Digital Always Media Inc.
: Search, Social & Analytics :

Much has been written about benefits of social interaction with peers and customers on Twitter. Relatively little has been written about how powerful a tweet by a recognized brand can be or how overrated they can be. Many people involved in social marketing seek out key influencers just in hopes of having them retweet or share specific content. The belief is that support from an influencer will drive inordinate amounts of readership to a particular piece of content which in-turn creates awareness, which should lead to sales.

Let’s examine the power of the Tweet in this specific case study. Please remember that this is a single instance and results will vary based who tweeted what, the targeted sector, subject matter of the tweet, etc…

The Case Study

On June 25, 2014 an article I wrote on ” was published on the leading industry website MarketingLand.com. As per Marketing Land’s usual content marketing process a series of tweets over a 24 hour period were made on their Twitter account.

Within 24 hours a high profile twitter account specific to not only the analytics industry but specifically to Google Analytics (), tweet out the link to the article with the comment “Good Story”.

With over 500,000 followers on the @GoogleAnalytics Twitter account one might expect thousands of click-throughs from the tweet with several hundred within minutes. Time for a reality check. What is the life span of a tweet (how long is it visible in someone’s Twitter feed)? How many of these 500,000+ followers were online looking at their twitter stream at the moment of the tweet? How many cared about the subject matter? These are all factors that influence just how many people clicked through the link on that tweet.

The good news is that most URL shorteners capture and report on a variety of analytical data available to the public. To access this data, you simply need append a “+” to the end of the shortened URL. In this case the URL to the analytic data became “ “. This provided the following detailed information about just how effective this tweet was.

As evident in the above chart, the vast majority (as expected) of click-throughs occurred within the first hour (between 12-1pm Eastern) and dropped off sharply thereafter. There were only a few clicks in subsequent hours. In total over the first 19 hours, the tweet by Google Analytics generated a total of 112 clicks to the article via the shortened URL used in their tweet. This equates to 0.021% of their followers clicking through to read an article that they recommended. Excluded from this count are of the 112 people who clicked to read the article then decided to share the article by click on one of the native social sharing icons on the article page creating a multiplier effect. (Note: people who retweeted the original tweet to their followers who then subsequently click through the shorten URL provided by Google are are counted in the 122 clicks).

Compare this to a re-tweet by Rob Woods () who has a respectful 3,326 follower on another trackable shorten URL which generated 3 clicks. This equates to 0.09% of his followers clicking through the link more than 4 times the rate of the Google account.

While getting an additional 112 sets of eyeballs to read an article is valuable, is it worth the effort that might be required to get an influencer to tweet out that link? In the case of this article, there was no effort on my part, yet many involved in content marketing spend countless hours establishing contact with these influencers earning their trust, all to request at some point in the future that they share a piece of content. How much you value a read of your content will determine if your efforts were worthwhile.

The reality is when we publish content we need to market that content via all tools available to us and this includes reaching out to influencers. It just might be easier and less costly to establish a quality relationship with lower profile influencers (not as many followers) who, while not having the same reach, can deliver a higher percentage of their followers clicking through.

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