What is Twitter Engagement?

The large amount of content published on Twitter every second increases the difficulty of getting your message heard, so experts must take effective marketing measures to increase the efficacy of the tweets related to any specific ad campaign.

Data of interest:

There are 316 million active users every month on Twitter and 6,000 tweets are sent every second. 77% of twitter users have positive feelings about brands that answer via this channel.

Engagement Rate

Several authors have defined this concept from different points of view, but we can summarize that engagement is the establishment of a relationship with a potential client that might lead to a future purchase.

When it comes to this social network, potential clients are also the users or community members and although selling a product could be an objective, we mainly refer to the conversions and traffic redirected to the brand’s web.

According to Cialdini’s consistency principle, once the user becomes a committed follower, he will maintain favorable conduct towards your brand, just on the basis of being congruent to their initial decision 

raalwaSo, the average engagement rate on Twitter is a  KPI, for an online marketing strategy. This parameter allows monitoring the Twitter Engagement Rates in real time so you will be able to follow any variation that might occur, useful to keep improving your implemented strategy.

To calculate the Twitter Engagement Rates will help you to establish a metric that you should learn to apply towards your analysis and make sure you understand its variations.

How Does Twitter Calculate their Engagement Rate?

If you’ve read more about engagement on Twitter you’ll have noticed that it’s a topic that has generated differing opinions.

There are many different formulas to measure engagement and there are all correct. 

My opinion is that you should choose one formula and stick to it, that is, you should always use the same whenever you want to measure engagement on your Twitter account. This way you will always get meaningful results. By measuring in the same way, you will be able to analyze the evolution of your Twitter account month by month.

Engagement Rate Formula

The first step to measure your engagement manually is to select the period of time that you want to analyze.

Then it’s time to choose the formula by which you are going to do this engagement measurement on Twitter. And once you’ve chosen it, it’s time to analyze and collect the data you need to put into the formula.

Here is the formula that Metricool uses to analyze the engagement rate on Twitter:

However, there are also two other examples of formulas that you can use to analyze the degree of engagement on Twitter:

While there is debate about whether or not to include more data within this equation, either way the result we obtain will be used as a reference point.  The simplicity of this calculation stands out, even when you add other elements to obtain another benchmark for other specific matters. For example, other users prefer adding the number of clicks on their Twitter publications to the numerator.

There are arguments for and against dividing the interactions by using the number of your followers or the reach of your publications.

The disagreement lies in the advertising factor, as publicity can alter the data. This is why we insist on the importance of consistently applying the same formula from the beginning.

What Type of Interactions Should We Consider?

It is important to define the interactions to be measured and the weight of each of them. As it happens with the engagement formula, there are also different opinions regarding this matter, even those that give different values to the citations or direct messages than to the favorites, or those that attribute negative and positive values to the citations.

The important thing is that you choose the interactions that you estimate more relevant for the correct measurement of the engagement rate according to your Twitter marketing strategy and once you choose them, you are consistent. 

These are all the metrics you can find on Twitter:

✅ Replies: When a user reply to a brand publication.

✅ Retweets: When a user shares a content of your brand in their timeline and shows it to their followers, adding a comment or not.

✅ Mentions: Users that tag the brand in their tweets

✅ Likes: When a user clicks on the heart in the publications of the brand.

✅ Clicks: When users click on the URL shared in the brand’s tweets.

✅ Impressions: How many times the tweet has been viewed (not unique per user). A view is counted if any part of the Tweet is visible on the screen.

✅ Direct messages: Users who instead of openly mentioning the brand send a private message.

✅ Hashtag: Measuring user interaction with a branded Hashtag. If you want more information here we tell you

✅ User profile clicks: The number of times a user clicks on any of this sections within the tweet; display name, username, profile picture

✅ Video views: How many times the video included in the tweet has been viewed.

How do we increase interactions in a natural way?

The answer lies in Cialdini’s principle of reciprocity: give to receive. Likewise, if you know exactly what your audience needs, you will be able to provide it at the right time, either by interacting to provide the solution to a problem or useful information in some way, or by complementing some topic.

Finally, it is vital to show respect for the time of others, firstly, by not taking up too much space in their timelines and, secondly, by synthesizing the content so that they can get the message as quickly as possible. This is taken into account as a skillful show of consideration towards others, which generates sympathy and attraction towards your brand. In this way, and with perseverance, you will become an authority whose information always brings value.

With Metricool at the moment you can see which are the best times to create publications on Twitter and use the planner tool. This will help you increase your engagement.

What’s a Good Twitter Engagement Rate for an Account or Publication?

We must bear in mind that high figures are not necessarily a good thing. We can see often how good numbers are accompanied by few conversions or sales, becoming a real headache for the person in charge of developing the strategy. For example, offering an amusing image of your brand despite the content having limited value beyond a laugh or a momentary surprise will lead you off course.It’s a difficult task to re-direct your boat in the correct direction once you’ve gone so far.

If we don’t detect this trend on time, sooner or later the members of our social community will start considering our brand irrelevant, poisoning not only our relationship but also affecting the product or services that we offer. However, if we identify the problem soon enough, we can redesign the part of the strategy that is not working, but only if we constantly supervise and monitor.

The Importance of Twitter Engagement

Because it allows you to know the level of acceptance, compromise and relationship at all times, not only with your audience but when you are testing a new product or service.

This metric offers companies and brands the value of knowing how they position themselves on Twitter and also allows them to confidently advance with more chances of success.

💡 Which value does it offer to brands/clients or companies?

Companies and brands not only need to know what’s going on with Twitter, they must also know how to get ahead of situations before they happen.  This will mark the difference between your competitors and you. 

Engagement rate on Twitter gives you the opportunity to stand out and reach a position of authority over time.

Laura Montells , 02 May 2017