Despite a year of significant change, Twitter is still the first platform people turn to for breaking news in 2023. To tap into the hub of current events and trending conversations, you have to dig into Twitter analytics to understand how people use the platform. This includes staying up-to-date on the latest Twitter statistics that can shape your approach.

Doing so will help you better understand your target audience. According to The 2022 Sprout Social Index™, 36% of consumers will pick a brand over a competitor if they feel understood, up from 21% in 2021.

While platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram might have more users, Twitter’s audience is active, engaged and plugged-in, and brands should consider it a valuable channel to connect with their audience.

Check out these 23 Twitter statistics to inspire and guide your social media strategy this year.

• General Twitter stats every marketer should know
• Twitter usage statistics that prove the platform’s impact
• Twitter user statistics to help reach your audience
• Twitter statistics for advertisers
• Twitter stats businesses need to inform their strategy

General Twitter stats every marketer should know

1. Monthly active users: 436 million

2. Worldwide usage ranking: 14th most popular social media network

3. Revenue: $5.08 billion

4. Ownership: Privately held

Twitter is at a unique crossroads. For one thing, new ownership has spurred renewed interest in the platform and increased user activity. As of January 2023, Twitter has 436 million monthly active users (MAU), up from 366 million in December 2022. Despite still trailing other networks like Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok, this growth indicates rapid and notable increases in user activity. (Pro tip: Use Twitter analytics tools to measure your brand’s unique audience performance.)

On the other hand, uncertainty over the platform’s financial health looms. In its last yearly earnings report in Q4 2021, Twitter reported earning $5.08 billion in annual revenue, up 37% from the previous year. By Q2 2022, Twitter earned $1.18 billion in quarterly revenue—a decrease of 1% year over year—and reported total quarterly costs and expenses equal to $1.52 billion, according to the company’s final earnings release. No updated revenue data has been reported since Twitter was privately acquired.

But don’t count Twitter out during this time of transition. As the 14th most popular social media network in the world, it remains a major player in the social media game.

Twitter usage statistics that prove the platform’s impact

5. Monetizable daily active users: 237.8 million (55% of total users)

6. Average daily usage: 34.8 minutes/day

7. Worldwide daily engagement ranking: Third most-used social network

According to Twitter’s final earnings release, each day 237.8 million monetizable users log into the app, which is 55% of all Twitter users. On average, these users spend 34.8 minutes on the platform. For perspective, users only spend 30.1 minutes per day on Facebook, the platform consumers anticipated they would use most, according to our Index data. Twitter still trails TikTok and YouTube, but as the third most popular app for daily use, there’s no denying Twitter has the potential to help brands grow their communities by gaining new, highly-engaged followers.

Twitter user statistics to help reach your audience

8. Gender: 56.4% male, 43.6% female (Note: Sprout Social acknowledges gender isn’t binary, but our data sources limit their reporting to male and female)

9. Age: 38.5% between 25–34 years old

10. Location: US, Japan and India

11. Cross-platform usage: Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook

12. Education level and income: One-third are college educated and make more than $75,000 annually

13. Sentiment trends: Negative sentiment toward glitches, some new features, user privacy and proposed paywall, but positive overall toward Twitter’s legacy

To maximize your chance of reaching your target audience on Twitter, you need to understand the demographic breakdown of its user base. The platform tends to sway male, with 56.4% of users identifying as such. It’s most popular with people between the ages of 25 and 34 years old, and least popular with teens. Users within this age range are also most active on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.

One-third of Twitter users are college-educated and make more than $75,000 annually, highlighting the platform’s highly-educated and high-earning base. Countries leading in Twitter usage include the US, Japan and India.

Twitter’s core users loudly express their feelings about the platform. In recent months, they have raised concerns about platform glitches, new features, privacy and proposed paywalls. While sentiment has ebbed and flowed, most users are pulling for the platform to regain its wings—like this Tweet from a Twitter fan showcases.

Twitter statistics for advertisers

14. Annual ad revenue: $1.41 billion

15. Cost per engagement: Increased 39% from 2020 to 2021

16. Ad engagement: Decreased 12% from 2020 to 2021

17. Ad view time: 26% higher than other leading platforms

18. Industry inclusivity: Only major social platform to allow cannabis advertising

Advertising on Twitter takes multiple forms—including promoted Tweets, accounts and trending topics (as this example demonstrates). The platform strives to continuously roll out new high-impact ad types to meet evolving consumer expectations and preferences.

Despite these efforts, ROI for advertisers has significantly fallen since 2020. According to the 2021 annual earnings report, Twitter earns $1.41 billion in yearly ad revenue (up 24% year over year). Yet, ad engagement rates fell by 12% while cost per engagement increased by 39%.

In late 2022 and early 2023, Twitter’s ad revenue took a hit as major brands paused advertising efforts on the platform. Ultimately, it’s too early to tell how this will impact advertising on Twitter long term, but it does create opportunity for brands to breakthrough and experiment in the interim. Twitter reports that ad view time on the platform is 26% higher than other leading platforms.

From offering discounted ads to allowing cannabis advertising, Twitter is making attractive appeals for brands to reinvest in the platform. (If your brand sells cannabis, bookmark our article: How cannabis brands elevate their social media content.)

Twitter stats businesses need to inform their strategy

19. Best time to post: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 9 a.m.

20. Average brand engagement rate: 0.04%

21. Discoverability: #1 platform

22. 53% of people on Twitter are more likely to be the first to buy new products

23. 15% of users and 32% of brands use Twitter for customer service

When you build your Twitter marketing strategy, it’s imperative to align your content with the style of the network. For example, Twitter is a fast-moving platform, and your Tweets will be missed if you post at the wrong time. Overall, the best times to post are Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 9 a.m., but you should find the best time to post on Twitter for your industry and audience.

The average brand engagement rate on Twitter is 0.04%. While that figure might seem low compared to other platforms, remember that Tweets often require less effort which allows brands to post more often, creating more opportunity for engagement.

Despite a low brand engagement rate, Twitter is the number one platform for discoverability, and its superpower is helping brands gain exposure to an audience eager to try something new. According to Twitter, 53% of people on the platform are more likely to be the first to buy new products.

Consumers aren’t just on the platform for Twitter ecommerce, though. According to our Index data, 15% of users and 32% of brands use Twitter for customer service and care—making it a key destination at every stage in the marketing funnel.

Use these Twitter statistics to help your brand soar

These key Twitter statistics prove the platform could still play a vital role in your brand’s social media strategy. But like all social media platforms, your brand’s performance on Twitter is what you make it. Even in the midst of Twitter’s evolution, you can find stability and success if you ground your strategy in data. Empowered with the 23 Twitter stats we shared in this article, evaluate your approach to the platform and refine your tactics to ensure you resonate with your target audience.

Start asking yourself questions like:

• Is my target audience using Twitter more or less than I anticipated?
• What does my target audience use Twitter for?
• What is my brand’s return on paid investment on the platform?
• Am I reaching my audience at the best time?
• Is my company’s Twitter customer service workflow meeting expectations?

Use your answers to guide your company’s approach to Twitter in 2023, and watch your presence take off.  Keep iterating on your Twitter strategy by learning how to use Twitter effectively to grow your brand.

The post 23 essential Twitter statistics to guide your strategy in 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

That’s exactly what we’ll discuss in this guide. Let’s take a look at the step-by-step process of creating a Twitter marketing strategy to grow your presence and drive engagement.

Table of Contents

• What is Twitter marketing?
• Audit your Twitter account
• Find your Twitter voice
• Use Twitter hashtags and trends
• Utilize Twitter ads
• Find out when to Tweet
• Schedule Tweets ahead of time
• Engage with your Twitter followers
• Set measurable Twitter goals
• Unleash the power of Twitter marketing

What is Twitter marketing?

Twitter marketing is the process of promoting your brand and its products or services through Twitter. It involves a well-established social media marketing strategy to create and publish content on the platform. When you market on Twitter, you need to publish the right Tweets at the right time to attract the right audience.

It doesn’t stop with posting content. Twitter marketing requires a plan to engage and interact with your audience. Twitter is a conversation-based network, so it’s important to create a two-way conversation with followers by replying to Tweets or direct messages.

Some Twitter marketing strategies may include a plan to advertise on the platform. This involves delivering targeted ads or promoted Tweets to a relevant audience. We’ll get into the details later in this guide.

However you approach Twitter marketing, make sure your strategy is aligned with your business goals and the style of the network. With that said, use these 9 tips to guide you through your Twitter marketing strategy:

1. Audit your Twitter account

If you already have an existing Twitter profile, the first thing to do is to run a Twitter audit.

Take stock of what’s working and what isn’t working by doing an in-depth review of your Twitter analytics. Twitter analytics tools help by allowing you to analyze:

• Hashtag performance
• Individual Tweet performance
• Individual Twitter audience

Knowing which Tweets are performing the best will give you an idea of the type of content that your audience is most interested in seeing. You can use this information to create a strategy to give your audience what they’re looking for in your content. This will ultimately allow you to maximize the reach and engagement you get on your Tweets.

One way to audit your Twitter profile is to look over your analytics manually from your Twitter Analytics dashboard. Here’s the step-by-step process to access this dashboard:

1. When you’re logged in, click on the “More” button from the left-hand panel of your Twitter dashboard.
2. Expand the “Creator Studio” option and select “Analytics.” This will open the Twitter Analytics dashboard.
3. From here, find “Tweet Highlights” and select “View all Tweet activity”. This will open a graph of all the impressions you earned for your Tweets within any given time period.
4. Below the graph, you can see the impressions, engagements and engagement rates for each Tweet. Click on “Top Tweets” to see your best-performing Tweets. Check out the performance of your promoted Tweets by clicking on the “Promoted” tab.

If you’re using Sprout Social to manage your Twitter profile, you can access your Twitter analytics alongside your other social media data in the Cross-Network Post Performance Report. Find your impressions, potential reach, engagements, engagement rate per impression to each of your Tweets.

2. Find your Twitter voice

Audiences on Twitter are looking for brands that Tweet authentically and stay true to their voice. It can be easy to jump on the latest trends to appeal to the masses on Twitter. But don’t do this at the expense of losing your brand voice. Your Twitter presence can be more playful and casual than LinkedIn or Facebook. However, it should still be authentic and consistent with your brand voice as a whole.

Innocent Drinks has nailed its brand voice on Twitter. Going through the brand’s feed, you can immediately see the brand’s persona shine through. The brand voice is fun, friendly, honest and approachable. It sometimes comes across as somewhat naïve, or you could say “innocent”–just like the brand.

Remember, an engaging brand voice is essential, but don’t jump on trends just for the sake of staying relevant. Twitter users are especially astute when a brand is inauthentic in an attempt to generate attention. In other words, don’t try too hard to fit in and instead, stay true to your brand.

3. Use Twitter hashtags and trends

Hashtags are a great way to expose your brand to new audiences who may be interested in what you have to say. They’re particularly effective for connecting your brand with what’s happening on Twitter. In fact, hashtags can increase message association by 18% and brand awareness by 8%. What’s more, is that brands saw a 3% lift in purchase intent by using hashtags to connect their brand with what’s happening on Twitter.

Some brands create hashtags for a specific campaign and use them in relevant Tweets. They may even encourage their audience to share Tweets with that hashtag.

One excellent example is the #RebuildTheWorld hashtag campaign from LEGO. LEGO used the campaign to inspire people to unleash their creativity. Additionally, it helped to showcase the virtually endless possibilities that LEGO play offers.

Within the first four days of launching the campaign, there were nearly 100,000 posts using the hashtag. Not only that but there was a 35% lift in positive sentiment for LEGO-branded keywords. First launched in 2019, the #RebuildTheWorld campaign is now an annual event.

https://twitter.com/LEGO_Group/status/1587369085456760832

Utilize Sprout’s Trend Reports

Can’t think of what to post or which hashtags to use? Sprout’s Twitter Trends Report generates topics and hashtags that are trending with your audience in relation to your account or industry. This can give you an idea of what your audience is talking about, so you know how to get their attention.

