Understanding Twitter Impressions: Why Are They Important?

Twitter impressions are described as the delivery of a post or tweet to an account?s Twitter stream. The stream is composed of several tweets from various sources. Not all tweets are read or noticed by the account owner, although people can increase exposure and their chances of being followed if they increase reach and impression. Reach is described as the total unique users on Twitter to where posts pertaining to the search term were forwarded. Exposure is different from impressions since the former refers to the frequency of tweets covering the search term. You can determine the number of impressions your hashtag makes the same way you study your tweet activity -- through reliable analytics tools. The gist is that the higher number of impressions your hashtag imprints, the greater the likelihood of your tweet getting noticed. If it involves a product offer, then the higher the chances of a sale.

Twitter Impressions Versus Tweet Counts

Before anything, let us agree that both are important to your social media marketing strategy because they both help you determine your market's online activity and lead you toward more targeted techniques. Twitter impressions are different from tweet count since impressions pertain to the actual interaction or engagement after the tweet has been delivered to various Twitter streams. Tweet count refers to the total number of tweets sent by an account, while the impression refers to the tweets sent that actually generate interaction or replies from others online. Not all tweets will generate responses or trigger engagement. There are, however, techniques that will significantly increase social media engagement. Let's compare the analytics generated from the promoted brand hashtag #wantnewcar by @Honda Cars. It is important to know reach, tweet count, impression and reach to determine the success of social media campaigns. In the case of #wantnewcar, we can see that since it started on July 14, 2013 it has generated as many as 7,120 tweets total and made 33.4 million impressions overall. The hashtag peaked on July 15, 2013 with 531 tweets and 30 million impressions. People use Twitter to get in touch with friends, spread information about a new product, an organization or charity and other issues. Tweets are also forwarded to make people aware of significant events and big shows. Marketers, casual users and business owners can determine how effective their previous campaigns were based on the tweets generated and the actual impressions made. Online users can also use different tools and techniques like replies, retweets and mentions to increase activity.

Hashtag Importance

Hashtags are particularly useful today when aiming to get more Twitter impressions. These are described as topics preceded by the ?#? symbol which will arrange these accordingly and make it easier for social media users to look for items and companies. Hashtags can also be monitored and evaluated according to period. You can check how well the hashtag trended and the total impressions made over the first 24 hours up to the next 7 days or more (even as far back as one year). For instance, you can compare how many impressions the continuous hashtag #Obama made six months ago against one week ago. Six Months Ago One Week Ago Several hashtags have made waves on Twitter, Ben & Jerry?s (@benandjerrys) started a hashtag campaign with #FairTweets one year ago, which became a huge success. The hashtag focuses on World Fair Trade Day wherein online users were encouraged to use the hashtag for their extra Twitter characters. See how it fared in the past month, impression-wise.   Overall, knowing the number of impressions a hashtag makes can help determine the next step in a social media campaign. That is, if the hashtag is reaching a very good number of people, that means you should continue it and move forward to your next step to close a sale. If it performs poorly, then it's time for your to rethink your strategy (perhaps change the hashtag?) and rebuild from there.   .