Yesterday afternoon I casually checked my blog to see how my latest blog post was doing in terms of number of comments, retweets, and shares. The number of comments was normal, but then I saw that the post had been retweeted 85 times. This was definitely higher than normal. And as I’m writing this now, the post has been retweeted 150 times. What the heck?? Why and how on earth did that post get so many retweets??
Usually my posts get anywhere from 35-60 retweets. I think that up until now, my most-retweeted post had been retweeted 70ish times. These are numbers that I’m definitely pleased with, so I was more than thrilled when I saw 85 retweets!
I thought that maybe it was a TweetMeme button glitch, so I checked my blog analytics. Sure enough, this is what I saw:
Sweeeeeeet!
So like I said, as of now, it’s been RTd 150 times and those tweets have over a million impressions (more on that later). How did this happen? Well, I wanted to find the answer to that question, too, and here’s I went about finding the answer:
First off Googled “retweet statistics” or something like that. I wanted to see if I could find a tool or an app that should show me when exactly the tipping point came. I was thinking that I could paste the URL of my post and then I’d get a timeline of the number of retweets by hour. I wanted to see when the big influx in RTs started.
I couldn’t find anything like that in the five minutes that my attention span allowed me to look, but I DID run across a tool called TweetReach. TweetReach shows you the total number of times a URL has been tweeted. While the TweetMeme button on my blog showed that the post had been retweeted 85 times, TweetReach showed that it had been retweeted something like 117 times. Woo hoo! Even better, right?
The free TweetReach tool had some limitations, so I paid $20 for a full PDF report on the URL and those retweets. I really wanted to see how this happened, and the $20 report also showed charts and graphs showing the number of impressions that blog post of mine had on Twitter.
[Note: If you just want to see the total number of times a URL has been retweeted and don’t want the charts and graphs and stuff, check out BackTweets. Type in the URL of your recent blog post and then scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the total number of results.]
Click on the image below to take a look at the PDF report. It’s pretty cool (and worth paying $20 once. Maybe there’s a free tool that lists all same info, but I didn’t want to take the time to find it)!
The report told me some pretty interesting things. Here’s what I learned:
- 557,900 people saw that post retweeted on Twitter. Or probably more accurately, 557,900 potentially saw that in their Twitter stream if they were looking at it at the time the retweet was done. (… Does that make sense?). It other words, it was tweeted to 557,900 people.
- That post saw 1,031,775 impressions on Twitter (It took me a little while to realize what the difference between these two numbers was. I think that some people saw the tweet multiple times, which explains why there are more impressions than people reached…? If you’ve got a better idea of what exactly these numbers mean, let me know).
- As of this instant, the post has been retweeted 150 times while the TweetMeme button on my blog currently shows 105 times. Big discrepancy.
- One Twitter user who retweeted the post led to 508,962 impressions, or nearly half (49.3%) of the total impressions. Turns out that user was @TweetSmarter, who tweets about Twitter tips and has 254,485 followers as of the time of this writing.
- I looked at the bit.ly URL of that initial tweet by @TweetSmarter and searched the PDF document to count the number of times that URL was retweeted by others, and saw that it was retweeted 44 times. So 45 of the 150 total retweets (42.8%) were the direct result of one Twitter power user (but see the next bullet point) . The rough estimate, then, of the number of RTs I would have gotten without that power Twitterer RTing my blog post would be 105, which is still more than usual. So I looked at the data more and saw that there were a few other Twitter users that RT’d the post, and then their tweets in return got retweeted a handful of times. But it was nothing like the @TweetSmarter tweet. In other words, even without the tweet by @TweetSmarter, that post would be my most retweeted blog post. I think part of the reason is that it was about Twitter (more on that below).
- I actually think the real number of indirect RTs that come from that @TweetSmarter post is more than 45. That 45 is just the number of people that retweeted that original @TweetSmarter post. It doesn’t include, for example, people who saw that tweet in their Twitter stream, clicked on the URL, read and liked the blog post, and then RT’d the post from the posts’ TweetMeme button.