4. Utilize Twitter ads

Using paid ads on Twitter is a great way to reach your audience in a more direct way than waiting for organic reach. Promoted Tweets can expand your reach more quickly.

They allow people to discover your profile, even if they don’t follow your brand or hashtags. When you use a promoted Tweet, your Tweets show up on the timelines of people who share interests with your audience.

You pay a monthly fee as long as you want the promoted Tweet to stay up. Users can interact with promoted Tweets in the same way they interact with organic content. The only difference is that promoted Tweets are labeled, so users transparently know it’s a paid ad.

Confluent uses Twitter advertising to promote its platform through a lead magnet–in this case, a free eBook. In the following promoted Tweet, the company encourages downloads by describing the benefits. Anyone who wants to download it will have to share some of their info, allowing the company to capture valuable leads.

5. Find out when to Tweet

At the same time, Twitter moves so fast that something you Tweeted 30 minutes ago may very well be invisible to your followers. This makes it crucial to post at a time when your followers are most likely to see and engage with your Tweet. This would allow the Twitter algorithm to prioritize your Tweets and display them to an even bigger audience.

Sprout’s study on the best time to post on Twitter revealed that 9 a.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays are the best time to post on Twitter. That’s not to say Thursdays and Sundays are not good days to post; engagements on those days are not as high relative to the other days of the week or are sporadic.

Sprout’s ViralPost™ feature looks at your audience’s activity and chooses the most optimal times for you to post depending on when your followers are most active.

6. Schedule Tweets ahead of time

The right Tweet posted at the right time has the potential to generate massive engagement and virality. But you can’t possibly wait for your audience to be active every time you send out a Tweet.

Intentionally scheduling your Tweets ahead of time to makes publishing more efficient.

Knowing the right time to Tweet makes scheduling a consistent flow of Tweets much more manageable. It’s important to be as consistent as possible on Twitter. Best practices recommend Tweeting at least once per day.

Some brands Tweet up to 15 times per day to stay in front of their audience. Best practices can differ across industries. It depends on your resources and social media strategy to determine how frequently you can create and publish new content on Twitter.

Use Sprout’s publishing tool to schedule your Tweets to go out at optimal send times. This allows you to schedule your Tweets for an entire week or month, making it easier to maintain consistency.

7. Engage with your Twitter followers

Twitter is all about creating a two-way channel of communication with your audience. It’s important to create content that encourages your audience to engage with your Tweets. A lot of businesses use Twitter as a way to field support questions.

Meanwhile, you need to make sure that you’re engaging with people who are Tweeting about your brand individually. If someone mentions your brand or responds to a Tweet, make sure you’re responding to their message in a timely fashion.

It’s a good idea to have a dedicated community manager handle these requests. This will help prevent responses from falling through the cracks.

At Sprout, we closely monitor any brand mentions and look for opportunities to engage. Whether it’s a question about student programs, a support-related problem or a positive mention, we make it a point to respond.

Another way to create engagement with your followers is to ask questions. You can do this by creating a survey on Twitter directly or just asking a question and Retweeting people’s responses.

ClearVoice regularly posts Twitter surveys to ask questions to its audience. These may be about their content preferences and strategies. This gives the brand valuable research information to understand its audience better.

Try out Sprout’s Suggested Replies feature

Sprout’s Suggested Replies feature can help simplify the process of responding to your audience. It lets you create canned responses for commonly asked questions on social media. Team members can then edit these with a personal touch. These responses give the people managing the profile behind the scenes a simple way to handle any volume of inquiries they get on Twitter.

8. Set measurable Twitter goals

Your Twitter marketing strategy needs measurable goals that will keep your plan on track. Instead of publishing Tweets and hoping for the best, set goals and objectives for Twitter. These goals should help your business meet its overall marketing goals. Goals for Twitter can include:

• Building an engaged following to increase brand awareness
• Generating leads by directing traffic to an offer or email list
• Increasing traffic to your website by posting links to blog content
• Building brand loyalty by providing excellent customer service on Twitter
• Networking with influencers and industry thought leaders to create more connections

Once you’ve determined your Twitter goals, set aside time every month to measure those goals. Make sure you know which Twitter metrics to track depending on your goal. Then you can analyze what’s working with your strategy and what needs tweaking. It helps to use a social media management platform like Sprout to measure your activity and track your goal’s progress.

Unleash the power of Twitter marketing

A solid Twitter marketing strategy gives you leverage in a competitive market. It helps you stand apart from the crowd while keeping your audience engaged. More importantly, it enables you to stay top of mind for your audience.

Use the steps outlined above to get started with Twitter marketing. And make sure to invest in a robust social media management platform like Sprout to make your job more efficient. Request a personalized demo to see how Sprout can help.

The post How to create a Twitter marketing strategy for your brand appeared first on Sprout Social.

Staying relevant and capturing your audience’s attention is a constant challenge for marketers. And now that brands rely on video content more than ever, it’s critical to use the correct social media video specs and advertising video sizes.

However, we couldn’t find all the correct social video sizes in one place. So we decided to create a complete guide of every single social media video spec and advertising video dimension.

Before we start, here are some additional resources to help you keep the information in once place:

• Easily reference our social media video specs in our always up-to-date Google Doc.
• Looking for image sizes? Check out our social media image sizes guide for help.
• Want to get better results with video? Download our social media video content workbook.

Social Media Video Specs & Ad Sizes Per Network

We’ve gathered a plethora of information on each social network’s specific video sizes and specs. Simply click the links below to jump to your desired network:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• TikTok
• Snapchat
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

Collaborative Publishing Made Easy with Sprout

Visually appealing content can often be found at the heart of successful social posts.

Whether it’s a video, image or text, Sprout’s Asset Library serves as the central hub, making accessibility, organization and collaboration easier than ever.

Experience how easy asset management can be when you get started with a free trial today.

Facebook Video Specs

Facebook video is consumed at higher rates each year, so it’s no wonder why so many marketers search for the correct Facebook video specs.

The challenge for marketers is that there are simply so many types of videos you can share on Facebook and the platform updates its design frequently. Each video format has different dimensions and specs, which can make it confusing to know whether or not you’re uploading the correct format for organic or paid posts. Follow the specs below to optimize your posts.

Shared Post Video (Landscape & Portrait)

Easily the most common type of video on Facebook comes from shared posts. This type of video lives in your Facebook feed, and can be shared by brands or your friends. While it’s not as easy to get organic reach on Facebook, it’s still a viable way to share video. You can choose between two video orientations: Landscape and Portrait. Here’s a look at the video specs for both.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended video dimensions 1280 x 720 for Landscape and Portrait.
• Minimum width is 1200 pixels (length depends on aspect ratio) for Landscape and Portrait.
• Landscape aspect ratio is 16:9.
• Portrait aspect ratio is 9:16 (if video includes link, aspect ratio is 16:9).
• Mobile renders both video types to aspect ratio 2:3.
• Max file size is 4GB (3 GB maximum in Sprout).
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Video length max is 240 minutes (45 minutes if uploading in Sprout).
• Video max frames 30fps.

360 Video

Facebook’s 360 Video allows users to get a complete 360-degree view by scrolling with a cursor on web, by touch or turning the device on mobile.

Video Guidelines

• The resolution and aspect ratio depends on the type of content:
  • Monoscopic: 5120 x 2560 maximum, aspect ratio 2:1
  • Stereoscopic: 5120 x 5120 maximum, aspect ratio 1:1
• Recommended max file size is 10GB.
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Video length maximum is 30 minutes.
• Recommended framerate is 30 fps.

Facebook Reels

The convenience of cross-posting your Instagram Reels to Facebook expands the viewership and reach of your videos. This format appears organically in feeds, but often gets “priority” on Facebook feeds.

• Recommended video formats are MP4 and MOV
• Allowed Frame Rate: 23 FPS minimum
• Allowed Duration: 4 seconds – 60 seconds
• Allowed File Size: No file size limit
• Resolution: 540 x 960 (540p) minimum (1080×1920 or greater recommended)
• Allowed Aspect Ratio: 9:16

Facebook Video Ad Specs

In-Feed Video Ads

These ads are the sponsored equivalent of in-feed posts and follow similar guidelines.

Video guidelines

• Recommended to upload the highest resolution video possible.
• Recommended resolution: 1080×1080.
• Recommended aspect ratio is between 9:16 to 16:9 (Horizontal: 16:9, Square: 1:1, Vertical: 4:5 or 2:3 and Full Portrait: 9:16).
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV (see full list here).
• Max video file size is 4GB.
• Video length max is 240 minutes.

Character limits

• Primary text: 125 characters.
• Link description: 30 characters.
• Headline: 40 characters.

There are more than 5 million advertisers now on Facebook and having the right specs for your ads can be tricky. Each type of Facebook video ad is different, so let’s go ahead and break down the specs for each type of video you can produce.

Carousel Video Ads

Facebook Carousel Video ads allow brands to showcase multiple videos (or images) and a link within a user’s Facebook feed. It has grown in popularity because its unique scrolling feature allows users to see more content before clicking a link. In fact, Digiday estimated Carousel Ads to be 10 times more effective than standard social media ads.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended video resolution 1080 x 1080.
• Aspect ratio is 1:1.
• Max video file size is 4 GB.
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Video duration range is 1 second to 240 minutes.
• Video max frames 30fps.

Collection Video Ads (Mobile)

The Facebook Collection ads showcases multiple images and a main video above it. This is perfect for displaying multiple products (or various colors of a single product) and a video as well. The ad type has been popular so far with retailers and clothing companies.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended video resolution 1080×1080.
• Square aspect ratio is 1:1.
• Max video file size is 4GB.
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Video length max is 120 minutes.
• Video max frames 30 fps.

Character Limits

• Primary text: 125 characters.
• Headline max: 40 characters.
• Landing page URL required.

Instant Experience Video Ads

Facebook Instant Experience ads open up a full-screen experience after the first click, which can be further customized with a variety of interactive features. This can include multiple video experiences, including features to auto-play on loop.

Video Guidelines

• Minimum resolution: 720p
• Portrait aspect ratio of 9:16 with pillarboxing for all others uploaded.
• Max video file size is 4GB.
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Maximum length of all video content must be 2 minutes combined.
• Video max frames 30fps.

Slideshow Video Ad

Facebook’s Slideshow videos were built for advertisers wanting to reach audiences with slower internet connections. Instead of a regular video, slideshows are just that–a slideshow of images or video in an ad display.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended video resolution 1200 x 720.
• Aspect ratios available are landscape (16:9), vertical (4:5) and square (1:1)
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Slideshow duration max is 15 seconds.

Facebook Stories (Ads & Organic Posts)

Facebook has also added the Stories feature, disappearing short photo or video updates that are only available for 24 hours. In addition to user-generated organic posts, Stories ads that run in between sets of user stories are also available.  While most users will be sharing immediate & organic updates from their phone’s camera without worrying too much about their video specs, the guidelines for this format are similar for paid & organic posts.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended resolution 1080×1080
• Aspect ratios: 1.91 to 9:16, with colored gradient bars rendered above and below videos under 9:16. The text field will also be placed under below videos smaller than this aspect ratio.
• Max video file size is 4GB
• Duration is 1 second to 2 minutes
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.

Character Limits

• Primary text: 125 characters
• Headline: 40 characters

For more information on the video specs for Facebook, visit the Facebook Help Center.

Instagram Video Specs

Instagram launched video capabilities in 2013 and quickly saw enough success to start advertising on the platform in 2015. Since then, video only continues to grow as an engaging social format. So needless to say, Instagram videos are absolutely worth the investment.

In-Feed Video (Landscape, Square & Vertical)

Since 2015, Instagram crafted its videos formats to allow three different styles: landscape, square and vertical. The predominantly-mobile social network is perfect to share videos of any size organically to reach your audience.

