Before you finish reading the words Twitter analytics and doze off, stay with me: this is important for your business.
The secret to unlocking your social media growth potential is in your X (Twitter) analytics. Seriously.
Keep reading to find out how to identify your best-performing X posts (Tweets) and unlock key insights that will help you refine your social media marketing strategy.
In this complete guide to X (Twitter) analytics, you’ll learn:
- The most important X (Twitter) metrics to track
- Why you should track them
- 5 tools that will save time and speed up growth
- And, how the heck to even use X (Twitter) Analytics in the first place
Bonus: Get a free social media analytics report template that shows you the most important metrics to track for each network.
What is X (formerly Twitter) analytics?
X (Twitter) analytics is a set of key metrics used by the social media platform to track follower count, engagement, impressions, retweets, and more. Twitter analytics are available to view for free through the platform for all users, including personal profiles, professional accounts, and X Premium subscribers.
Besides tracking growth for your own motivation, using X (Twitter) analytics for business helps you make data-driven decisions about your social media strategy. Armed with data, you can optimize your X campaigns to get better results and more followers without guessing whether your plan will work or not.
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How to see X (Twitter) analytics
How to access Twitter analytics (Desktop)
You can either directly go to and log in with your X/Twitter account, or find the analytics tab by clicking the three dots in the left side menu of the main Twitter dashboard:
From there, click Creator Studio, then Analytics.
This will bring up the main Twitter analytics dashboard.
From here, click on Tweets at the top to view a monthly overview of all your Twitter post performance.
How to access Twitter analytics (Mobile)
The X/Twitter mobile app doesn’t contain the full analytics dashboard, but you can check analytics for individual posts from your phone.
Go to one of your posts, then tap View analytics.
For that post, you can see how many likes, retweets, and comments it has, as well as Tweet impressions and engagements.
Plus, three more metrics:
- New followers: People who followed you directly from this post.
- Detail expands: Times people clicked to read the full post (for longer posts).
- Profile visits: Times people clicked over to your main profile from this post.
How to access Twitter analytics with Hootsuite
See your complete Twitter analytics inside Hootsuite alongside data from all of your other social platforms. No more hunting around each platform for the metrics you need to track — it’s all right at your fingertips.
You can find Hootsuite Analytics along the left menu in your dashboard: the graph-like icon labeled Analytics when you hover over it.
Hootsuite Analytics is a social media analytics tool that lets you easily track the performance of all your social channels in real-time and in one place so you can replicate what works and get more engagement.
Hootsuite collects your stats from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Get the big picture of all your profiles together, or deep dive into individual platform analytics — all from one intuitive dashboard.
Tracking your Twitter analytics (and analytics for all your platforms!) in Hootsuite helps you:
- Save tons of time by having everything you need for all your accounts in one place.
- Create and export custom reports to showcase your results to your boss and share insights with your team.
- Monitor your performance against competitor and industry benchmarks.
- Get insights on the best times to post and your overall campaign ROI.
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9 key metrics to track on X (Twitter)
1. Engagement rate
What it is: Your engagement rate is the percentage of people who saw your post and took action on it, whether they liked it, commented, shared, or something else.
Why it matters: Gives you an idea of overall account performance and if your content is resonating with your audience (or not).
Find it at the top of the right sidebar within Twitter analytics.
It’s even easier to see your X (Twitter) analytics engagement rate trends and identify your top performing content at a glance with Hootsuite Analytics. See your top posts by engagement rate, plus your overall average engagement rate statistics for X (Twitter) and all your other social platforms in one place.
2. Follower count (gain/loss)
What it is: The size of your audience. How many new followers you’ve obtained minus how many have unfollowed you. Obviously, you want this to be a positive number week after week.
Why it matters: Besides tracking your overall follower count, knowing how many people are unfollowing you can uncover valuable information.
For example, do 100 people unfollow you every time you post a certain type of content? You don’t need to completely change your content strategy — consider it a process of weeding out people who don’t really resonate with your brand — but depending on your social media goals, you may want to revisit your content plan.
You can find your current follower count either on the X (Twitter) analytics dashboard homepage, or by visiting your profile.
3. New followers
What it is: The fresh new faces who have recently followed you.
