to see demographic information related to your Twitter followers. Use this information to ensure your audience is who you actually think it is. If your content isn't matching what your audience is looking for, you might need to consider revamping your Twitter content strategy.

If you use Twitter cards in your tweets, you can also go to the "Twitter Cards" tab at the top of the page to get detailed Twitter analytics related specifically to your Twitter cards. This information will allow you to compare against other publishers and provides insight for what works best for your account.

My Results

Like I said at the top, I wanted to see how my Twitter analytics compare with Facebook. I am currently running Facebook studies to see how posts and reach are affected so I have a lot of information to compare. But, to quickly sum it up...

For the month of November, my Tweets had a daily average "reach" (impressions) of 2500 per day (44.5% of my audience). My average engagement rate was 2.2% per day. And I posted an average of 9 tweets a day. I have just over 5600 followers on Twitter. Based on this, my average tweet has a reach of 278 people.

We know that a significant portion of my daily reach will come from people not actually in my list of followers. But still, a reach of nearly 50% is pretty good! And for a quick moving platform like Twitter, I'm happy with 2.2% engagement.

For Facebook in this same time frame, my posts had a daily average reach of 462 per day (24.8% of my audience). My average engagement rate was 9.45% per day. And I posted an average of 2.3 times a day. I have just under 1900 fans on Facebook. Based on this, my average Facebook post has a reach of 201 people.

So, yes, I do get more engagement on Facebook, and with current organic reach debates, the fact that I'm reaching nearly a quarter of my audience daily, I'm happy with that. And to get 10% of my audience engaging with clicks, likes, comments, and shares, is a good position to be in. I am looking to grow that even higher, but with all the constraints Facebook places on pages, I don't know how much higher it will go based on organic traffic alone.

And, I'm actually surprised to see that my average Facebook post has nearly the same reach as my average Tweet. This will definitely keep me thinking about both my Facebook and Twitter strategies...