Video Guidelines

• Minimum resolution for all formats is 1080 x 1080
• Recommended horizontal pixel resolution is 1920
• Multiple aspect ratios are supported: Landscape aspect ratio is 16:9, square aspect ratio is 1:1, vertical aspect ratio is 4:5.
• Max file size for all formats is 4GB (*100MB maximum for Sprout Direct Publishing and 512MB maximum for Sprout Mobile App Flow Publishing).
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Video length is 3 to 60 seconds.
• Recommended frame rate is 23 to 60 FPS.
• Recommended data rate/bitrate for posting through Sprout: 5 Mbps (megabits per second)

Character Limits

• Primary text recommendation: 125 characters.
• Maximum number of hashtags: 30

Instagram Reels

Introduced in 2020, Instagram Reels are another option for your video strategy on Instagram. These short-form, easily digestible videos are becoming the preferred type of content in Instagram feeds.

Fortunately for social content creators looking to easily generate a lot of content for Instagram, most of the video specs for Instagram Reels are fairly similar to other formats on the platform, with the main differences being the short length and the ease of editing in-app to add effects and sound.

As Instagram has started to add separate tabs for different content types, thumbnails will be cropped differently on each view. If the viewer is on the first tab that has all content types, the thumbnail will be cropped to the traditional square post size of 1:1–center your subjects and plan to avoid undesirable vertical cropping.

• Allowed file extensions: .MP4 or .MOV
• Allowed Frame Rate: 23-60 FPS
• Allowed Duration: 3 seconds – 15 minutes
• Allowed File Size: 4 GB max (1 GB or less in Sprout)
• Allowed horizontal pixels: 1920p
• Allowed maximum bitrate: 5Mbps
• Allowed aspect ratio: 0.01:1-10:1 (9:16 recommended)

Instagram Video Ad Specs

Instagram’s advertising revenue has significantly increased over the last year. In fact, Instagram predicts to earn $4 billion in mobile ad revenue in 2017 alone. The push for Instagram advertising is real and marketers have to be ready to take advantage with engaging videos.

In-Feed Video Ad (Landscape, Square & Vertical)

Much like the in-feed organic Instagram video options, the network provides similar options for advertising. These video ads appear nearly identical to organic posts to blend in with users’ feeds. In fact, the Instagram video specs are the same for organic and paid content.

Video Guidelines

• Same as In-Feed Video.

Video Character Guidelines (Mobile)

• Same as In-Feed Video.

Carousel Video Ad

Much like Facebook’s Carousel Ads, Instagram offers a similar feature. Carousel ads allow users to see more of a product or feature than a single image or video. With Instagram, your carousel video ads can have 2-10 cards with a full-width call to action below the ad.

Video Guidelines

• Minimum resolution is 600 x 600.
• Max resolution is 1080 x 1080.
• Aspect ratio is 1:1.
• Max file size is 4GB.
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Max video length is 60 seconds.
• Instagram allows 2-10 videos/cards per ad.

Instagram Stories (Ads & Organic Posts)

It didn’t take long for Instagram Stories to feature ads within users’ story feeds. Brands can seamlessly integrate their video content between other Instagram users. Much like Snapchat, it’s smart to make these videos more raw and in-the-moment to avoid drastically standing out as an ad, especially since users can immediately swipe to leave.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended resolution is 1080 x 1080.
• Aspect ratio is 9:16.
• Max file size is 4GB.
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Video length max is 2 minutes for ads and 15 seconds for organic. If you upload a longer video on organic, it will be clipped into multiple Stories slides.

If you’re looking for further information including images, check out our complete guide to all the Instagram ad sizes!

For more information on the video specs for Instagram, visit the Facebook Help Center.

TikTok Video Specs

TikTok has quickly gained attention in the social space, and some social marketers might be feeling caught off guard by the rush to understand what works and what doesn’t on the platform. Fortunately, TikTok’s focus on easy to create and share videos means it’s not hard to start producing video content for the platform, and there are plenty of trends to inspire TikTok content creation. Read on for the specs.

TikTok Organic Videos

TikTok videos are all about the ease of creation, editing and sharing, so it makes sense that specs are more or less oriented around typical mobile phone dimensions. One key trait to keep in mind if you’re trying to repurpose video content across platforms is that videos uploaded from another file source, rather than recorded on the app, can be longer than 60 seconds.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended resolution: 1080×1920
• Aspect ratio: 9:16 recommended to fill a standard mobile phone screen (1:1 with letterboxing)
• Length: 15 seconds recorded in-app, 60 seconds in-app (4 sections of 15 seconds), or over 60 seconds when uploaded from another source
• Maximum file size: 287.6MB
• Video formats: MP4 or MOV recommended

TikTok Feed Ads

TikTok ads are a rapidly evolving opportunity for brands. The in-feed option for paid TikTok content is fairly similar to the formatting for existing organic content. To fine-tune paid content for the best performance, be sure to consult TikTok’s business center for the latest tips.

Video Guidelines

• Resolutions must be at least: 540×960, 640×64 or 960×540
• Aspect ratio options: 9:16, 1:1 or 16:9
• Length: 5–60 seconds, but 9–15 seconds is recommended
• Maximum file size: 500MB
• Bitrate minimum: 516 kbps
• Ad description character limits: 1-1000 Latin characters or 1-50 Asian characters
• Video formats: .MP4, .MOV, .MPEG .3GP, .AVI

Twitter Video Specs

Twitter is a popular space to share and interact with different social media videos. For marketers, it’s all about keeping a user’s attention with enthralling and click-worthy video content. In the sports and entertainment industry, Twitter is often the go-to for sharing video content, so it’s critical to learn the correct Twitter video specs.

Twitter Landscape & Portrait Videos

Twitter provides two formats of in-feed video content to share with your followers: landscape and portrait. These specific formats are only available for uploading video directly to Twitter, rather than sharing YouTube or Vimeo links. Luckily, Twitter makes it easy to share organic content, but the dimensions do change as the video bitrate alters.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended resolutions are 1280×720 (landscape), 720×1280 (portrait), 720×720 (square).
• Aspect ratios recommended at 16:9 (landscape or portrait), 1:1 (square). 1:1 is recommended as the best route for rendering across devices with the best output.
• Max file size is 512MB.
• Recommended video formats are .MP4 for web and .MOV for mobile.
• Video length max is 140 seconds.
• Recommended frame rates are 30 or 60 fps.

Character Limits

• Maximum count: 280 characters.

Twitter Videos Ad Specs

Looking to promote your video through paid ads on Twitter? Luckily, you can use the same exact formats from Twitter organic videos. Stick to the same specs for both organic and paid video to ensure maximum visibility.

For more information on the video specs for Twitter, visit the Twitter Help Center.

Snapchat Video Specs

Snapchat is still an active network for younger generations to share video content. Whether it’s through FOMO-inducing disapppfilters, Snapchat is a hotbed for video sharing. And for your brand, it’s important to know the correct video dimensions for Snapchat.

Single video ad

This video format is the most common across the channel and is the main way users communicate back and forth through the app. However, your business can post videos to its story so others can see what your business is up to. Just follow these specs:

Video Guidelines

• Recommended dimension is 1080 x 1920.
• Aspect ratio is 9:16.
• Max file size is 32MB.
• Accept video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Video length is between 3 and 10 seconds.

Long-Form Video Ad

Snapchat currently offers one main video format for ads, which is known as the long-form video. While there are partner opportunities to put video within Snapchat’s discovery option, most dimensions are the same, but require your business to reach out to the social network for more details on advertising. However, the Snapchat Long-Form Video Ad is what users see in between viewing users’ Stories.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended dimension is 1080 x 1920.
• Aspect ratio is 9:16 or 16:9.
• Max file size is 1GB.
• Accept video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Video length is 3 to 180 seconds.

For more information on the video specs for Snapchat, visit the Snapchat Ads Help Center.

YouTube Video Specs

Known as the second-largest search engine behind Google, YouTube is an essential network for video content. For marketers, YouTube is a great space to promote, educate and share video content around your brand.

As YouTube continues to grow as a destination for video content, it hosts everything from short form promotional videos to full-length movies and TV. This means users are streaming content on all sorts of devices, which could have different levels of zoom or overscan.

While there’s no hard and fast rules from the platform on how to approach the video editing concept of ‘title safe’ areas where text like titles and subtitles aren’t cut off, you do want to avoid placing these types of visual elements right at the edges of your video area. Read on for more specifics on each format available on YouTube.

Video Player (Standard YouTube Video)

While YouTube allows users to upload various types of media formats and use plenty of different dimensions, organically, there’s truly only one format for the video player. Organic videos should all follow 16:9 ratio, but can be uploaded 4:3. However, the smaller ratio will automatically pillarbox the sides to still make it fit in the player. YouTube has seven recommended dimensions and ratios for standard YouTube videos:

Video Guidelines

• Recommended dimensions: 426 x 240 (240p), 640 x 360 (360p), 854 x 480 (480p), 1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p) and 3840 x 2160 (2160p).
• Aspect ratio is 16:9 (auto adds pillarboxing if 4:3).
• Max file size is 128GB or 12 hours, whichever is less.
• Accepted video formats include: .MOV, .MPEG4, MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .MPEGPS, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM.
• Video length max is 12 hours.

YouTube Video Ad Specs

Standard YouTube videos are pretty straightforward, but there are a few video ad formats to learn if you want to advertise on the network. According to data from Google, Brands advertising on YouTube often receive a 20% increase in traffic.

Skippable, Non-Skippable, Mid-roll & Bumper Video Ads

We’ve put these four YouTube video ads specs together because in the end, they all play through the standard YouTube video player. That means all of these ad types follow the same dimensions as the non-ad videos, but only differ in video length. Let’s look at each ad type:

• Skippable Video Ad: This YouTube ad type is played before, during or after the content and becomes skippable after 5 seconds. This ad format is the only one allowing advertisers to monetize views from any viewing device.
• Non-Skippable Video Ad: This YouTube ad type is played before the content and users must watch the full 15 seconds (can also be added during or after video). However, views from TVs or game consoles don’t count toward a monetizable view.
• Mid-roll Video Ad: This YouTube ad type is played mid-view (like TV commercials) and is only available for content longer than 8 minutes. Ads are added either manually or automatically and again, views from TV or game consoles don’t count toward a monetizable view. Mid-rolls can be skippable, but users must watch 30 seconds or entire ad (whichever is shorter).
• Bumper Video Ads: This YouTube ad type is played before the content.It’s a small 6-second video ad that cannot be skipped, which is usually optimized for mobile views.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended dimensions: 426 x 240 (240p), 640 x 360 (360p), 854 x 480 (480p),1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p) and 3840 x 2160 (2160p).
• Minimum dimension is 426 x 240.
• Max dimension is 3840 x 2160.
• Aspect ratio is 16:9 (auto adds pillarboxing if 4:3).
• Max file size is 128GB or 12 hours, whichever is less.
• Accepted video formats include: .MOV, .MPEG4, MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .MPEGPS, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM.
• Skippable video length max is 6 minutes (skippable after 5 seconds).
• Non-skippable video length max is 15 or 20 seconds (30 seconds in some regions).
• Mid-roll video length minimum is 30 seconds.
• Bumper video length max is 6 seconds.

Display Ad

YouTube display ads are shown in users’ search queries and sometimes appear in the right video column when watching a video. These ads are static, which means they don’t automatically play. However, once the video is clicked, the type of content displayed can simply follow the standard video player guidelines mentioned above.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended dimensions for the static image is 300 x 250 for the larger side view or 300 x 60 for the smaller side view.
• Actual recommended video dimensions are: 426 x 240 (240p), 640 x 360 (360p), 854 x 480 (480p),1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p) and 3840 x 2160 (2160p).
• Aspect ratio is 16:9 (auto adds pillarboxing if 4:3)
• Max file size is 128GB or 12 hours, whichever is less.
• Accepted video formats include: .MOV, .MPEG4, .MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .MPEGPS, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM.

For more information on the video specs for YouTube, visit the Google Help Center.

YouTube Shorts

Introduced late 2020, YouTube Shorts have recently made its debut as another short-form video feature. These videos are a new way to watch, create and discover short-form content. Shorts can be captured and edited from a smartphone or uploaded through the standard upload workflow from desktop or mobile. Because people are watching more short-form videos globally, using Shorts is a new way to reach wider audiences to entertain, education or make them feel good.