Why it matters: Reaching out quickly after someone follows you increases the likelihood of a productive interaction since you’re still top of mind.
In Hootsuite, you can see a list of Tweets from all your recent followers. You can reply to their Tweet, share it (Retweet), send a direct message or save it to reply to later. It’s easy to engage with your latest followers.
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4. Top posts (Tweets)
What it is: Your most popular Tweets with the most impressions within a specific time period, ranked from highest to lowest.
Why it matters: Impressions are important for attracting new followers and growing your audience. However, keep in mind that impressions aren’t everything. The official Twitter analytics “top posts” section sorts your posts by highest to lowest impressions but often, you’ll care more about how many comments they received, their engagement rate, shares, and other metrics.
So while this section can help you identify top-performing content, it may not be the most accurate picture of what’s working for you. Read it with a grain of salt.
5. Monthly impressions
What it is: How many total impressions all your posts earned over a specific month.
Why it matters: Track monthly impressions for a general barometer of how your content is performing. Of course, other metrics like follower count and engagement rate matter more in the long-term, but generally speaking, getting more impressions each month = good.
You can find this number by selecting a month in X (Twitter) analytics and your total impressions are at the top.
6. Link clicks
What it is: How many people clicked a link in one of your posts during the specified time period.
Why it matters: Gives you an idea of interest in your content and how much traffic you’re sending to blog posts, podcast episodes, products, and other destinations from X/Twitter.
You can see link clicks in the right sidebar on the X/Twitter analytics dashboard.
Want an easier, more accurate, and automatic way to track social media traffic? Hootsuite’s built-in URL shortener adds tracking parameters that are invisible to your customer, but all neat n’ tidy in your Google Analytics and Hootsuite Analytics reports.
Track which social platforms are driving the most traffic, which campaigns are converting the most, and exactly how many leads are coming from your social channels.
7. Shares (Retweets)
What it is: When someone shares your post to their own X (Twitter) profile.
Why it matters: Helps get your content to more eyeballs.
Find this metric on your X (Twitter) analytics dashboard in the right side column.
Pro tip: Set up a Hootsuite Stream to monitor when someone shares your post, so you can easily comment and thank them right from your Hootsuite dashboard.
8. Replies
What it is: When someone leaves a comment on one of your posts, or shares your post and adds their own comment with a @YourUsername.
Why it matters: Helps boost your post in the Twitter algorithm, as well as attract new followers from the other person’s audience. It also helps you build genuine connections with your existing audience through conversations.
Find your replies metrics in the right-side column of the X (Twitter) analytics sidebar.
9. Likes
What it is: How many people hit the heart icon to “like” your post, similar to other social platforms.
Why it matters: Likes give you an idea of your overall X (Twitter) performance.
Your likes metrics are also in the right sidebar in X (Twitter) analytics.
5 X (Twitter) analytics tools for 2024
These are Twitter analytics-specific tools, but we’ve also got a list of the best overall Twitter tools to grow your account.
1. Hootsuite
Key benefit: Manage your X (Twitter) content scheduling and analytics alongside all your other social media in one place from one easy-to-use dashboard
Skill level: Beginner to advanced
Best for: Plans for all types of users, from solo business owners to large marketing teams and every business in between
We truly believe we’re the best at bringing all your social media management, scheduling, and analytics needs for all your accounts together in one place. Other tools offer posting to multiple accounts, but Hootsuite offers the ability to dive deep into your analytics, so you can zero in on only your X/Twitter campaigns and growth, or pull back to see your big picture performance across all your accounts.
Besides the nerdy number stuff, Hootsuite has all the planning, scheduling, social listening, and advertising tools you need across:
Hootsuite goes beyond simple social media scheduling or analytics reports to encompass everything you do on social media, and makes it easier:
- See all your upcoming and posted content together in one big calendar view, or slice it down by channel, week, type, or approval status.
- Find out your personalized best time to publish based on your real audience’s online habits.
- Manage all your DMs and comments across platforms with multiple team members from your unified Hootsuite Inbox.
- Track your top competitors’ performance, see where you rank in industry benchmarks, and identify growth opportunities with deep insights.
- Save time with OwlyWriter AI captions, built-in image editing tools, and bulk uploads.
- Integrate with all of your other tools, including Canva, Hubspot, Shopify, Mailchimp, Microsoft Dynamics, and 200+ more.
