Twitter is now one of the top social media sites in the world, which is obvious to mention but also significant. Of the many Twitter metrics you ought to track, Twitter impressions must be high up on the list. When paired with other metrics, the tracking of impressions gives you an indication of how far your Tweets have gone. Twitter impressions act as one of the major indicators of your account’s presence on the platform.
Impressions aren’t supposed to be the only Twitter metric you’re tracking, but for this article, we’re going to break down what they are and how important they are to your brand.
What do impressions mean on Twitter?
A Twitter impression is an impact, and one impact means that someone has seen our post. An impression is counted when someone sees your tweet. That is, if your tweet has been seen 20 times, then it means it has 20 impressions. If your tweet included a hashtag, it also will mean that the hashtag got 20 impressions. For any person using Twitter for business, impressions are one of the main KPIs.
There are two types of Twitter impressions:
- Tweet Impressions: a tweet impression is generated when anyone sees our tweet. These impressions are available in the Twitter Analytics section of our Twitter profile and it is available only for the owner of the account. We cannot see the impressions of other people.
- Hashtag impression: Hashtag impressions are calculated using the number of followers of the users who use the hashtag. These impressions are called “potential impressions” because we don’t really know how many people really saw the tweet. If a person with 1,000 followers uses the hashtag of one campaign, we will say that he/she generated 1,000 impressions (potential impressions or impacts).
Twitter Impressions Vs Reach
Twitter impressions is a metric that is already accessible to every Twitter account with a configuration change. If you activate Twitter’s native tools and insights for your profile, you’ll see Tweet activity per tweet on Twitter. A small graph symbol is located at the end of each Tweet, and when you open it, you’ll be given some Tweet data, including impressions and total engagement. This feature is available on both the web and mobile versions of Twitter.
Impressions on Twitter are the cumulative number of times the post has been seen. This involves not just the times that your tweet appears in the timeline of one of your followers, but also the times that it appears in the search or as a result of someone who likes the Tweet. It does not include times someone may have seen the Tweet through an embed on a website, third-party platform, or through text preview. It only counts when you see the post on Twitter itself.
In the Dashboard of Twitter Analytics, you can see how your Tweets have been doing overtime. Hovering over each day provides you information about organic impressions and promoted impressions. You can filter the data by date range and check how your recent tweets performed.
So, here’s the deal with Twitter impressions and reach:- Twitter impressions show how many times your tweet has been seen impressions), including timeline, search, and conversation impressions, but not including how many people who have seen it (reach), because one person can see your tweet multiple times.
So, if Twitter User A sees your tweet 10 times and Twitter User B sees your tweet 5 times, then your Twitter reach will be 2 and your Twitter impressions will be 15.
Where to find your Twitter impressions?
You might want to rush and check your Twitter impressions by now. But first, you need to enable Twitter analytics. You can do that by visiting analytics.twitter.com. If you haven’t done that yet, you will not be able to see past metrics. You will be able to see the data for all the tweets posted after enabling Twitter analytics.
Apart from Twitter impressions, you will be able to check out a lot of other data too. You can view impressions per tweet, as well as your collective impressions across all tweets for a given time period, for example, the past month.
How Twitter Impressions & Engagement Rate Interact
The ideal Tweet will have a high impression number as well as a high commitment rate. Getting both means that your Tweet has reached far and wide and has become significant enough for people to get involved. The engagement rate can be found in Twitter Analytics by tweet and as per the time period. You may therefore equate the success of one Tweet with the monthly average.
The engagement rate is determined by dividing the number of engagements by the sum of impressions. Engagement requires some interaction with the tweet that you post, which can be in the form of retweets, likes, clicks, shares, etc.
If you have a tiny proportion of impressions with a high number of followers, then your fans might be inactive. On the other hand, your tweets could use some work if you have high-impression numbers with a low engagement rate. Tweeting at the right time is also important to bring your tweet in front of people when they are active. To know the best time to tweet according to your industry, read our complete guide.
If you’d prefer not to think about when to post for the most engagement, and likely, most impressions, Try out RecurPost. It is a social media scheduling tool that offers the option to auto-schedule your tweets for the best time.
How many Twitter Impressions are good?
When you might be expecting a number for this answer, the actual response would be ‘It depends’. The best way to know if the number of impressions you got is good or bad is to compare it with other tweets and trending hashtags. There is no particular number that indicates good or bad. However, we can set a range that can be ideally considered good. It would be amazing if you get more than 20% impressions over your follower count. This number usually fluctuates, but 20% can be considered as good. It would mean that at least 20% of your followers saw your tweet. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your followers anyway.
Why are Twitter impressions important?
Twitter Impressions is a crucial statistic because it gives you an idea of how efficient your tweets are. Think about it this way: If you have 100 followers and all of them see your tweet, then you get 100 impressions. But then you reply to your own tweet with another tweet, so your 100 followers see not only your reply but also the original tweet again. That original tweet will jump from 100 impressions to 200 impressions.
Then, let’s say that let’s say a few of your followers retweet your tweet to their followers, bringing you another 300 impressions. You’ll gain a whopping 500 impressions with just 100 followers in this way.
How to increase your Twitter impressions?
1. Tweet a variety of content consistently
You might have heard about the 80/20 rule for posting content on Twitter. This means that 80% of your content should be informational and 20% of your content should be promotional. People on Twitter look for valuable content more than branded or promotional ones. So, cut out on just posting tweets related to your brand and give out tweets focused on industry news, educational info, tips, tricks, how-to guides, etc.
2. Engage with influencers, brands, and followers
The easiest way to increase your impressions is to constantly engage with others on the platform. Contact other brands, find influencers and address them and answer questions of your followers. Find and connect with the top followers for your account. You can find your top followers from Twitter analytics itself. Start a conversation on their tweets or retweet if you find their content interactive. Constantly engaging with other users will make your brand more visible and bring you more followers and tweet impressions.
3. Focus on your media
Tweets with large media pieces would possibly first catch people’s attention as they scroll through their Twitter feed. See your top tweets and see whether most of them contain pictures or videos or not. If you inserted a link, a picture preview would have automatically generated. Always consider posting high-quality images in the right size. The recommended size would be 440 x 220 pixels (2:1 ratio) and keep it horizontally centered to avoid odd cropping. A proper image will stop the scrollers and make them check out your tweet and likely interact with it too.
Conclusion
Now that the questions, “What are twitter impressions and why are they important?” are answered, go out there and get seen! Be consistent with what you post, provide relevant and valuable information along with smart branding, interact with people regularly, and watch your following as well as Twitter impressions reach new heights.
If you wish to manage your twitter accounts effortlessly, try out RecurPost’s free plan, which offers bulk scheduling of tweets, an advanced editorial calendar, creates tweet variations, analytics and reports, and a lot more! Sign up now to get started.