Video Guidelines

• Recommended dimensions: 240×426 (240p), 360×640 (360p), 480×854 (480p), 720×1280 (720p), 1080×1920 (1080p), 1440×2560 (1440p), and 2160×3840 (2160p),
• Aspect ratio is 9:16.
• Video length is 60 seconds max.
• Accepted video formats include: .MOV, .MPEG4, MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .MPEGPS, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM.
• Music from the YouTube music library is limited to 15 seconds.
• Title character limit: 100 characters max.

For more information on the video specs for YouTube, visit the Google Help Center.

LinkedIn Video Specs

Even though LinkedIn is still in the early stages of video content adoption, the network is still a go-to source for sharing. In fact, nearly 75% of business executives say they watch online videos every week. With that number only likely to grow, it’s safe to say LinkedIn will continue to put video content at its forefront.

Shared Video

The only video format you can upload is through a shared video. While there are options to share YouTube links in shared posts and in LinkedIn Pulse articles, there’s still just one way to upload your own video.

Video Guidelines

• Aspect ratio is 1:2.4 to 2.4:1.
• Max file size is 5GB.
• Accepted video formats are .ASF, .AVI, .FLV, .MOV, .MPEG-1, .MPEG-4, .MP4, .MKV, and .WebM.
• Video length minimum is 3 seconds, max is 10 minutes.
• Video max frames 60fps.

For more information on the video specs for LinkedIn, visit the LinkedIn Help Center.

Video Ads

As of 2018, LinkedIn now offers video ads. The requirements are a little bit different than shared video, so be sure to consider them when developing ads for your paid campaign.

Video Guidelines

• Required dimensions are:
  • Landscape video: Minimum: 640 x 360, maximum: 1920 x 1080.
  • Square video: Minimum: 360 x 360, maximum: 1920 x 1920.
  • Vertical video: Minimum: 360 x 640, maximum: 1080 x 1920.
• Aspect ratios are:
  • Landscape: 16:9
  • Square: 1:1
  • Vertical: 9:16
• Maximum file size is 200 MB
• The accepted video format is .MP4
• Video length max is 30 minutes, although LinkedIn’s guidelines state most ads perform best at around 15 seconds
• Frame rate must be less than 30fps.

For more information on the video specs for LinkedIn ads, visit LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help.

Pinterest Promoted Video Specs

Pinterest allows video upload for business accounts only, so they have specs designed for brands to get the most out of the highly visual and inspirational lifestyle content frequently shared on the platform.

Shared Video

In addition to ads, business accounts can upload organic video content. There are two formats: standard and max width video.

Video Guidelines

• Standard video recommended aspect ratio: 1:1 (square) or 2:3, 4:5 or 9:16 (vertical)
• Max width video required aspect ratio: 1:1 (square) or 16.9 (widescreen)
• Max file size is 2GB.
• Acceptable video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
• Video duration is 4 seconds to 15 minutes (for ads, the platform notes that 6-15 seconds are optimal).

Character Limits

• Title: Up to 100 characters.
• Description: Up to 500 characters.

Promoted Pinterest Video

There are two formats for Pinterest Promoted Video: standard and max width. Both versions have the same specs as the options for organic uploads. These video ads appear in users’ boards, but advertisers can select the style in the ads manager.

Video Guidelines

• Same as shared video

The post Always Up-to-Date Guide to Social Media Video Specs appeared first on Sprout Social.

They want to speak to a human as soon as possible, and guess where they go to achieve this? Social media.

The number of US social media users is expected to surpass 308 million in 2023 (up over 6 million from 2022 projections). So brands—now’s the time to build a social customer care strategy (if you don’t already have one).

Not sure where to start?

In this piece, we’ll discuss leading social media customer service statistics and how to use them to build stronger relationships in 2023.

How do customers use social media for support?

Brands have several options for delivering customer support, but the one that appeals most to consumers is social media. From 2020 to 2021 alone, the volume of consumers who preferred using social messaging for customer service jumped an impressive 110%.

As customers continue to flock to social for their support needs, it will take more effort to maintain speedy social media response times. Be careful—if you fail to offer timely resolutions on social, almost half of consumers may unfollow your brand. Even worse, social media trends show that over a third will talk about the experience with their family and friends.

So how are customers using social channels to receive support from brands?

“About 70% of my customers reached out to me through social media channels, the other 30% by email,” says Zoila Streich, Co-Founder of Independent Fashion Bloggers and former fashion business owner. “Most questions are about product availability and payment methods, but a few are feedback about the products or the buying process.”

You’ll also find customers using it to report service outages:

Or to point out issues with shipments and deliveries:

It’s disheartening to get negative feedback, but being respectful and helpful to each customer’s request will help in the long run.

Combining a great product or service with excellent support sets you up for more positive remarks from customers:

Make sure to prepare for the ebbs and flows of incoming customer support requests. New product launches or promotions lead to an influx of sales, which means more opportunities for inbound questions, so have your social media presence properly staffed.

“The volume of customers using our social media customer support fluctuates between 40% to 60%, depending on promotions,” says Yuvi Alpert, Founder, Creative Director and CEO of jewelry brand Noémie. “Because we drive people to our social media profiles through other channels, such as our newsletter, many of the questions we receive come through those platforms.”

How important is social media customer service to consumers?

Social media has flipped the balance of power between brands and consumers. Only on social can people compare a brand’s support practices to its competitors in less than a few clicks. If a business providing similar products or services is offering better help, Sprout Social’s Index™ found that 30% of consumers say they’d choose the competitor.

The public nature of social media support has influenced many brands to rethink their roster of standard support channels. More than half say that private/direct messaging plays a role in their customer care strategy.

With social media customer service stats like these, there’s only one thing to do: improve your social media A-game, so you don’t fall into the trenches of negative reviews.

Being consistent with your customer support builds trust and loyalty. Some will even go out of their way to show their praises in public (hello, social proof).

Having stellar customer support is essential to both customers and brands. But manually responding to every message—especially when you have multiple social media accounts and thousands of customers—is not sustainable.

With a tool like Sprout Social, customer care teams can organize and filter incoming messages across platforms, triage responses and view critical customer information all in one place.

Start your free Sprout trial

How quickly do brands need to reply to customer service messages on social?

Being present on social media is great. But having a fast response rate sets apart the “best in class” brands from the “I’m unfollowing you because your customer service is horrible” brands.

How fast is fast enough? In many cases, it depends on the industry and the situation.

For instance, Yuvi Alpert finds a day is fast enough during promotions. “It is critical that we answer those questions within 24 hours. We found that allowing more time to elapse lowers customer interest. By offering prompt responses, we see dramatic increases in sales of featured items.”

But what do customers say the proper response time is for social media customer support?

Our latest Sprout Social Index™ data found that 76% of consumers expect a reply within 24 hours on social.

At one time, taking a day or more to respond to a customer was acceptable. But now most demand instant access and gratification. And if you’re considered a high-priced product or service, then you definitely must respond quickly. Customers who pay more for a service expect a higher level of social customer care.

When MeUndies set a goal of replying to all messages within a 60-minute window, they needed an alternative to responding natively through social platforms. They turned to Sprout’s Smart Inbox to get an all-encompassing view of their Instagram direct messages, mentions and comments in one stream.

Now, be mindful that a fast response isn’t the primary goal—it’s to resolve customers’ issues. Unfortunately, some brands are quick to reply but slow to resolve. And when that happens, unhappy customers will let you (and all their followers) know:

Delta is replying, but the issue is lingering too long. Address customer problems fast or risk losing current and potential customers.

Facebook customer service stats

Facebook is the number one platform where consumers follow brands, so it’s easy to reach out whenever needed. Around 69% of Facebook Messenger users say communicating with brands here builds confidence in the company.

If your customers are on Facebook, then you should be too.

OLIPOP, a tonic brand, uses Facebook to offer direct customer support. “I’d estimate at least 50% of our customers will message us questions or comment directly on our posts across Facebook and Instagram,” says Melanie Bedwell, eCommerce Manager for OLIPOP. “Ideally, we try to reply instantly, but if that’s not possible, then at least during the same day.”

Here are examples of their engagement with happy customers:

They also use opportunities to promote their in-store options (and their tool to locate one near you).

Twitter customer service stats

Twitter is where you’ll find most people headed to compliment or complain about a brand. About 64% of Twitter users even say they’d rather Tweet a brand than call them.

We partnered with Twitter to learn more about how consumers are connecting with brands on the social network and found that:

• 53% of Twitter users find it helpful to see how brands answer questions or solve issues publicly.
• 51% of surveyed Twitter users report their experiences communicating with brands on Twitter makes them feel more favorable toward the brand.
• 1 in 3 (34%) Twitter users purchased a product or service after a positive customer interaction on Twitter.

Why do people reach out to brands on Twitter? All sorts of reasons, but the most popular reasons to seek out customer service on the network are product defectiveness (37%), order issues (29%) and bad in-person experiences (29%).

While it’s great to have this two-way communication with customers, a customer service-filled feed can distract from other campaigns and promotions your brand is trying to highlight. This is why some brands stand up separate Twitter accounts dedicated to customer care.

“Businesses use social media for a variety of purposes, including marketing, engaging with customers, interacting with influencers and more,” says Keenan Beavis, founder of Longhouse Media. “That’s why having a distinct social media account dedicated to customer support inquiries is so important. You don’t want your advertising, likes and shares to bury client demands and questions. ”

We see companies like Belkin using this approach. The consumer electronics brand notifies users to ask questions using its dedicated Twitter customer service channel.

If you visit Belkin on Twitter, you’ll see they go over and beyond for their customers. They even offer multi-lingual support.

Improve customer experiences with social media customer service

You created your business profiles on the social channels your customers frequent. But don’t just use them to promote your products and services. It’s a channel where today’s consumers expect customer support.

Be ready to engage with both customers and prospects by creating separate handles and using Sprout’s social customer service tools to manage it all in one place. Timely alerts + quick responses = happy customers. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Ready to build relationships with your customers? Sign up for Sprout’s free trial to get started.

The post The social media customer service statistics brands need to know in 2022 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Support requests vary, so there’s no standard reply formula that can guarantee Twitter customer service success. Instead, brands should build out customer service playbooks to pull from when handling support requests on the network.

To help you create yours, we rounded up seven examples showcasing how top brands use Twitter to deliver stellar support to their customers. Use these as inspiration to guide your support strategy on the network.

Why use Twitter for customer service?

Twitter is an ideal platform for customers to turn to when they need assistance. It’s fast-paced, public and geared toward conversation. It’s where people go to make their voices heard.

That doesn’t mean your support strategy should be limited to responding to issues from upset customers and solving individual support requests. Messages that answer questions or simplify the buying process count as customer service Tweets, too.

When we teamed up with Twitter to uncover data-driven insights on how consumers are connecting with brands on the network, we found that:

• 74% of consumers following brands on social media reach out on these platforms for customer service or support.
• 1 in 3 (34%) surveyed Twitter users purchased a product or service after a positive customer experience on Twitter.
• 53% of surveyed social media users report that they find it helpful to see how brands answer questions or solve issues publicly.

These stats prove that using Twitter for customer service can influence both brand perception and purchase behavior. Not bad for 280 characters or less.

7 tips and examples to improve Twitter for customer service

Let’s dive into seven Twitter customer service examples from top brands that will help you create a strategy that gets people talking—in a good way!

1. Respond to issues quickly

Brands across Twitter are prioritizing speed and consumers are getting used to prompt response times. According to our research, one in three (36%) users report receiving a response from a brand in less than an hour.

To keep your social media response time in line with consumer expectations, you need to have a plan in place to monitor brand mentions.

Here’s a stellar example of a prompt response from Petco. A customer reached out at 12:21 p.m. CT asking about a possibly discontinued dog toy. The Petco social customer care team swooped in less than fifteen minutes later with a potential solution.

While it won’t always be possible to be this quick with your responses at all hours of the day, it is a good rule of thumb to respond to all Tweets sent during business hours, within the hour, and respond to any Tweets sent afterward within 12 hours.