Lessons learned
Out of all of those million impressions, I saw a spike in traffic that was about 4 times my normal amount. That’s a surprisingly low number. I’m psyched about the influx of traffic, of course, but it just goes to show how ineffective (for lack of a better word) Twitter can be. Out of all the half million people that saw that tweet, only a very small percentage actually clicked through.
The post caused more RTs and traffic then usual, but guess what? It didn’t cause more comments than usual. I’m a little surprised by that.
The real shocking statistic is that it got me 2 or 3 more newsletter subscribers than what I’d see on a normal day. That really surprised me. I would have thought that I’d get a lot more. I think the reason for this is that not everyone who came to read that post really cared to read a blog about blogging. It also made me rethink my newsletter subscription options. I used to have Popup Domination installed on this site, but I removed it (mainly because I heard that people seeing couldn’t close the popup on their netbooks and smart phones because it was too big). I can’t help but wonder if I could have captured a couple more people if I still had it installed…
There’s more that I’ll be trying out in the future to increase my email list signup conversions, but that will have to wait for a future blog post.
I’ve noticed in the past that posts about Twitter get lots of retweets, and this last blog post of mine just reinforced that. In fact, I wrote about Twitter about a month after I started this blog (in mid-November 2010) and that quickly became my most retweeted post. It’ll be interesting to see if this blog post (the one you’re reading now) gets a bunch of RTs, too, since it’s also about Twitter. Maybe I just got lucky a couple times?
With this blog post, I’m going to @mention @TweetSmarter (the Twitter power user that got the retweet ball rolling) and tell them I mentioned them in this blog post. Maybe I can get them to RT this blog post, too :) I’m guessing, though, that it even if that does happen, it won’t get quite as much traction because it appeals to a narrower audience. Whereas my last post appealed to everyone who uses Twitter, this post that you’re reading now will appeal mostly to bloggers who use Twitter. Not everyone who tweets is a blogger.
I just finished reading The Tipping Point
Want something to go viral? Make friends with connectors (oh, and read The Tipping Point. Make sure you buy it through these affiliate links so that I make scads of money in Amazon affiliate commissions).
If you don’t learn anything else from this post, let this be your takeaway: When you check your stats, don’t just look at the numbers and call it quits. Analyze those numbers and see what you can learn from them. This might not only give you something to write about if you blog about something internet marketing-related (he he), but it will also give you an idea of how you can increase your stats even more in the future.
Final words
Well, it was an interesting journey! I hope I didn’t lose you in the hot mess of percentages, fractions, and random large numbers. But though I’m $20 poorer (worth it), I’m much wiser. Hopefully you are, too. And now I want to hear from you!
- What did you learn from this post?
- What posts of yours have gotten the most retweets, and why do you think that is?
- What are some Twitter tools and apps that YOU use to check your Twitter stats and metrics?
{ 97 comments… read them below or add one }
Good experience you certainly had and there are lot of lessons to learn for every body. Wondered with the power of twitter. Congratulations and thanks for the post.
Twitter is great, Bivori. It’s my #2 traffic source (behind Google). I love it.
Thanks for commenting!
Oh how much do I love that coverage!
Not only in the screen shot but the actual document – there I am and there is my brand logo at the top of the list.
LOL – oh the things that excite me now a days ;)
Oh and my comment re: the post.
I think you are lucky that your post was RT’d by that guy to get the extra 50 but the first 100 you earned simply because it was a damn funny post!
Oh, and I have popup dom installed and when I wrote a particularly good post (the Google PR one) that got a crap load of votes and shares tweets etc I got 56 signups over the course of the next few days, which is definitely more than usual.
You probably don;t want to hear that now actually LOL, especially considering that GOogle pagerank and making money with Amazon are hardly aligned
Tristan
$20 was a small price to pay for all that info. And very interesting to see the low percentage of click throughs to the site in percentage terms. It’s a Catch 22 to increase that – increase the number of times you tweet about a post might improve the click through rates…but also might annoy people because they see it as ‘twitter spam.’
