4 Key Performance Indicators To Measuring Hashtag Success

When you engage with Twitter users, you will notice a number of things happening on your account. There are indicators which will determine whether or not your hashtag is doing quite well. These factors should be properly managed through the use of features and apps to bring in more customers and increase brand awareness. You can observe how people engage with your tweets and respond, thereby bringing you added business and a solid reputation online.

1. Retweets

When people find your posts and tweets interesting, they will most likely retweet these, thereby allowing their own followers to view the same message and the source. You can view the total retweets on the social media site by looking under the retweet link on Twitter or searching via the Twitter search box for RT @(type in the user name) or retweet @(type in the user name). You can check the retweets for every thousand or hundred followers. In this example, we see that controversial business tycoon Donald Trump's post about the 2014 SuperBowl got 324 retweets and 377 favorites. When you retweet a post, you share it with your followers. When you favorite a post, you bookmark it for your personal consumption, or for repeat/further reading at a later time (or you simply agree with what the post says without having to share it).

2. Replies to @(username on Twitter)

Many Twitter followers use the @reply to forward their responses to your tweets. Similar to retweets, they can start a conversation with you through @reply. You can read and check both positive and negative replies to your tweets. You can then use the information to either improve the quality of your content or answer questions. Replies are effective in providing customer support and providing quick relief to minor problems. Know the number of @replies through ARPM or At Replies Per 1000 visitors or %AR. There are third party apps to measure this. To make this easier, you can simply Expand the tweet and check out the replies it generated from your followers and their followers.

3. Tweet link visits

These are the actual visits that you generate from clicks on links you include in tweets and will require a specific third-party tool or plug-in to measure on your website. User engagement increases significantly when you post links to tweets. You can determine how much more traffic you are getting based on the reliability and accuracy of the link. Many Twitter users find it helpful to read articles and blogs and include these in their posts to put more detail to the 140-character limit set on Twitter. The KPI is % Visit Rate to know the total visits for every 100 followers. To maximize the 140-character limit and leave more space to type information in, you can also shorten the links. Here's an example of a popular tweet that uses shortened links.

4. Total hashtags

You can also determine the success of your hashtag based on the total number of people joining the conversation and other related hashtags created based on it. You can generate more loyal customers by identifying key users and having them make related hashtags or provide new information to share in the conversation. Manage and maintain the conversation properly. Determine the growth of followers before and after each hashtag campaign. For this example, let us use the very popular hashtag #ThrowbackThursday. In the past week (7 days), the hashtag generated as much as 122,000 retweets and made 820 million impressions. In the past two weeks, it generated nearly 246,000 retweets and 1 billion impressions. You can go as far back as two months to see how a hashtag has performed.

Why KPIs Matter

All these KPI or key performance indicators will show how well your hashtag campaigns are doing and how you can improve on certain aspects depending on how current Twitter users react. Make the most out of each campaign by observing the particular replies of individuals and responding to their specific needs and interests. It will help to have a few allies or relevant users who can usher new clients and bring in the needed sales to grow your business. Keep the hashtag within topic at all times and respond in timely fashion always.