2. Know when to move conversations off-platform

You won’t be able to resolve every support issue in 280 characters. Use an escalation management strategy to determine which problems need more in-depth attention.

Knowing when to move conversations off the platform is particularly important when dealing with private information or when the conversation grows complex and time-consuming.

Here’s an example from Notion’s Twitter account as they help a customer dealing with an unstable app environment. After sending a few Tweets back and forth, they directed the user to a support email address for additional help. They also request a screenshot or recording so they can provide a better customer service experience.

It’s a good idea to compile a document with each of the items your Twitter support can handle, as well as where to lead customers if something needs more direct or in-depth attention.

You can also use Sprout Social’s Saved Replies feature to help guide your responses and the help you should be giving. Save text responses to your asset library to keep customer service Tweets at the ready. It’s a great way to store links to specific resources and stylistically consistent information like product names and details. Your team can then focus on building a personalized response to individual messages around this core information.

3. Showcase your brand’s personality when responding to complaints

When using Twitter for customer service, you still want to keep your brand voice and personality throughout your communication. Creating engaging replies using images/GIFs/emojis can be a great way to stay in touch with your roots.

Of course, whether this is appropriate may depend on your overall industry and the severity of specific complaints. Be sure to cover this item in your overall Twitter customer care strategy.

Take a look at this tweet from Discord, a brand that makes internet-speak a core part of its brand personality.

Their response to this complaint is less formal than most, staying true to their brand personality. Make sure your Twitter customer service responses are always genuine and match your brand.

4. Analyze Tweets and tag common issues to provide better service

Twitter customer service isn’t just about fielding complaints from customers: it can be a valuable source of business inspiration, too.

Take this interaction from Grammarly, for example. A customer with a unique use case for global settings reached out to see if they could accomplish their request using an existing feature. Grammarly’s response let them know that while it wasn’t currently possible, they had routed the feedback to their product team.

This is a great way to let a customer know you acknowledge their request, even if no immediate fix is available. It also supplies their product team with meaningful user feedback that they otherwise might have missed.

If you want to streamline the internal flow of information, try Sprout’s Tagging feature. With Tags, you can label and support incoming Twitter messages with custom categories, like “feature request” or “product complaint”. You can spot trending issues or business opportunities as messages come in using the Tag Report.

5. Automate replies to common issues to save time

If a widespread issue is impacting multiple customers, chances are you’re going to hear about it from more than a few people on social. Addressing similar messages over and over again isn’t just time-consuming—it can also lead to inconsistent responses that cause even more questions than they solve.

Southern California Edison (SCE) is one of the largest utility companies in the U.S. They cover 180 incorporated cities across 15 counties. Even a short outage can drive a ton of questions on social.

SCE uses Sprout to manage the high volume of messages they receive every week. In a recent example of their automation strategy, they use Saved Replies to keep a customer updated on their request status during a point of high traffic.

Their team also uses Sprout’s Bot Builder to quickly respond to customers’ Twitter DMs during nights and weekends when staff isn’t immediately available. These practices keep response times low, without having to staff up for night and weekend support.

6. Leverage Twitter DMs

Just because your followers can’t see your DMs doesn’t mean they don’t matter. Two out of three (65%) surveyed Twitter users like when a brand takes a public Tweet and asks the customer to DM them to take it to a private space and discuss details.

Not only do Twitter Direct Messages keep conversations private—they also support longer messages. A Twitter DM can be up to 10,000 characters long, making it much easier to work out complex issues. What goes on in a brand’s DMs should stay between the brand and the customer, so we created a mockup to show you how we manage our Twitter DMs at Sprout:

When someone reaches out to us privately, we send out an automated message to gather some quick information about the request at hand. From there, we connect the customer with the right person for quick and easy resolution.

7. Humanize your support team

One final way to make your Twitter customer service stand out is by letting your audience know that real people are behind the handle.

You can approach this in different ways depending on how your overall brand voice is structured: you might refer to your team as ‘we,’ include initials or names as a sign-off to messages, and use conversational language when appropriate for each response.

Chipotle uses all three approaches. Their personalized responses use names, ‘us/we’ references and a conversational tone to remind customers they’re speaking to an actual person.

If you choose to go this route in your Twitter support strategy, don’t be afraid to use emotion (“we’re excited about this too”) or a more personal tone (“this isn’t what we like to see”). Don’t just rattle off a form reply and add on initials to offset a dry response.

Online customer service can be frustrating for customers who want to know they’re talking to an actual human being. Building in reminders that there’s a person behind the handle is a great way to reassure your audience.

It’s time to start using Twitter for customer service

Good customer service is the foundation of a positive brand reputation, so it’s time to ensure you’re being as helpful as possible. These seven Twitter customer service examples should have you well on your way to creating better customer experiences on the network.

Take advantage of Sprout Social’s customer service features to help keep track of all brand mentions and respond accordingly. Start a free trial to see how Sprout Social can empower you to overhaul your customer care strategy across platforms.

Start Your Free Trial

The post Twitter for customer service: 7 pro tips and examples appeared first on Sprout Social.

If you haven’t brought video into your social media strategy, consider this your “twist my arm” moment.

But video creation requires work. You want your time and effort to go toward content that is effective for your channels and your brand. And to know what videos work, you need the right metrics.

Let’s explore video engagement metrics that help you understand organic performance across your biggest channels.

Dive deeper into video engagement performance with Sprout Social

Sprout’s Premium Analytics give you a full, 360-degree view of how your videos—paid and organic—perform on social.

Fast reporting helps you understand what content impacts your business and strategy, and how.

Request a demo to try Sprout’s Premium Analytics tools and see how they can enhance your strategy.

Before we start, know your goals

If you feel overwhelmed by the dozens of video metrics out there, there’s good news—you can be choosy.

The best way to pick the right metrics is to ask yourself: what are my channel-specific goals?

As Sprout Social’s Senior Social Media Manager Rachael Samuels puts it, “On every network, the metric that relates to the goal or purpose of the video is what you should measure. If you want people to comment or take action, views aren’t the most important but view duration might be. If your goal is awareness, if it’s an ad, if you want your video in front of thousands of people—views are more important.”

Video engagement metrics you need to improve content performance

While everyone knows metrics like views and impressions can inform performance, they might not tell the full story.

Here are some key video engagement metrics to help you dive deeper into your performance data and know where to focus your production efforts.

TikTok metrics to track

As a short-form video app, views are everything on TikTok. The second your video starts playing, it’s counted as a view—including when a video is replayed. Views from you watching your own video, however, don’t add to your total count.

Here are some TikTok metrics to track.

Total likes and total views

These are two individual metrics, but they’re important to compare. A high total views count is exciting. But if your total likes are low, you’re not getting the most out of your content.

The TikTok algorithm uses likes as a key signal when it comes to identifying popular content to organically show to more users. If your likes are low, especially on videos with a high view count, experiment and find new ways to make your content more engaging.

Post time

Most newly-uploaded videos reach peak engagement soon after being published. Publish videos when your audience is more active to rack up more engagement earlier. Look at the post time of your most successful videos to identify your best times to post on TikTok.

Watched full video

Viewers watching your video to the end holds a lot of weight with TikTok’s algorithm. Luckily, the majority of consumers find short-form video to be the most engaging content type.

To achieve a better video completion rate, create engaging, bite-sized videos with sounds and text that keep viewers watching. Tracking this metric will help you understand how well you’re hitting this goal.

Traffic sources

Knowing whether the majority of your traffic comes from your followers or new users in the For You Page tells you how much organic reach your content is getting.

A little background: there are three TikTok feeds, including the Friends Tab, Following Feed and the For You Page. The For You page is where you want your content to show up, and where you can go viral. Tracking video views received from the For You feed will tell you which videos TikTok is pushing to more people.

Average watch time

Like we mentioned, completion rate matters on TikTok. Tracking the average time people watch your content will inform when people are falling off, and what your ideal video length might be.

Keep in mind—TikTok only keeps your data for 60 days. Using a tool, like Sprout Social’s reporting and analytics, empowers you to see your lifetime TikTok data, and even compare your TikTok performance to the performance of your other accounts.

Facebook video metrics to watch

A video view on Facebook counts when a user watches a video for at least three seconds.

Average video time watched

This can help you understand your audience’s preferred video length.

Sound on vs. Sound off video views

The vast majority of video on the internet are watched without sound. Knowing whether your videos are watched with or without sound can help you prioritize captions, music, voiceover and more. Dig into how sound on vs. sound off video plays compare using Sprout Social’s Premium Analytics tools.

Full video views vs. partial

A partial view is the number of times users watch a video for at least three seconds, but no more than 30 seconds and not to the end.

A full video view is the number of times users view your post’s video for at least 30 seconds, or almost to the end for shorter videos.

Seeing these two metrics next to each other can help you visualize if your video retention improves over time.

Click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of times users clicked in your post as a percentage of impressions during its lifetime—especially important if your goal is to boost conversions or leads.

Cut out the manual calculation that goes into CTR. Sprout Social’s Premium Analytics feature calculates this metric in a downloadable report in seconds.

Unique video views

This is the number of unique users who viewed your video. If one person watches a video 10 times, it counts as one unique view.

Using Sprout’s Premium Analytics, compare this number against your total views to get a sense of how often your video is being replayed—an important metric considering Facebook favors content that keeps people coming back.

Click to play vs. Autoplay metrics

This can tell you how many people click to play your videos and which videos inspired interest. While videos on Facebook generally autoplay, this feature can be turned off.

Peak live viewers 

If livestreaming is a part of your video strategy, using Facebook’s Live video metrics can help you refine your approach to live audience.

Shares and comments

Facebook post engagements include reactions (Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry), shares, clicks and comments. Total engagements can give you a sense of how effective your video was overall.

People sharing your content is one of the best ways to organically reach new eyes in an algorithm-satisfying way.

95% video views

Facebook prioritizes content that sustains viewer attention. This metric highlights when viewers have watched at least 95% of your video, including those who skip ahead. Find this when you download your Post Performance Report with Sprout’s Premium Analytics.

Stand-out YouTube video metrics

YouTube has more than 2 billion active users and their newest video type—YouTube Shorts—generates more than 15 billion daily views. But beyond its popularity as a social platform, YouTube also has SEO and search applications. The platform is often touted as the most popular search engine behind Google.

Here are a few YouTube metrics to measure whether your videos are standing out.

Average view duration

YouTube prioritizes how much time is spent watching a video. It’s important to know which videos inspire people to keep watching, and how to recreate their success.

Card clicks

YouTube cards are the main type of pop-up you see during a video. There are four different kinds:

• Video: allows you to link to another YouTube video (see example below)
• Channel: allows you to link to another YouTube channel
• Link: YouTube Partners can link to an external website
• Playlist: can link to a public YouTube playlist

Card teaser impressions

This is the number of times that card teasers were displayed to viewers.

Subscribers gained/lost from video 

Looking at how many people subscribed to or unsubscribed from your channel from one video can tell you a lot about its impact.

Likes/Dislikes

While this may just seem like a vanity metric, YouTube’s algorithm weighs Likes and Dislikes when determining which videos to serve.

Key Instagram video metrics

On Instagram, a view is counted when someone has watched a video for three seconds or more.

Saves

When someone saves a video on Instagram, it means they liked it so much that they want to easily rewatch it. Instagram also uses saves as an indicator of what to show in the Explore feed.

Story metrics

Looking at Instagram Story analytics can help you understand their impact and which ones to recreate or turn into Highlights. Keep an eye on:

• Story taps back: Could indicate people are rewatching your Story, or the previous frame contained too much information
• Story taps forward: Could indicate people don’t want to stay on your Story
• Story exits: Who dropped off of or swiped out of your story
• Story replies: Who took the time to respond to your Stories, if you offer replies

Profile metrics

Looking at the following profile metrics can indicate if a recent video post led to a spike in profile actions:

• Website clicks
• Email link clicks
• Get Directions Clicks
• Phone Call Clicks

Using Sprout Social’s Premium Analytics feature, you can quickly pull these numbers to understand your audience behavior.