Interesting dilemma – but there’s no doubt that Twitter is an important source of traffic. Since I joined Triberr Twitter has been sending around 8 to 10% of my traffic – even if my follower count is woeful!
Good investigative blogging as always! Keep on doing your thang….
Paul
I agree, Paul. $20 was worth it, for sure.
There’s definitely a delicate balance between tweeting something multiple times and spamming the daylights out of your followers. I tend to tweet my latest post once a day until my next post. So it usually turns out to be 3 or 4 times per post. And each one usually gets retweets, so that’s good!
For a long time Twitter was my #1 traffic source. It’s now #2 behind Google, but it still brings me a good chunk of traffic every day.
Thanks for commenting, Paul!
Congratulations, Retweet if I come, but do not do so impressions…. :-(
Yeah, Twitter really can be hit and miss with regards to getting traffic. Sometimes it definitely works better than others.
Thanks for commenting!
The very important lesson you give is about not just collecting stats (we all do that, one way or the other) but actually understanding what you’re collecting, and why. Reading through data is not as simple as it may seem, they can be read in several layers and each layer holds just as much data to read, understand, analyze. It’s like with Google Analytics, even a monkey can use it but it takes a lot to master it properly.
Gabriele, thanks for bringing up Google Analytics. That thing is SO powerful, yet so few people know how to really take advantage of it and use it to its full potential.
You’re right; all of our data is like that. People who don’t dig deep into their data to see what’s going on are only hurting themselves.
Thanks for the great comment!
Tristan! Glad you’re putting that $20 to good use, and learning about your blog. It’s something a man of dedication would do, and you’re one of the most dedicated bloggers I know.
BTW, check out Part 2 of my Value 101 series in a couple of days, because you’re about to come up ;-)
Keep on trucking, mothertrucka :-)
I have to be dedicated… This is my life! :D
Thanks for the kind words, Stu. And thanks again for including me in your Value 101 series. I really appreciate it, and would be more than happy to participate in any future things like that!
Tristan,
Thanks for the in depth look at your stats and for the book recommend. I am glad curiosity got you going.
Twitter does stay a hot topic especially on Twitter itself. I think we are all looking for a better way to make use of it. Like Paul my Twitter traffic is up since I joined Triberr and my page views are up. Optin ins are down but it changed when I changed my offer.
It is pretty easy to skip over and take a quick look at stats. I definitely learned a good lesson here.
I have to admit that I’m kind of a stats geek. I love diving deep into my Google Analytics account. So doing this analysis was pretty fun for me!
To be honest, I really haven’t seen much of an increase in traffic since I started using Triberr…
Thanks for the great comment, Sheila!
Tristan,
This is some great information. It certainly seems that you have found a powerful connector in @tweetsmarter (I had to check…he is on my twitter list already) It is amazing that nearly 50% of RTs can can come from one source. Even though I guess it makes sense since his topics are so narrow and defined.
Congrats on the great traffic… and thanks for sharing the info. It is really interesting to see all of this.
I know, I was really surprised at the kind of influence that dude had! Nuts.
Thanks for the comment, Steve!
I know this guy named Tristan and boy is he analytical!
Very interesting. I probably would have never taken the time to look that deeply in to Twitter, because for me it hasn’t paid very large dividends. The only time I get a solid jump in traffic from there is when certain individuals RT my article. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate the love I get from Twitter…but it just hasn’t been a major source of traffic for me.
The most RT’s I’ve gotten is from my last article where I got [42]. I also tied my high in comments with that post.
I don’t use any Twitter tools to check stats. I can see how my clicks I get from my Analytics account…bout that about it. Looking forward to learning what others share.
Thanks for showing me how it’s done Tristan – I need to better analyze things on my end. That Twitter just hasn’t found its place in my heart yet…but I’m trying!