Seeing is believing, so check out how Hootsuite can save you hours of time per month and grow your social media presence faster:
Oh, and since you’re here for Twitter analytics info, you’ll probably enjoy this nerd-fest of a video too:
X/Twitter’s built-in tools
Key benefit: Free and easy-to-use Twitter analytics reports
Skill level: Beginner to intermediate
Best for: Tracking your main Twitter analytics metrics like followers, impressions, and more
The built-in X (Twitter) analytics dashboard is basic but provides all the key metrics you need to know. And of course it’s 100% free to use.
You can go back to view historical analytics data, but can only view 90 days at any one time. For example, you cannot see all your analytics for a specific year, or compare months year over year together within the dashboard. At times, I found historical data from even one year ago to show as zero for everything, so it may not be the most reliable for long-term analytics.
The built-in Twitter analytics dashboard is a good fit if you’re committed to manually tracking your metrics on an external spreadsheet or other analytics tracker every month.
Source: Twitter Analytics
Buffer
Key benefit: Simple to use interface with basic performance tracking
Skill level: Beginner to intermediate
Best for: Individuals and solo business owners who manage their own social media
Buffer is a social media planning and scheduling tool that includes the ability to publish to X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and others. Buffer prioritizes simplicity over advanced features, so its scheduling features are easy for even total newbies to learn quickly.
Source: Buffer
Buffer’s focus on easy scheduling means it omits more advanced features that are part of Hootsuite, like social listening, industry benchmarking, or paid campaign performance tracking. Notably, analytics across all platforms isn’t supported, though it does include X (Twitter) analytics.
If your primary focus is scheduling content without a lot of analysis or optimization, Buffer may be right for you. Compare Hootsuite vs. Buffer in detail to find out.
Sprout Social
Key benefit: Twitter analytics reporting along with other social profiles
Skill level: Beginner to intermediate
Best for: Marketing teams at larger organizations
Due to its higher price point than others on this list, Sprout Social is targeted to larger organizations and teams. It offers all the usual social media scheduling and planning tools, along with detailed analytics reports for all major social platforms, including X (Twitter).
Source: Sprout Social
A nice feature of Sprout Social is the ability to create white-label analytics reports, perfect for agencies managing social media for clients. However, Hootsuite offers easy custom reporting templates along with more features and integrations for a lower cost. Though, the decision is yours: compare Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social.
Later
Key benefits: Visual calendar, simple cross-platform analytics reports
Skill level: Beginner to intermediate
Best for: Solo business owners and businesses primarily focused on Instagram
Later started as an Instagram-only scheduling app but now includes Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube (limited to scheduling Shorts only). These scheduling tools are similar to Hootsuite (you can compare Hootsuite and Later here), but Hootsuite offers many more integrations and advanced capabilities like social listening, benchmarking, organic and paid campaign analytics, and more.
Source: Later
How to use X (Twitter) analytics tools for best results
Check in on a regular basis
Twitter analytics tools make your job infinitely easier, but they can’t do it for you. Check your reports at least monthly to identify content trends, see what your audience is responding best to, and how your key metrics are growing. Use what you learn to adjust your social media strategy, if needed.
Keep an eye on competitors
You don’t need to copy anyone or jump on the latest trend just because your biggest competitor did. But you should be aware of what your competitors are doing on social media and how their growth compares to yours.
Success in business comes down to a lot more than who has the most social media followers… but it definitely doesn’t hurt either, y’know?
Compare your results to industry benchmarks
Monitoring your own performance and that of your competition… check. But how do you stack up compared to the rest of your industry? Hootsuite’s built-in industry benchmarking tool automatically calculates this for you and provides suggestions to improve your rankings.
Conduct a social media audit
Running a full social media audit sounds like a lot of work but it only takes a few hours, which you can split up into blocks with our foolproof seven step process. Uncover opportunities and new ideas to optimize your social strategy for the year ahead.
Grab our free social media audit template and see how to do your own fun n’ functional audit.
Get all the key Twitter analytics insights you need — along with analytics, one-click custom reports, content scheduling, and more for all your other social media profiles — in one place with Hootsuite. Try it free today.
Do it better with Hootsuite, the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition.