Essential LinkedIn video metrics 

Like Facebook, LinkedIn counts a view after three seconds, and your video view count doesn’t display publicly on your post until your video has reached 500 views.

Click-through rate

LinkedIn prefers native content that keeps users on the platform. Make sure your external links, like the job posting link below, are worth it by looking at which videos drive the most clicks to post links.

Pro tip: LinkedIn’s paid ad analytics open up opportunities for a deeper understanding of video performance. In Sprout’s Premium Analytics, you can look at view conversions to understand how your video directly impacted engagement.

Comments

Posts with a lot of longer comments, like the post below, get the platform’s attention—even more so than reactions (Like, Celebrate, Support, Love, Insightful, Curious.) They’re richer in content and can potentially increase time spent on a post, or dwell time, which LinkedIn’s algorithm favors.

Followers gained or lost 

Looking at this number after you’ve posted a video vs other types of content can reveal whether video is a powerful tool for you, or hurts you.

Helpful Twitter video metrics

A video view on Twitter is counted when someone has watched your video for at least two seconds with at least 50% of the video visible in their window.

Engagements

Twitter’s algorithm favors engagement as one of several key signals. The more engagements, the more attention. On Twitter, engagements include:

• Retweets
• Favorites
• Replies
• Mentions
• URL clicks
• Hashtag clicks
• Media views

Tweets that are Liked or commented on by one person may show up in their followers’ feeds, connecting you to new potential fans.

Follow or Unfollow from posts

Use this metric in Sprout’s Premium Analytics to understand which of your videos drive people away, and what videos attract new audience members.

Post media clicks

Post media clicks can tell you how many times viewers clicked your video—to pause it, for example—while watching.

What’s next: Turn video engagement information into action items

You’ve published videos on your social channels.

You have a sleek report highlighting their performance.

…Now what?

Data has a million stories to tell about your brand and channels. Here are a few ways you can level up your social media analytics from data points to actionable insights.

Report impact to stakeholders

Data provides a window into your strategy. It can also back you up when you need more resources for video creation by illustrating video’s impact on your brand to senior leaders.

Similarly, if your higher ups are pushing you to publish video formats that you know are not performing well, data can help prove your point. Use Sprout’s presentation-ready reports to present clear findings to your leadership team, and use Premium Analytics to answer some of their biggest questions about how social affects your business.

Know where to allocate your ad spend

It doesn’t make sense to boost or make an ad out of a video that doesn’t resonate. Knowing which videos are your most engaging can help you determine where to distribute your budget.

Guide your content strategy

Video content is a lot of work. Especially if you have to coordinate remote video production.

You want to make sure the work and energy you invest goes into the type of content that works best.

Looking at your video engagement data can highlight successful content to recreate and content that’s underperforming.

Here are a few factors that metrics can help you determine:

• Video length: Looking at view duration and video lengths with higher engagement can help you prioritize the right type of video content.
• Theme: What types of videos garnered the most engagement? Were they about your product? Funny? Informative?
• Quality: If all of your viewers drop off of a video at the same time, what’s turning them away? What can you fix?
• Card clicks: Specifically on YouTube, are a lot of people clicking a card at a specific time? Or is your card missing your audience?
• Frequency: Use video engagement data to determine how often to post, and when to pull back.
• Time of day: With social platforms like Facebook and Twitter putting a lot of value on posting time, video engagement data can help inform when your best times to post on social might be.
• Titles and description copy: Did your top-performing videos have particularly keyword-rich descriptions? What were their titles like?
• Preview images: Is there imagery that worked particularly well for video clicks?

Identify which videos to repurpose

The more mileage you can get out of one video, the better.

Identifying your high performers can help you determine which videos are worth repurposing and posting on other channels—even beyond social.

Connect content to intent

Going viral for the right reasons is every social media manager’s dream. But at the end of the day, your social efforts have to positively impact your business’ bottom line.

Video engagement data, when paired with other metrics, can help you connect content interactions with audience intent.

Looking at a successful video and comparing it to website clicks, event registrations, profile views, email signups, etc. at the time it was posted can connect content to action. This can illustrate the real business impact your efforts make to your senior leaders.

Make an impact with video engagement metrics

Video engagement metrics and social media analytics don’t exist in a silo.

By combining some of these metrics with awareness metrics—like impressions—and more, you can start to form a full picture of how video can drive your social strategy, and your business, forward.

It’s hard to be decisive when it comes to social data, but you’re not alone. Use our social media metrics cheat sheet to find the metrics that matter most to you. Then, level up your insights and make data analysis a breeze—request a demo of Sprout’s Analytics tools today.

The post The marketer’s guide to reporting on social video engagement appeared first on Sprout Social.

Whether it’s identifying which messages resonate, determining successful campaigns or spotting holes in your customer service, the data at your fingertips can turn seemingly random social interactions into strategy-changing insights.

Not sure where to get started? This guide will help make Twitter analytics much more manageable for you and your team.

• What are Twitter analytics?
• How to access Twitter analytics
• Who are Twitter analytics for?
• What metrics can you track with Twitter analytics
• How to maximize Twitter analytics with Sprout Social

What are Twitter analytics?

Twitter analytics compiles all the behaviors and actions audiences take when they come across your posts or profile–the clicks, follows, likes, expands and more–and breaks down that data to help you track performance and refine your strategy.

This data is critical for understanding who’s interacting with your Tweets and how your account is performing overall. Even if you log in daily and generally understand how the account is performing, it’s essential to put numbers to those feelings.

How to access Twitter analytics

Every Twitter profile comes with free access to the native Twitter analytics tool. Here’s how you can access the analytics dashboard for your page:

Step 1. From your Twitter dashboard, click on the “More” button on the left-hand panel. This will open a list of additional options such as settings and privacy, among others.

Step 2. Select the “Analytics” option. This will instantly bring you to your native Twitter analytics dashboard. Here, you can get an overview of how your profile and Tweets have been performing. The 28-day summary section gives you an overview of your performance. This will show you metrics related to Tweets, Tweet impressions, profile visits, mentions and followers.

Step 3. Scroll down and you’ll get to see the monthly breakdown of your performance. For each month, you can see your top Tweet, top mention, top follower and top media Tweet. You also get a summary of the number of Tweets, Tweet impressions, profile visits, mentions and new followers.

Step 4. Click on the “View all Tweet activity” button under your “Top Tweet” section. This will open more advanced analytics on how your Tweets have performed.

You’ll see a graph comparing how your Tweet impressions changed over the chosen period. You can also manually set the period you want to analyze.

Who are Twitter analytics for?

Anyone with an interest in how their Twitter account is performing should use Twitter analytics.

Check out how the Chicago Bulls use social data to take the guesswork out of what they do.

Analytics are most useful to those with a vested interest in Tweet performance and engagement rates. This means: practitioners, managers and agencies.

Those who are interested in building their brand–company or personal–will find Twitter analytics helpful in determining the type of posts that are most interesting to their followers. These insights are crucial for optimizing their Twitter marketing strategies to maximize results.

Twitter analytics for practitioners

For practitioners, advanced Tweet activity analytics help you understand how your Twitter posts are performing. You get to drill down to the singular Tweet level to see each Tweet’s metrics.

You can also see your top Tweets to see which ones seem to resonate well with your audience. These insights will help you inform and optimize your strategy.

Twitter analytics for managers

Managers will find Twitter analytics helpful because it measures the social ROI of paid and organic efforts. You get a comprehensive view of areas where you need to improve and understand how well your team is performing.

Twitter analytics for agencies

Finally, agencies can easily export the data and share it with clients. Twitter gives you the option to export data by Tweet or by day. So, you can build reports specific to business needs and help clients visualize the impact of your work.

What metrics can you track with Twitter analytics?

Let’s be honest, social media has its own language.

It’s easy to get confused and overwhelmed by mentions, hashtags, impressions, interactions and everything in between.

The bottom line is you can’t measure something you don’t understand. So here are some of the most important metrics that you’ll find within the native Twitter analytics dashboard and third-party Twitter analytics tools.

Impressions

The total number of times any user could have potentially seen a brand’s name or message.

Reach

The number of users who saw an impression of your post in their timeline.

Engagement

A Twitter user’s interaction with another user. This can come in the form of mentions, Retweets, favorites and new followers.

Engagement rate

Engagement rates are metrics that track how actively involved with your content your audience is. Engaged consumers interact with brands through “likes,” comments and social sharing.

The engagement rate is a metric often used in analyzing the efficacy of brand campaigns. People who spend time interacting with videos, updates and blogs are more likely to convert into paying customers. Engagement rates also have subset measurements like “sharing metrics” which highlight the impact of your word-of-mouth marketing.

Link clicks

The total number of times a link was clicked in a Tweet.

Mentions

The total number of instances where a Twitter user that is talking to you, or about you, mentions you in their tweet.

Followers

The number of Twitter users that are subscribed to your updates at any given time.

Response rate

Percent of inbound messages you respond to that warrant a response.

Response time

The amount of time it takes your business to respond to inbound messages.

Profile visits

The number of users who visited your profile within a given timeframe.

Top Tweet

The Tweet that earned the most impressions during a given month.

Top mention

The mention that earned the greatest number of engagements during a given month.

Top follower

Your most popular new follower based on the number of followers they have.

Top media Tweet

Your media Tweet—one that has an image, video or gif—that earned the most impressions during a given month.

Retweets without comments

The number of people who Retweeted you without adding a comment.

Likes

The number of likes that your Tweets received during a specified timeframe. It’s the small heart icon below every Tweet.

Replies

The number of replies that your Tweets received during a specified timeframe.

How to maximize Twitter analytics with Sprout Social

Twitter analytics provide a limitless supply of information to create better content, reach new audiences and improve user experiences. Here’s how you can use Sprout Social to maximize the insights from your Twitter analytics and inform your social strategy.

1. Identify your best content

Look at all the Tweets you’ve sent and identify which content has performed best. Use those insights to help you create content more likely to resonate with your audience.

Access this data from the Post Performance Report. This gives you an overview of post-level performance across all your profiles. You can filter the report to only show the Twitter profile you want to review.

You’ll see metrics like impressions and potential reach. In this report, you’ll also see the engagements and engagement rate per impression for each post.

With this data, you can identify why these posts were so successful.

• Find common themes in those top Tweets. Did the Tweet contain a hashtag, mention, or question? If so, think about including those in the future.
• Were there particular days or times that seem to work best with your audience? If so, schedule around those times in the future.
• Export your top Tweets and create a word cloud to more easily visualize messages that resonate.

2. Uncover trends in performance

Your Twitter Profiles Report can reveal how your performance has changed over time. From your performance summary, you can track metrics such as:

• Engagements
• Replies
• Likes
• Retweets
• Other post clicks
• Post link clicks

Changes in these metrics could indicate whether your strategy is working.

The Twitter Profiles Report also includes a helpful graph of your audience growth during the reporting period. This can help you visualize how you gained or lost followers over time. Compare this against your strategy and activities to uncover patterns. For example, did you gain lots of followers while running a certain campaign?

3. Analyze your competition

The Twitter Competitors Report lets you track and compare fundamental metrics against any Twitter profile. This gives you a comprehensive view of your competitors’ performance. You can then compare these metrics against your own profiles. This also allows you to benchmark your performance against the industry average.

Using this report, you can visualize how your follower size and audience growth compare to that of your competition.

Use the Profiles tab in the Twitter Competitors Report to get a side-by-side look at how you stack up to the competition. You’ll be able to compare Twitter stats such as:

• Impressions
• Engagements
• Engagement rate per impression
• Retweets
• Clicks

When you have enough data, analyze your competitors and think through how you can differentiate your presence. Think about questions like:

• Are they growing faster than you?
• When was the last time they posted?
• Are there long spans of time between each post?
• Do they respond to comments?

4. Report across multiple Twitter profiles

Looking at the performance of individual Twitter profiles is important, but you can also analyze multiple profiles at once if you have them. This provides additional data to help guide your strategy.