PEACE
Man, I love being analytical when it comes to, um, analytics. Looking at my stats and figuring out where everyone is coming from and WHY they’re coming from there is just fascinating. And that’s weird because normally I’m NOT a numbers guy.
For a long time Twitter was my #1 traffic source. It’s now slipped to #2 (behind Google), but I still get a healthy chunk of traffic every day from it.
It can take a while to really get used to Twitter, but I love it now. For a long time I struggled to see its value and thought it was the dumbest thing in the world… But I’m a convert now.
Thanks for the great comment, Jk!
The stuffs about twitter are really very interesting and sometimes even shocking. The thing which happened with you is an impression that how twitter is growing and how unexpected it can be some times but its really great on your behalf to experience this kind of stuff, I have also earned a lot of knowledge about twitter tools like tweetmeme button and tweet reach from this article.Thanks a lot for this.
No problem, Angela. I’m glad you liked the article, and thanks so much for commenting!
Wow Tristan! Freakishly amazing brother.
I know you may be involved with multiple tribes in Triberr – Do you think that has anything to do with the increment in the number of retweets. The reason why I bought this up is that my retweets have increased ever since I joined Triberr just like some of the other commentators have shared.
TweetReach seems like a great investment – twenty dollars isn’t a bad price for the interesting report! I still can’t believe that 50% of your RTs came from a single source (O:
Thanks for the share Tristan.
“Freakishly amazing.” Hahaha! Best compliment ever!
I’m involved with 1 tribe on Triberr, and it has 16 members. And honestly, I haven’t seen too much traffic from it. Maybe it’s because most of my tribe is made up of people who already tweeted my stuff…
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Adam!
Very informative. Thanks for sharing. Yeah I’m surprised too it didn’t convert as many subscribers as it should. Nor comments. But I suppose the nature of Twitter is read and move on for most casual users. It’s where they get news and interesting things.
But those are some mind boggling numbers. Maybe you’re getting to Kim Kardashian level on Twitter. :-)
As of now, the post has gotten slightly more comments than usual. But still not the huge number I’d expect.
I think you’re right about part of it just being the nature of Twitter. Like you said, it’s where they get news and look for interesting stuff to read. People don’t want to WORK when they’re on Twitter, and I guess signing up for a newsletter or leaving a comment is work :)
Thanks Benny!
Surprising experience for you and big lesson for you and all bloggers. Congrats and thanks for sharing your experience.
Thanks for the kind words and comment, Kavita. I really appreciate it!
Woah, what an interesting “lesson” if I may call it. Million views from Twitter is something I can only dream of right now. Indeed, some people unfortunately just check and leave, but did you see take a look at your Bounce Rate for that specific day? I also hope you’ll get even more tweets with this post, hah!
No, I didn’t look at my bounce rate from that day… But I just did and it was a whopping 92%. Wow!
Thanks Tarrum!
Hi Tristan,
I think the lesson here is one that all marketers need to remember. We need measurable objectives to be able assess our campaigns. Some people (like me) would consider the exposure of the RTs you received a great success. Others might only care about ebooks sold or newsletter subscriptions.
Your analysis really shows how powerful a single person can be in spreading a tweet. Congratulations!
-Marianne
I think that the exposure of the RTs was a success in and of itself, but not an overall success. The real thing I’m trying to do is get people to subscribe to my blog’s newsletter, and there weren’t too many more subscribers. So I guess in that sense it wasn’t a success. But hey, a million of anything is pretty awesome! I’ll take it :)
Thanks Marianne!
Impressive. Most impressive.
Thanks Darth :)
That is great reporting and metrics but coming from experience Twitter impressions of a tweet don’t translate very well to site visits/clicks. I had a tweet reach over 400-500k impressions yet yield less than 100 click throughs or actions on the tweet. Granted, some perform better than others and this is where attention grabbing headlines and call to actions really come into play.
That post of mine got more than 100 clickthroughs but yeah, Twitter is kind of hit or miss. And you’re spot on with the headlines. I think that’s one reason a lot of people say they don’t like or don’t get Twitter. The easiest way to get results with it is just to write attention-grabbing headlines!
