A Quick Dive into the New Twitter Dashboard

Twitter has been under some flak recently and for good reason.

As social media platforms expand in number and scope in response to user trends and demand some of the goliaths of this world have found themselves called to account in terms of features and capabilities that modern users expect.

The response to this has been a new set of analytical tools couched under a new Twitter dashboard available to users.

After Twitter stock hit a record low the response has arrived in the form of this significant update to the ability to monitor the trends and statistics of your Twitter accounts.

A key feature of the new Twitter dashboard is the point that users can get the analytics they need without having to resort to third-party tools – not the end of the world by itself, but it’s great to see such a widespread and integral part of the social media world identifying a need and responding in kind.

We’ll be taking a look at the key features of this update right here.

First Impressions

The first thing you’re greeted with when you enter the dashboard is your login page, after which you are taken to a new setup process. This page asks you to enter details of your business including fields for specifics such as business scale and employee headcount.

An interesting point to mention here is that on the front page Twitter states that the answers provided will aid them in providing more targeted and useful tips about how to tweet and what content to provide. This is repeated throughout the process as you go further.

After details have been entered the user is then taken to a page where they determine the details of their customized dashboard.

This includes details about key terms and handles and lets you prioritize what information and tweets or keywords you want to track on your dashboard. Neat!

Looking towards the left-hand side of the screen we can see details about your company name and common terms that are associated with your entry.

The right side also shows details about any mentions that are determined by the details you have already put in.

We feel that’s a great point to add in and will certainly help newbies get their heads around how to monitor traffic and terms to get an understanding of trends and top tweets.

There are also some handy features that are newly available such as the ability to make use of negative qualifiers, which are usually down to the advanced search function of Twitter.

Once that’s all been completed you’re good to go! The setup will take you to a new home screen page where you’ll have your own dedicated feed of tweets determined by the search terms you put in during the set-up phase.

So How Do We Like The New Twitter Dashboard So Far?

It certainly feels like a tailored response.

Twitter appears to have recognized the need for proper analytics and a user-friendly set-up process that doesn’t compromise power for ease of access. We particularly like the addition of negative qualifiers as mentioned above during the set-up phase.

Moving on.

What’s next – Scheduling and monitoring

Next up on the menu is some fantastic analytics. The “create” link on the left takes you to a tab where you can see how many tweets have been made in the last week as well as a prompt is shown at the bottom of the page suggesting ideas for your next set of messages.

These appear so far to be surprisingly well targeted, although it’s debatable how useful a feature is when many marketing professionals have their own specific campaigns and keyword focuses to work on already. It’s still a nice feature to see and might help small businesses in particular keep their tweets relevant to their demographic.

That said, the best thing we can see about this “create” tab is the fact that you can schedule tweets.

This is a big deal surprisingly – the function to schedule your tweets was previously the domain of separate plugins and platforms like If This Then That. The fact that Twitter has brought such a potent and important function in-house is great to see and much appreciated.

It’s worth noting here that Twitter might have missed out on an important little function by not allowing a list of when the audience relevant to your profile is most active and logged in.

Let’s talk about Analytics

Finally, we come to the Twitter Analytics tab.

Some of these functions have already been available through the set of Twitter’s analytics tools. They are available in a little more drilled-down sense here though.

First on the scene is a list of your total activity. This provides a well-presented drill down of your average count of daily tweets as well as an indication of their performance and the amount of engagement through replies received.

After that, you get a list of profile views and impressions available through a chart.

You’ll also be able to see a range of thirty or sixty days count for these details.

It’s appreciated that you can also set a difference between recent tweets and engagements.

A point to mention here is that Twitter has decided not to include date filters or the ability to show engagement types. We thought this would be included as you can see tweets listed in chronological order. It would be great to see them in different manners.

Mobile – What’s new

Finally, we come to the details of mobile analytics.

It’s no secret that mobile users are increasing drastically in numbers and it’s nice to see the response here in the addition of some extras within the twitter dashboard.

This new tool is a great thing to take a look at even if you only want to set up a tracker for mentions that link in with a series of keywords.

The tool doesn’t really provide anything particularly revolutionary or drastically new but it’s well-presented and has some flex that will let you get the analytics you need for your mobile viewer base.

So what’s the final word?

Great.

It’s no secret that you can get all of these through third-party tools.

Not everyone will know the best tools to access and how to make use of them. The point here is that Twitter has responded to a hit on its stock by understanding well what people need – analytics.

This new suite will be of particular use to small companies and beginners in Twitter who will benefit greatly from the tooltips and advice provided as part of the setup.

More seasoned marketers and social media workers will also surely appreciate the integration of some well-displayed analytics tools into the new Twitter dashboard.

Overall a great move with little to criticize.

Well done Twitter!