Use the Overview in the Profile Performance Report to get a summary of your performance across your Twitter profiles. This will collectively calculate the impressions, engagements, engagement rate and link clicks you earned across those profiles. The audience growth chart lets you compare how each of those profiles gained followers.

Additionally, you can also use the Profiles tab to compare stats across your Twitter profiles.

Analyze all your Twitter efforts at a high level to get a better sense of your overall presence. Identify which profiles are outperforming and which need more love.

5. Understand your Twitter followers

You can use Listening Topic Insights to view a detailed demographic breakdown of people interacting with a specific topic.

You can then understand whether your target audience is participating in relevant conversations. The device demographics give you a sense of how people like to communicate when discussing a given topic.

6. Identify advocates and Twitter influencers

Using the Profile Overview chart in your Listening Demographics can help identify influencers. It shows you which profiles are engaging in conversations around a given topic. This will help you uncover key influencers and advocates on the topic.

From this breakdown, you can easily view the gender, age, volume and engagements for each profile. Sort the list by volume and engagements to see which profiles are dominating the conversation.

From there you can easily start adding more names and faces to your influencer marketing strategy.

7. Discover hashtag and topic trends

Adding hashtags or jumping on hot topic trends can be a powerful way to bootstrap your posts. But it’s critical those hashtags and topics are relevant to your brand.

We have an all-in-one guide on hashtag analytics, including how to find and use them, but here is a quick summary.

Navigate to Sprout’s Twitter Trends Report to see the topics and hashtags that people frequently mention with your company’s handle. Use this to inform your content and hashtag strategy for better visibility and engagement.

For example, if a company is frequently mentioned on posts asking about “hours,” they may want to make that info more accessible within their profiles or business listings.

Or, if people are frequently mentioning your brand with the hashtag “#PerfectMorning,” adding that to your post could drive higher engagement and impressions.

8. Monitor hashtags and keywords over time

Not only can you surface the best topics and hashtags, but you can also track those keywords and hashtags over time.

Sprout’s Twitter Keyword Report helps you analyze keywords and quantify total volume, average volume per day and growth as well as a sampling of those Tweets and engagements.

You’ll find information on the volume of each keyword, the top accounts that used those keywords and the drill-down of metrics on each keyword. These reports are not only useful for creating new campaigns but also for monitoring how well a campaign is performing.

9.     Visualize Twitter campaigns

Are you and your team creating entire Twitter campaigns? Sprout lets you track both organic and paid campaigns on Twitter.

Tag each outbound or inbound social media message with a single or multiple campaign designations. See the following example for “Iced Coffee,” “Lemonade” and “Sunny Sale.”

Then track the entire campaign’s success within a single dashboard with metrics like:

• Impressions
• Engagements
• Clicks
• Average messages sent per day
• Total sent
• Average messages received per day
• Total received
• Growth trends

Start growing your Twitter

Analyzing your social performance regularly enables you to find out what works and what doesn’t. This ultimately means you can make smarter business decisions. In a small business setting, being able to quickly pivot is always a plus.

Once you’ve aligned goals and determined which metrics are key for your business, it’s time to start tracking. Don’t let the numbers or seemingly massive amounts of data scare you—with proper preparation, the right tools and a few “best practices,” you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to tackling Twitter.

Sign up for a personalized demo Sprout Social to see how it aligns with your Twitter strategy.

The post Twitter analytics: How to analyze and improve your Twitter marketing appeared first on Sprout Social.

While Twitter has its own built-in analytics (more on this later), there are a number of more robust Twitter analytics tools that also allow you to get a look at your other social media platforms all at the same time, streamlining your reporting process.

Throughout this article, we’re going to address the top nine Twitter analytics tools that can help you measure your performance and ensure your Tweets are resonating with your target audience.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social offers a number of social media management tools, from publishing and monitoring to analytics and reporting. You can easily get in-depth insights into how your Twitter account is performing, as well as a number of other platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok and more.

Sprout’s Optimal Send Times and ViralPost features also help simplify when your best time to post is.

Features:

• A platform overview, demographics information and a look into your profile all in one easy-to-use dashboard
• A look into your engagements, replies, likes, Retweets, post clicks and more
• Customizable look into your audience growth during your selected reporting period
• Several report options to guide your Twitter strategy:
  • Twitter Competitors Report to see how you stack up against the competition
  • Twitter Paid Performance report to see where your investments paid off
  • Twitter Trends and Twitter Keywords Reports can help you understand where the conversation is happening on Twitter so you can adjust your strategy to get more reach

Pricing: Try Sprout free for 30 days, and visit our pricing page to explore all plans.

2. SocialPilot

SocialPilot offers social media scheduling, content curation, its own browser extension, ads help as well as analytics. The platform also allows users to bulk schedule up to 500 Tweets at a time, making it easy to create and share a large number of Twitter posts at one time. Then, you can take advantage of their Twitter analytics tools to keep an eye on their performance.

Features:

• White-label reports that can be fully customized to fit your branding, and are ready to share with your team
• Track hashtags and influencers to keep an eye on conversations that relate back to your brand
• Discover who interacts with your posts the most so you can reciprocate or offer free product as a thank you

Pricing: Starting at $25.50/month, billed annually.

3. Keyhole

Keyhole differs from some of the other tools we’ve already covered because their entire focus is on social media analytics and reporting. Instead of offering it as only one of their features, they’ve dedicated their entire tool to ensure users are able to gather the most accurate and comprehensive social media insights possible.

Features:

• Generate automated, comprehensive reports that erase any potential for human error in spreadsheets
• Campaign-specific reporting so that you can see how individual social media promotions are performing
• Hashtag reporting that lets you track user-generated content and other hashtags your brand may be promoting

Pricing: Custom pricing—get in touch with their team to discuss your needs and get a quote.

4. Klear

Klear is an influencer marketing platform that also has a few free tools specifically for Twitter. As a whole, Klear is dedicated to helping users find the best influencers to work with, manage and analyze influencer marketing campaigns, and build connections with popular influencers in their niche.

Features:

• A free tool to help you find the best influencers to work with on Twitter
• A free tool that lets you analyze Twitter profiles—you can use this on your own or to gather insights on potential influencers

Pricing: The two Twitter-related tools above are completely free, though you do need to create an account to use them. To utilize their services for other platforms, you’ll need to schedule a demo to get a custom quote.

5. Tweepsmap

Tweepsmap is a Twitter-only analytics tool that helps you get actionable insights through their AI. While they of course provide analytics, a few other features Tweepsmap offers Twitter users are post scheduling, optimal Tweet times and engagement insights. The biggest complaint that Tweepsmap users have is that the user interface can sometimes be confusing and difficult to use, but with enough practice, you should be able to figure it out.

Features:

• Audience interest and sentiment analysis that lets you know what your followers are talking about
• Twitter engagement dashboard to keep an eye on how your followers are receiving your Tweets
• Twitter follower segmentation so you can get a deep dive into who is following your account

Pricing: They have a completely free plan with limited features. Paid plans start at $7/month, billed annually.

6. Followerwonk

Followerwonk is another website filled with tools only for Twitter. While it can be useful to have a tool that lets you access all analytics at once, tools that hone in on a single platform can also be useful—especially because tools like Followerwonk tend to have either free plan options or a very low price point, making it easy to add onto your other social media management tools.

Features:

• Analyze Twitter accounts to discover the accounts they follow, which can be a great way to pinpoint potential customers you should interact with
• Compare users to discover gaps or overlaps in how your followers line up with that of your competitors
• Track your follower growth over a specified time period to see how your account is growing

Pricing: There is a free plan. Paid plans start at $23/month, billed annually.

7. Twitonomy

Twitonomy is another Twitter-specific tool on our list. Their tagline is “Twitter #analytics and much more…” and they certainly do offer a lot of features. It’s simple to use; simply log in with Twitter and start analyzing your profile, your competitors, your followers and more.

Features:

• Basic dashboards that provide you with insights on your (or any selected account’s) Tweets and engagement
• The ability to back up and export your Tweets to keep an archive of everything you’ve shared on Twitter
• Follower reports that let you find out which accounts don’t follow you back and other interesting metrics

Pricing: Twitonomy offers a completely free plan with limited features. To access more features, paid plans start at $19/month.

8. Brand24

Brand24 is a media monitoring tool that helps you monitor and analyze media mentions across multiple platforms, ranging across social media, news publications, blogs, radio and more. This is useful to utilize when analyzing your Twitter mentions so that you can stay on top of any conversations happening around your brand or industry.

Features:

• Automated sentiment analysis that will provide you with a bird’s-eye-view of how Twitter users feel about your brand
• A mentions feed that allows you to quickly and easily find all Twitter mentions of your brand so you can organize and respond
• Marketing analytics that show you how many mentions your brand is getting, broken down into positive versus negative sentiments

Pricing: Starting at $49/month, billed annually.

9. Twitter Analytics

Twitter Analytics is the completely free, built-in analytics tool that Twitter offers to all users. To access, simply head to analytics.twitter.com, or from your regular Twitter feed, click More in the left sidebar, then click Analytics. Here, you get basic insights into your best-performing Tweets, how your last 28 days compared to the previous period and how much engagement your individual Tweets get.

Features:

• Monthly highlights that show your top Tweet, mention, follower and other monthly updates
• Deep dives into the number of engagements and what those specific engagements were for each Tweet (i.e., likes, profile clicks, detail expands, Retweets, replies and more)
• Your average monthly engagement rates, number of replies, Retweets and more

Pricing: Twitter Analytics is completely free for all Twitter users.

Find the best Twitter analytics tool for your brand

Ramp up your Twitter marketing strategy with the best tool(s) for monitoring and analyzing your performance. Ensuring your Tweets are resonating with your audience is the only way to know if your efforts on the platform are paying off. Start analyzing your Tweets and consider performing a Twitter audit to make sure you’re creating and publishing the best possible content.

The post 9 Twitter analytics tools to amplify your strategy appeared first on Sprout Social.

But where does Twitter fit into the social commerce landscape, and who is buying on Twitter?

To answer this, we reviewed Twitter’s latest ecommerce features and looked to brands mastering them. We also explain how you can leverage these features to sell on Twitter and best practices to get started.

This guide will cover:

• Twitter ecommerce features you need to know
• Examples of Twitter shopping in action
• 4 tips for getting started with Twitter ecommerce

Twitter ecommerce features you need to know

Twitter has rolled out four ecommerce features: Shops, Spotlights, Live Shopping and Product Drops.

1. Twitter Shops

Merchants can use Twitter Shops to showcase up to 50 products from their online stores. A Twitter shop is accessible via a “View Shop” button on your profile. This free, mobile-first feature aims to convert brand enthusiasts to buyers on the platform.

However, the payment option for these shops isn’t hosted on Twitter. The checkout link will take customers to your website or app, where they’ll fill in their details to complete their purchase.

2. Shop Spotlight

The Shop Spotlight is a carousel on your profile that features five products in your Twitter Shop. Shoppers can swipe through the carousel and tap on products to learn more.

Shop Spotlight is a part of Twitter’s larger effort around Professional Profiles, expanding the dedicated space for businesses and creators with ecommerce features that drive engagement and revenue.

3. Live Shopping

Host a Live Shopping broadcast for followers to buy alongside—like an infomercial. The engagement and shopping options are displayed below the video stream, which include:

• A “Shop” banner and tab on the event’s page featuring all the products from the broadcast.
• The “Latest” tab where new products show up as they appear on the live stream.
• A live Tweet discussion about the product(s) that takes place underneath the live stream.

4. Product Drops

Product Drops are to Twitter shopping as trailers are to movies. Show potential customers a sneak peek of products and drum up anticipation before they officially launch. You can also track which user profiles engage with the drop to inform future advertising and marketing initiatives. Early brands testing this feature include Dior, The Home Depot and Union Los Angeles.

Product Drop Tweets show up as regular Tweets on a user’s feed. Users can also set a product reminder, notifying them when it goes on sale.

This Twitter shopping feature is currently limited to iOS in the US.

Now that we’ve covered Twitter’s ecommerce features, let’s look at ways you can use them to expand your brand’s presence and generate revenue on the platform.