Hey Tristan,
Wow, that’s awesome! A similar thing happened to me several days ago, but only with StumbleUpon. I ended up getting 203 visits from StumbleUpon, and most of them were directly due to one StumbleUpon user stumbling a post.
Sadly though, the quality of the StumbleUpon traffic was incredibly poor – the average time spent on the site was 15 seconds and the bounce rate was 92.12% for that StumbleUpon traffic. But, even so, it’s always a pleasant surprise to check Google Analytics and see that you’ve received way more traffic than the norm. :)
And this goes back to what you originally mentioned – power users matter if you want a post to go viral. Interesting read – it definitely gets a tweet from me!
Christina
I’ve had a couple good days with StumbleUpon, too. And I found the same thing about my StumbleUpon traffic–the bounce rate is super high. It was about that high on my big Twitter day, too! Oh well. I’ll take all the traffic I can get!
Thanks for the RT and comment, Christina :)
That’s what I love about the internet. You can learn something new everyday. Nice tip and one I just used.
Awesome, man. I’m glad you learned something, and thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!
I think, we need some good number of followers on twitter and the work is retweeting will be done by them, when we will post some useful info that they need. Thus getting us huge real time visitors. Nice post about this. Thanks.
You’re right, Ricky. Having a lot of followers does help. But I’d rather have 1 amazing follower than 1000 crappy followers!
I’m glad you liked the post, and thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment!
Agree with you, 1 amazing follower is better than the 1000 (even10,000) crappy followers.
If a single follower help us in acheiving our goals, then its cool.
That’s interesting stuff. I went to that TwitterReach site myself and tested one of my links and it only reports on 3 Twitter folks, one of which is me. I tested it on the link of another blog and the same thing. Still, seeing that 3 people reached almost 15,000 other people in some fashion is kind of neat, even if it doesn’t end up in more subscriptions and the like.
It is kind of cool seeing the reach of your tweets, isn’t it? And you’re right, even if it didn’t result in a bazillion new subscribers, it’s pretty dang cool that that post got a million of anything :)
Thanks Mitch! I hope you had a great weekend.
Twitter is like most other marketing methods, you are lucky to get 2% click through rate for your tweets. Even that click through rate is based on a engaging user level. With focused groups like Triberr etc you are likely to get better click through rates
I think that the key to using Twitter effectively IS by cultivating a focused group of followers. You don’t need Triberr for that. Just follow and interact with those people in your same sphere.
Thanks Nishadha!
Yes, looking at the Stats can be interesting, for example recently I discovered that people liked my post about using a Whiteboard to be able to keep a focus on their Home Business Goals, So I wrote an other post about it and Woooosh, again a Most Popular Post!
Possibly it was because people thought what an old fasioned idea :)
So don’t worry you can also find a Post about how you can use your iPad for keeping a focus on your Home Business Goals.
All the Best,
To your Happy – Home Business – Inspiration,
HP
HP, I really like what you said about writing a follow-up post on the same topic as an already successful post. Great idea! And sometimes those old fashioned ideas are the best ones.
Thanks for the comment, HP!
Interesting topic. I think this relates back to the value of social media. You got lots of re-tweets and impressions, but not many more conversions than a normal day. Social media is certainly valuable, but this just proves that it’s not the only thing to rely on.
You are right , Nick – it is takes a well rounded and diverse campaign to reach any particular audience.
For sure, Julien. It’s important to test out a bunch of different traffic generation techniques to see what works best for you.
Interesting point, Nick. I think that a lot of people fail to realize that the real power of social media doesn’t just depend on having a bigger number of subscribers or followers or fans or whatever. If they’re not GOOD (which I’ll define in this case as targeted) subscribers, followers, or fans, they’re still useless. I think the reason I didn’t see greater results from all that Twitter traffic was that it wasn’t targeted. Those people just wanted to know how to use Twitter better. They didn’t care about blogging or social media or internet marketing.
