Thursday, April 30, 2009

An Analysis of Free Twitter Analytics Tools

As promised in my last post on Features I'd Like to See In a Twitter Analytics Platform, I promised I would provide an analysis of some of the free Twitter analytics tools on the market today.

I recently ran a test on my Jeremy Porter Twitter account using a variety of the Twitter tools that are out there. I've provided the results below to give you an idea of what you can expect from some of these early Twitter analytics offerings.

TweetStats

TweetStats is a very straightforward Twitter analytics tool that provides you with some useful graphs on things like Number of Tweets Per Month and your Tweet Density on specific days and times during the week.

TweetStats also provides you with graphs on Aggregate Daily Tweets or Hourly Tweets, your most popular Replies To, and which Twitter client you use most often. Overall, TweetStats is a great tool to get a quick glance at your tweet activity.


TwitterGrader

One of the latest additions to HubSpot's popular Grader family, TwitterGrader is an awesome tool for gauging how well you're performing in the Twitterverse. As you can see from the graph below, I scored a 98.4 out of 100 from TwitterGrader based on the tool's evaluation on my Twitter activity. Try TwitterGrader out and let me know what you score. Oh, did I mention how awesome these guys are? Their Grader tools are among the best ideas I've seen for generating inbound leads - which is what they do after all.


TweetRush

TweetRush was the least impressive of the tools I tried out for this evaluation. It really just provides you with a summary of your aggregate number of tweets and provides you with an average over time. In this case, I average about two tweets per day. Of course, I didn't tweet much early on, so the average is skewed a bit with this format. The results might be more impressive for you, particularly if you are a heavy tweeter.


Twinfluence

Twinfluence didn't knock my socks off either. It really just provides you with an arbitrary ranking of your influence in the Twittersphere. In my case, I rank close to 12,000 - which is apparently in the 78th percentile of Twitter's 10 million plus users. Either way, it's a fun tool to play with as well. Again, I'd be interested in knowing what you score with this Twitter analysis tool.


TwitterCounter

I like this one. TwitterCounter shows a nice line graph of the increase in my Twitter Followers over time. This is a great at-a-glance way to see your trajectory in accumulating Twitter Followers, provided that's part of your Twitter Strategy. TwitterCounter provides historical snapshots of your Followers over time, and also supports the ability to compare different Twitter accounts for competitive analysis.

Twitalyzer

Twitalyzer wins hands down for its graphical representation of my Twitter activity, and its innovative approach to analyzing my Twitter behavior by five dimensions: Influence, Signal-to-Noise Ratio, Generosity, Velocity, and Clout. Twitalyzer's analysis is far more comprehensive and scientific than any of the other solutions, providing some impressive data for free. Twitalyzer probably has the greatest opportunity to capitalize on our desire to ego-check our Twitter prowess - or to analyze the results of your social media efforts on Twitter, without having to invest in heavy equipment. Twitalyzer is best positioned to be a gateway to premium offerings, providing users with a taste of things to come from more advanced Twitter analysis products.

As you can see, I score pretty low across most of Twitalyzer's dimensions. For more detailed information on how Twitalyzer works, visit the overview here (it's pretty impressive).

Conclusion

Did I miss one? Let me know. Feel free to share your advice on how Twitter users can monitor and track their social media success through Twitter. I'll be sure to let you know when I come across new tools to add to this list.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I work in the Innovation Center at Humana, a health insurance company, and we recently released myTPSreport.com which is a Twitter search and Google Maps mash-up.

We made the tool for internal reasons, to find people interested in topics like bike sharing, health, and happiness, but have made it public for others to benefit from as well.