Key Twitter Metrics to Track Right Now

The Twitter-tastrophe continues! We won’t bore you with yet another rundown of the latest Elon Musk updates; you can use this Google News link instead to catch up whenever you want. (Today’s headlines include the words “international outrage,” “Twitter condemned,” and “an exercise in hypocrisy” after prominent tech journalists were banned, so happy reading!)

Given everything that’s going on with Twitter, though, one key question has come up again and again. How do you know whether it’s time to abandon the Twitter ship, or if you should hold the course? One way to make this decision is to pick a few Twitter metrics to serve as your guide.

What Twitter metrics you track depends on your goals, even now.

If Twitter is a key platform for your organization’s success—meaning that it’s where you make your sales or pull in funding, or where you have critical relationships—there are numbers you are probably already tracking to measure that success, be it transactions, donations, or the results of those key conversations. Those are the most important numbers to keep tracking, and if you see those numbers go down, it’s time to change your tactics or your platform.

But Twitter gives you lots and lots of other data to track, from followers to likes to profile clicks. Which of those should you keep an eye on right now?

Keep an eye on Impressions. If you’ve used Twitter for some time, you likely have baseline numbers for your account and expect your content to reach a certain number of eyeballs day over day or month over month. Visit analytics.twitter.com and take a look at the monthly summary you’ll find there; your Tweet impressions are on the right side, along with some other key numbers we’ll get to in a moment.

If your Impressions have dropped in the past couple of months, or seem to be fluctuating wildly, that means your content isn’t showing up on as many screens as you might have assumed. It might be time to rethink your strategy or think about pivoting to a new platform, since it’s hard to meet your goals if you’re not reaching people like you should be.

See who your Followers are, as well as how many there are. It’s not just about how many new Followers you’re getting (although you can track that in the same place you measure your monthly impressions), but it’s about whether the followers you’re getting are real people who fit your target audience profile.

Visit your profile page and click on the number of Followers you see listed there. You will see a list of your Followers from newest to oldest, with their bios and whether or not you’re following back. Are your latest followers looking like spam accounts, or are they real people? Anyone you know, or are they random accounts? Take note; if you’re inundated with spam followers, something’s not right.

Check your Top Tweets. Up at the top of your screen, click “Tweets” and you’ll see post-level data. Set the dates you want to track at the top right (you can look at up to 90 days at a time), and click Top Tweets to see your best performing content in that time period.

Why does this matter? You might be assuming that certain content resonates with your audience, but your Top Tweets can tell you if you’re correct; with that view, you’ll see the posts that reached the most eyeballs as well as the posts people actually clicked on in some way. If the content that is performing best isn’t what you expected, or the performance of your individual posts is up and down, take note. Certain types of content might not be performing as well due to changes in how things are moderated (or no longer moderated), so keep that in mind too.

Don’t forget to check your notifications daily. It isn’t exactly a metric, but checking your notifications for harassment, spam, or trolling is important all the time, and especially now. Depending on what you post about, and given that Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council has been disbanded, it’s possible that your Twitter experience is changing pretty negatively and without warning, and there isn’t a lot of recourse if that happens. Watch and, if things start to get overwhelming or too toxic, consider putting your energy elsewhere.

The bottom line is that Twitter is no longer the right place to be if you can’t use it effectively to communicate. Evaluate your options carefully, and don’t be afraid to leave! Your audience doesn’t only live on Twitter.