Hmmm… That just gave me a thought. I wonder if I’d had a “related posts” thing at the end of the post, if I could have converted a bit more of the traffic. I’ve written other articles about Twitter that they might have found useful, too. I don’t know if it would have made that much of a difference overall, but it undoubtedly would have increased my number of pageviews.
I definitely agree with you about social media not being the only thing you can rely on. Diversification followed by testing and analysis is the way to go.
Thanks for the great comment, Nick!
I personally do not count on twitter to send me much traffic, but the few that do come are worth the very small effort it takes to send a tweet. Not saying you depend on twitter either, but it has been known for some time that most of the ‘active’ twitter mini blogs come from a small percentage of total users. That fits right in with what you found in your research.
I actually get a lot of good traffic via Twitter. It’s my #2 traffic source after Google. I think a lot of it has to do with what your niche is, too.
Thanks Julien!
Great work Tristan and for sharing all of this with us. I think Twitter is a hot topic for anyone trying to figure out the right way to implement it into their online strategies. Plus you have a lot of faithful followers, including me, who are always eager to share your content with our followers as well.
I will definitely check out one or more of the tools you suggested. I think all of mine are not quite up to standards but I have found an increase in traffic to my site from Twitter as well. So, people should really pay attention to what information is getting their followers attention and what isn’t. 33 tweets is my biggest number right now but my blog is only 5 months old plus I only post once a week. Not too shabby if I say so myself. But, can always use the tips to improve that number.
As always, thanks again for this information. It’s worth it’s weight in gold.
Adrienne
33 tweets is great, Adrienne! That’s definitely a number to be proud of.
One of the easiest ways I’ve found to get more Twitter traffic is keep Twitter in mind when I’m writing my blog post titles. I try to make sure that if someone sees that title in their Twitter feed, they have little choice but to click :)
I’m glad you liked the post! Thanks for retweeting and thanks so much for the comment :) I hope you’ve had a great Easter weekend.
Hi Tristan,
That’s both awesome results and a little disturbing, but nonetheless, it’s very interesting. I would have guessed that you would have received a lot more visitors to your blog from this and also more comments. But, as I have also experienced (but with a lot less retweets), I don’t get much traffic from Twitter.
I don’t enjoy Twitter for the traffic, but for the fast and personal communication. It’s so easy to send messages to people, and do a short type of Q&A. To me, Twitter is brilliant, but not for generating massive amount of traffic.
Thanks a lot for sharing this. This is the first time I’ve seen someone who’ve actually looked behind the numbers.
“Awesome and a little disturbing.” Hahaha. That’s a great way of putting it!
Twitter is actually a really good source of traffic for me. I think it’s my #2 after Google.
I’m glad I was able to come up with something here that you haven’t seen before, Jens! That’s a huge compliment, and I really do appreciate that.
Awesome Tristan. Good for you on your results, hopefully I can get the same number of retweets on a future article of mine as well. Thanks again
Thanks Edwin!
Great story with a lot of good information, I need to look into your statistic counters and see what my numbers are. I can only hope to, at some point, get a tenth of the activity on my blog as the post you are writing about. Now I want to go out and read that one as well.
I just wish I could get results like this more consistently! But it’s really not something we can have too much control over.
Thanks for commenting!
Tristan, I use a bookmarklet from Back Type and it gives pretty much the same info, but it also includes the number of Facebook shares and likes. If you want to grab it check out the post I linked to in CommentLuv.
Keep up the awesome writing my friend. I enjoyed both posts!
Oooo. I like the sound of that! I’ll definitely check that out.
Thanks Ileane!
Hi Tristan!
I’m glad I ran into your blog. This article about Twitter retweets is loaded with information that I could really learn a lot from. The statistics that you presented is the core of this post and I really admire how you took the time to make the calculation in driving home the point of the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of Twitter retweets.