Examples of Twitter shopping in action

Whatever your product or service, direct-to-consumer brands can benefit from integrating their creative content streams—videos, live streams or carousels—with Twitter’s ecommerce features. Whether you’re an established brand or just starting out, the platform’s ecommerce features make it easy to begin.

Let’s look at brands selling out fast on Twitter:

Trixie Cosmetics

Founded by drag start Trixi Mattel, Trixie Cosmetics sells premium cosmetics in vibrant, whimsical packaging.

Trixie’s Twitter strategy is distinct through their use of scavenger hunts, quizzes and behind-the-scenes content to drive engagement while featuring their products. To get their audience to actually buy, Trixie uses Shop Spotlights to launch new collections and builds hype around them through Tweets.

By leveraging Twitter’s full stack of features, Trixie is able to create a seamless brand and buying experience, building brand credibility and authenticity while promoting products. Look at your current Twitter strategy and identify ways to expand upon it with Twitter ecommerce tools. 

Use Live Shopping to host tutorials with influencers or share behind-the-scenes content, like Trixie’s warehouse tours and customer spotlights.

Twitter Spotlights can double as pop-up sales introducing limited-edition products, seasonal specials or influencer collaborations to ignite excitement and give a special reason to buy now.

Arden Cove

Arden Cove is a brand selling theft-resistant travel bags and accessories—empowering women to travel without the fear of being pick-pocketed.

Their consistent posting schedule paired with proactive customer engagement allowed them to integrate Twitter Shops seamlessly. With special discounts available through their Twitter Shop, customers can enjoy a unique experience while shopping in the app. Plus, their live streams amplify special products and give customers the chance to interact directly with the brand.

Arden Cove creates compelling content that keeps their audience engaged throughout their buying journey, from inspiration and aspiration to conversion. Focus on converting your aspirational Twitter content into direct sales. Spark interest with live streams featuring your products or Q&As with experts, then drive excitement with Product Drops of coveted items. The previews, reminders and limited-time offers will encourage conversion.

All I Do Is Cook

This brand sells ready-to-eat African food products, using Twitter to inspire their audience with recipes that incorporate their ingredients. All I Do is Cook takes it a step further by selling their recipe ingredients directly to customers via Twitter shopping features.

Their structured Twitter Shop is segmented into categories—such as Snacks, Sides and Stews and Soups—to help buyers effectively navigate products.

Their strategy features a guided approach that ushers customers to their products based on interests, reducing friction on the path to conversion. Turning their Twitter Shop into more than a store, but a shopping guide. 

Organize your products to make everything easy to find, then layer in other Twitter features so your customers can quickly find the latest products.

Now that we’ve seen how brands are creatively strategizing for Twitter ecommerce, the next question is: How do you get started?

4 tips for getting started with Twitter ecommerce

Before you dive in to your first sale, here are some things to keep in mind when building your Twitter ecommerce strategy:

1. Start small

Don’t feel the need to incorporate all of these features at once. Identify which would make the most sense for your audience and brand. Consider who follows you on the platform and what they’d be most interested in purchasing. Then start with offering products that align with those interests.

If you have more than 50 products to sell, Twitter Shops can double up as “Bestseller” or “Last few pieces” lists for popular items that sell fast.

Twitter Spotlight is well-suited for featuring signature products that are integral to your brand’s identity, such as the Louis Vuitton tote or MAC Cosmetics’ Ruby Woo lipstick.

2. Collaborate with influencers

Twitter has its own band of influencers who are trusted by their communities. Find influencers who echo your values and collaborate with them to host Live Shopping events or co-tweet Product Drops to expose your brand to a larger audience.

3. Integrate ads

Twitter’s algorithm places ads where it makes the most sense in a feed—between actual conversations about products. This is why Product Drops can integrate naturally with Twitter’s conversational ads. Remember to create your ads and Product Drop content in the same brand style for a consistent experience.

4. Align with trends

Twitter is one of the epicenters of conversation around the latest news and trends, and users are also not afraid to share their opinions about brands and products on the platform. Listening to these conversations can uncover content and promotional opportunities relevant to your target customers and products. Leverage Twitter listening data to unearth relevant trends and weave them into your Product Drop content, live streams and more.

Embrace Twitter ecommerce

Twitter ecommerce is not limited to brands that are already popular on the platform. These features can help brands of all sizes start selling directly on the platform. Find your niche and nurture your community with the content and products they want and need.

To learn more about expanding your ecommerce strategy on Twitter and beyond, read our 2022 Social Shopping Data Report.

The post Twitter ecommerce: How to embrace the next social shopping frontier appeared first on Sprout Social.

Customers sometimes discover your business on Twitter, but often they end up on your website from a search engine or other source rather than a Tweet. One key to maximizing discoverability on Twitter? Embed a Twitter feed on your website and show your Tweet activity to your website visitors.

Adding a Twitter embed widget to your website helps create a cohesive online identity and makes it easy for people to follow your online conversations in one place. It can increase engagement from website visitors and Twitter followers, plus it’s a great way to keep your website fresh and relevant.

5 types of Twitter feeds you can embed on a website

You can embed a Twitter timeline feed or button on your website using the Twitter widget embed tool (listed below). Or, there are a few different ways you can display Twitter posts on your site including:

• Twitter’s embedding tool (free)
• Plug-ins and integrations with your website hosting company (not always free)
• Third-party tools or widgets like Taggbox (usually not free)

We’ll expand on each of these in a minute.

First, we’ll present an overview of the different types of Twitter feeds and buttons that you can embed by pulling embed code from Twitter. They include:

1. Embedded Tweet feeds

A Tweet embed allows you to display a single Tweet to your website.

2. Embedded profile timeline feeds

A profile timeline embed displays Tweets from a single Twitter account on your website. You also have the option of embedding Follow and Mention buttons for a Twitter profile.

3. Embedded list feeds

You can embed a Twitter list feed directly onto your website which shows all posts associated with a curated list. Twitter Lists allow Twitter users to organize a group of accounts by topic. For example, you could create a Twitter List of industry thought leaders and embed it on your website’s resources page.

4. Embedded @handle feeds

With handle feeds, you have the option to embed a Twitter user’s profile (your own or someone else’s) onto your website. This is one way to embed your profile feed without needing the exact profile URL (you only need the handle). The handle embed also allows you to add Follow, Mention or Hashtag buttons.

5. Embedded #hashtag button

This is a button rather than a feed. It has one function: to enable your website visitors to Tweet about a given hashtag from your website. Users simply click on the Hashtag button, and a draft Tweet opens with the hashtag included.

3 quick ways to embed a Twitter feed to your website

Now for the fun stuff—three easy ways to display a Twitter feed on your site! You can:

1. Use Twitter’s free tool to manually embed your feed

Grab the embed code from Twitter’s embed tool by navigating to the Twitter embed page and inputting the following in the form field:

• A Twitter link URL (for a list, profile or Tweet)
• Your Twitter business handle (e.g., @SproutSocial)
• A hashtag (e.g., #SproutSocial)

Once you’ve filled out the embed form, Twitter provides you with an embed code that you can copy and paste into your website. The code for a Twitter handle (e.g., @SproutSocial) looks like this:

<a class=”twitter-timeline” href=”https://twitter.com/Sprout Social?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>Tweets by Sprout Social</a> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

How to embed Twitter feeds in 2 easy steps

Step 1. Add the URL of the Tweet you want to embed to the form field.

Step 2. Choose your embed display type—either a Twitter timeline or button display. The timeline displays the Tweet (or list of Tweets) on your website the way Twitter content displays in its own feed. The Twitter button allows your visitors to interact with you on Twitter without leaving your website. Available button types are:

• Follow (allows users to follow your Twitter account)
• @Mention (allows users to send a Tweet to your Twitter handle)
• #Hashtag (allows users to Tweet about a hashtag)

Not all options are available with all feeds. Some feed types don’t have button options (or have fewer than three) and some allow only one button. Here’s a breakdown of what’s available by feed type:

Tweet

• Syntax: https://twitter.com/Sprout Social/status/1544347965061570560
• Options: Feed of a single Tweet

Profile

• Syntax: https://twitter.com/SproutSocial
• Options: Feed of embedded timeline + 2 buttons (Follow & Mention)

Profile feed embed example:

Twitter follow button embed example:

Twitter mention button embed example:

List

• Syntax: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1305508946556456962
• Options: Timeline feed of the list (no buttons available)

List feed embed example:

Handle

• Syntax: @SproutSocial
• Options: Timeline feed + 3 buttons (Follow, Mention & Hashtag)
• See above for Follow/Mention button examples

Twitter hashtag button embed example:

Hashtag

• Syntax: #SproutSummit
• Options: Hashtag button embed only (see above example)

A note about embedded buttons: When a user clicks on an embedded button, it opens a new browser window on Twitter where they can complete the related action (e.g., send a Tweet using your hashtag, follow your account or mention your account in their Tweet).

2. Use a WordPress plug-in to embed Twitter feeds

WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world and offers many plug-ins that make it easy for webmasters to display Twitter feeds and other content from social media channels. And once you install a plug-in, you don’t need to worry about embedding any HTML codes.

Smash Balloon is a good WordPress plug-in for Twitter if you want lots of options for customization. It offers feed integrations with most top social media platforms. The plug-in also allows site owners to embed a feed into a WordPress page, post or widget.

The Twitter feed automatically adopts your website style and lets you customize feed layouts, filter unwanted terms, and create carousels. There’s a free version available with limited features. The paid version starts at $49/year.

Feed Them Social is a solid alternative to Smash Balloon. It has free and premium options, with the premium version starting at $50/year for a single domain. The plug-in integrates with four social networks (including Twitter) and can embed multiple feeds on the same page. Add multiple feeds, embed buttons, incorporate recent Tweets within a feed and customize feed appearance.

Pro tip: When considering a plug-in, make sure it’s up to date and compatible with the latest WordPress version and has a large number of active installs and positive ratings.

3. Use a third-party Twitter feed tool

Third-party tools like TagBoxx and Flockler focus on bringing user-generated content (UGC) from social platforms into owned environments such as your website. They tend to provide more robust customization and integration options than free tools, and they’re great for showcasing visual content.

Tagboxx offers a social embed widget that lets users curate and publish social feeds from a wide selection of social platforms, (Twitter included). Users can embed and customize Twitter feeds using hashtags, account profiles and handles. There’s a free version with minimal features so you can give it a test drive. The basic plan starts at $39/month.

Flockler’s embed tool makes it easy to pull Twitter feeds into your website. Users can create grids, scrollable carousels and content “walls” from Twitter posts, which can be customized using hashtags, accounts and pages from social media platforms. Pricing starts at $47/month. While there’s no free version, you can test the tool with a 14-day free trial.

5 Benefits of embedding your Twitter feed

Adding a Twitter feed to your website is an effective show-versus-tell approach when communicating brand identity and authenticity. There are many other benefits to displaying Twitter posts and other social media content on your website including:

• Turning website visitors into Twitter followers: Send website visitors to Twitter, where they can follow you from your profile, Tweets and mentions.
• Increasing Twitter reach and engagement: More visitors can share, like, or Retweet content on Twitter from your site.
• Building trust and credibility: Build social proof and increase confidence in your brand, particularly when you share positive reviews, customer feedback and current news.
• Increasing brand loyalty: Create a more interactive and personal experience for site visitors to engage them with your brand.
• Converting more website visitors: Show off customer testimonials, product reviews, awards and company news, all of which can help motivate visitors to convert.

Manage Twitter engagement with Sprout Social

Embedding Twitter feeds is a great way to capture new audiences and show you’re active in digital conversations. Whether you’re using Twitter as a customer care channel or to promote your brand, having a Twitter feed embedded on your site is valuable visibility.

But do you know how well your Twitter followers and impressions are growing?

With a powerful Twitter management tool such as Sprout Social, you can schedule and publish Tweets, track key performance metrics, monitor Twitter activity and easily engage with followers.

Learn more on how you can use Twitter effectively to build and grow your brand’s presence.

The post 3 simple ways to embed a Twitter Feed on your website appeared first on Sprout Social.