Thanks Elmar, I appreciate that! I really enjoy diving into my statistics to see why they are the way they are. So I’m glad you liked the post, too :)
I agree with you that it takes connections to make things like this work, which is why getting INVOLVED on social networks rather than just “being on” social networks is so important for promotion. I’m still struggling with this.
This is my first time at your blog, and it looks very interesting! You just gained one subscriber! ;)
So many people forget that whole “social” part of social media. That’s really the only way to get good traffic results from Twitter and other social networks.
I’m glad you like my blog, Sarah! Thanks for commenting and subscribing :)
Great Post, Tristan !
I especially like you post because you mixed your experience and stats to give the post a new flavor.
I am glad to see that you got so many re tweets for your article :D I haven’t really got much re tweets for my articles that I write in my site. (But I have got a good number of them for my guest articles).
I use a lot of twitter apps (but, I am sad that twitter is reconsidering its policy regarding 3rd party apps). Most of the tools that I use are like services (that are not related to tweeting). But, I have heard of Timely and Buffer being good tools for twitter. Both can help you to schedule your tweets.
Anyway, thank you for sharing your wonderful experience !
Jeevan Jacob John
Twitter is reconsidering its policy regarding third party apps? Huh… I didn’t know that… That sucks.
I use Buffer right now and freaking LOVE it! It’s probably my #1 favorite Twitter app right now.
I’m glad you liked the post, and thanks a ton for taking the time to comment on it. I really do appreciate it.
Your this blog post has given me more sneak peak info about twitter use and how to tracked everything . I will try something new and track the results like you .
Thanks
Awesome! I’m glad the post helped and that you got some good info out of it. Thanks for commenting!
That was useful. I RT’d it of course!
I just started using my stats to increase leverage, even though my numbers are way smaller than yours. But hey, we all have to start somewhere, right?
Will have a closer look at your website (FB page, etc) – interesting remark about your pop-up. Will also try that out again, I took mine off too.
And, keep writing and Tweeting, I’m eager to learn!
groetjes :)
Charlotte
Thanks for the RT, Charlotte :)
And thanks for the kind words. I’ll definitely keep tweeting and writing. Tomorrow’s post will by my third (of three) post about Twitter in a row, so be sure to check back then!
Hey Tristan,
Great job digging in to figure what was really happening (well, approximately anyway).
I tend to read blogs via rss on a smartphone now days, so I missed the graphics the first time around. It is interesting also as I just tried tweetreach.com on one of my recent blog posts and found that it only picked up on tweets with two types of links (bit.ly and su.pr). It did not pick up the tweets with some of the other shorteners (triberr and a few others). Does that sound right to you?
Also, sort of related – you can use twiangulate.com to see who you have in common with other people. Could be useful in your analysis.
Have a great day!
Hmmm… That’s odd that TweetReach only picked up on the bit.ly and su.pr links. I just checked the RTs for this blog post and saw ow.ly, t.co, and j.mp in addition to bit.ly. I wonder why you were seeing only the bit.ly and su.pr ones. Maybe that particular post was only shared with those two? I don’t know, man. That’s odd.
And sweet, thanks for the twiangulate tip. I’ll for sure check that out!
Nice post Tristan!!
As a person who plans to create a blog within the next few months, I learned a lot. This post made me realize the value of investigating and doing research. I guess if you are serious about blogging these are the steps that have to be taken in order to educate yourself and to improve your skill set. Thanks for the valuable information!!
Aaron Andrews
For sure, Aaron. By analyzing your stats, you see what works and what doesn’t. That in turn lets you know what you can do to replicate the success that you see.
Thanks for the comment, and be sure to hit me up if you ever have any blogging questions. I’d be happy to answer them.
Great post Tristan! First, it clarifies those components in the tweet stats. Not something everyone has the patience to wrap their minds around :) , but still important stuff. This generally shows that digging through your analytics (be it social media stats or website stats) is important and can turn up a lot of useful info and hints.
Secondly, it shows the power of twitter. I for one didn’t use any retweeting tool on my sites, but I’m seeing more and more proof that I should be reconsidering this.
I love Twitter. I think it’s my #2 traffic source after Google. You should definitely be on it and incorporate it into your sites!
And yeah, not everyone cares this much about their stats, but I love it. I’m an analytics junkie.
Thanks for the comment, Aloys!
One caution about getting too deep into stats analysis: after you start to understand what is happening (cause-effect), make sure you don’t over-analyze your stats to the detriment of content.
Figure out what causes these things to happen and then “push that button hard” with more content designed to do the same thing.
Yeah – the return for the number of impressions for that one post wasn’t what you’d think it would be, but the A-List bloggers know it is a matter of replicating that success over and over that brings in collectively more traffic – regularly.
Great report! Keep up the great work!
I really like this, Jack: “Figure out what causes these things to happen and then “push that button hard” with more content designed to do the same thing.”
Great advice there.
And yeah, over-analyzing stats can be a MASSIVE timesuck.
Thanks for taking the time to leave a great comment, Jack. I really appreciate it, man.
Hi Tristan!
That seems like an exciting experience. As a new blogger I get really happy to see people RT my articles in general. I’ve been blogging for 2 months now and I think I’m progressing at a fairly fast pace. I’ve had some great help along the way.
I’ve been wanting to get into analytics and different tools to see where all my traffic is coming from so I’m definitely going to look in to tweetreach and backtweets!
I’m excited to hopefull experience a similar situation to yours some where along the line in my blogging career!
Chelsea, if you haven’t already, you definitely need to get a Google Analytics account. You integrate it with your blog and tells you way more information than you need to know. I’d start with that first before diving too deep into your Twitter analytics.
Good luck with your blogging, and let me know if I can do anything for you or answer any questions. Thanks for commenting!
Hello Tristan,
I am relatively new with Twitter but I am amazed to see the numbers and stats of your last post.
You have given Twitter statistics, but did not share actual page views of your blog post.
Regards
I think re-tweeting involves a bit of luck. If a person who has alot of followers re-tweets that is great, if not then not many people read it.
Amazing! YOu’re so lucky everybody loves to tweet your stuff!
It looks like either you are getting popular day by day, or either a huge crowd of freelancers who work for link builders have flocked to your site. I mean I am not jealous of you, I am just happy that you are getting popular :)
Impressive numbers, man. I like your excessive analysis of your statistics. You’re getting famous, too :)
YOU GOT A MILLION IMPRESSIONS!!!!! That is so freaking amazing…. I think I’m going to subscribe to your blog to learn more from you :) *thumbs up*
First of all, Tristan, I’m impressed at all of what you learned by analyzing all those numbers, percentages, impressions (your explanation made sense, btw), and everything else. I think I might’ve gone cross-eyed if it were me. That’s pretty impressive, too. I’m usually happy if ONE person takes the time to RT my blog posts. =)
Delena
The title really caught me! I was absolutely interested in knowing the reason behind your blog post having 150 retweets. I think, one retweet from an influencial person on certain aspect would deliver one blogger so much traffic and most likely get more retweets. And it’s not just about that, it’s also because of the content of the post. Thanks for sharing your experience and I got inspired with it! Looking forward for updates!
Many a time you just get overwhelming response for your labour many a time its sheer luck, however one thing is constant- Each time you get something for you to learn. It was really nice going through your journey.
Interesting post Tristan, it was just yesterday that I got an abnormally huge spike on Twitter and I didn’t understand why. Sadly my attention span was less then yours and I didn’t take 5 minutes to investigate. :)
This post did give me some ideas and I checked out Tweet Reach for some possible insight, thanks a bunch.
Really Informative article thank you
This is a first person case study and highlights the need for content marketers to understand in what specific ways social media traffic aligns with their business goals online. Not all referred traffic is equal.
good and interesting information will surely get retweets :)
Wow nice traffic spike. I haven’t experienced traffic spikes from Twitter yet, only a few times from StumbleUpon and it was quite a few months ago.
I really missed the exciting feeling seeing a traffic jump. Congratulations again.
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