How to Audit Twitter

Is a Twitter audit due?

Recent social media demographics show a thriving platform.

Twitter is still a great platform to promote content, make announcements, and interact with your audience.

But without the bustle of Instagram or TikTok, many corporate Twitter accounts stagnate.

It if you haven’t updated your profile or pinned Tweet in a few years, now is the time to do so.

Here’s how to execute a Twitter audit to enhance your profile’s appearance and performance.

An audit of Twitter?

Consider a Twitter audit as a health check for your company’s account, looking at things like:

Twitter content and marketing alignment with social media goals

If your account is gaining followers and engagement from your target demographic

KPIs and content performance benchmarks (think: interactions, response time, Twitter traffic)

What is a Twitter audit? Find any account difficulties when reviewing what’s functioning and what’s not. An audit can immediately reveal low-hanging chances to contact your audience on Twitter.

An audit can also help you keep track of your brand’s Twitter messaging and branding.

How to audit Twitter

What’s new? An audit doesn’t have to be long.

Social media management solutions like Sprout Social help speed up the process and dig deeper into data.

But Twitter’s built-in metrics also allow for a complete DIY Twitter audit.

Before you start your audit, you need to answer a basic question for your company: “Why are we on Twitter?”

Your goals will eventually lead your audit and define your Twitter success. Once you know the answer, it’s time to examine your Twitter profile.

Profile and brand audit on Twitter

Twitter first impressions matter. Your profile should say:

What your firm does (products, services and industry)

Brand purpose and voice

So they’ll follow you (valuable insights, one-on-one engagement, support and so on)

Optimising your profile’s appearance is key to communicating that message. Here are the first phases of your Twitter audit.

Ensure that your brand imagery is current.
Ask yourself if your brand “looks the part” professionally:
Utilizing new branding creatives (cover photo, hashtags)?
Do we use Twitter’s latest picture sizes?
Do our Twitter usernames, images, and messages match our other social profiles?
Take a look at Grammarly’s Twitter profile in 2020 and 2022. The 2020 version is simple but effective.
The 2022 edition includes the same logo and bio link, but eliminates the hashtags and has a much more vibrant cover photo.
These small changes may go a long way in letting followers know you’re active.
Verify your message’s logic.
This is arguably the case.

Twitter’s character constraint makes it difficult to completely express yourself. Then there’s place in your Twitter bio for:

What does your firm do?

Showcase your brand’s voice (whether it’s formal, informal, or somewhere in between).

Distinguish yourself from your competition

Companies like Frase do all of this in one sentence:

Focus on your pinned tweet

Companies love pinning tweets on their profile.

This tweet serves as a brand introduction for new visitors to your profile. You clearly want your pinned tweet to count, thus many firms utilise it to:

Show a lead magnet or CTA (review a product, for example)

Boost a new product’s hype

Announce big news (funding, acquisitions and so on)

Relate your Twitter presentation to your company’s objectives. You may also use your pinned tweet to advertise things.

Engage and authenticate your Twitter followers
Your Twitter followers should ideally mirror your target demographic. Your engagement rate should represent your fans’ enthusiasm for your posts.
But in reality? Unless you’ve been freestyling your Twitter presence.
Next, let’s walk through a Twitter audit to better understand your account’s engagement.
Analyze your follower growth rate.
Examine your account’s growth month-to-month using Twitter analytics or a platform like Sprout.
Because numbers don’t matter. Not even impressions. You should monitor your profile visits and remarks to see whether you’re getting interest-based interactions.
Then check your follower count. How big is your Twitter? How does it compare to Facebook or Instagram?
If you’re witnessing steady growth, it’s probably time to prioritise Twitter.

Determine if you’re reaching the right people.

Manual digging is required.

Is your Twitter audience similar to your target audience? Manual scrolling and checking biographies or hashtags on your followers’ profiles is a good start.

More significantly, are you followed by industry peers? Do real consumers praise you? Does Twitter follow you (hint: look at your “Top Followers” tab)?

If your Twitter following is unruly, it may be time to rethink your content approach (but more on that later).

With Sprout, you can analyse your audience much more precisely. Check out this example of utilising our Twitter integration to audit Twitter followers, breaking down demographics and interactions that signal relevance.

Audit Twitter followers to screen out phoney accounts

Fake followers are an issue on all social media platforms, including Twitter.

The presence of fake followers is unavoidable, but too many might damage your profile’s reputation.

A free false follower report from SparkToro may help you rapidly check your audience’s legitimacy.

If you have too many phoney followers, you should rethink your content strategy and prioritise meaningful interactions with real accounts.

That leads to our next Twitter audit point!

Examine your Twitter content and frequency

The most difficult yet crucial aspect of content analysis is its performance.

Twitter rewards all accounts with reach.

Content performance feels “random” without analysis (even if it isn’t). What works, what doesn’t, and where can you improve?

Analyze your posting rate (and whether that frequency is effective)

We have lots of data on the optimal times to tweet.

And unlike other networks, Twitter allows you to publish many times each day.

However, real publication frequency varies. We suggest looking at your own data to determine whether engagement and frequency correlate. Again, your native analytics can help.

Note surges at specific days or times. Consider stopping content on days or times when there is a continuous lull.

Examine the stuff you’re posting.

Understanding how different pieces of content promote engagement is another critical performance metric.

The beauty of Twitter is that you can easily diversify your content approach.

Again, approaching your content strategy as a free-for-all might backfire. Throwing ideas at a wall could work, but then what?

We suggest categorising your material and tracking which receives the most engagement. For example, you could write:

Images
Videos
Threads
Infographics
Helpful hints
Posts and blogs (external links)
Funny memes and videos

Analyzing your content schedule might help you identify high performers and anomalies.

Analyze which material performs best.

Analyze the relationship between content type and engagement rate.

Twitter’s inherent statistics let you rapidly examine a month’s top tweets. You may do the same by exporting them into a spreadsheet.

For a more thorough and holistic perspective of all of the above, tools like Sprout can help.

Oh, and our software makes it simple to determine which Twitter hashtags work best to increase your top-performing content.

Audit your Twitter engagement for fresh ideas

Regardless of your company’s aims, a Twitter audit should result in more followers and engagement.

Finally, we’ll show how your analysis helps you achieve just that.

Analyze your post’s interaction rate.

You can set expectations based on your normal interaction.

No “right” or magic number here, either. Don’t allow outliers affect your average engagement rate.

Consider, too, that Twitter’s business worth goes much beyond vanity metrics. Context matters in engagement.

Time to respond for your firm

A faster social media reaction time is a benefit. Doing so delights followers and shows you’re listening to them.

twitter help model

Consider how centralising alerts or working within a collaborative tool (like Sprout!) may speed things up;

Find out what your @mentions, #Tags and brand keywords mean.

What do your Twitter followers and customers think of you?

And are you happy with the brand dialogues on Twitter?

Searching for non-tagged mentions of your product or brand will reveal this. But doing so manually takes time.

In any case, keep an eye on client opinion and engagement. This demonstrates the value of social listening and the capacity to monitor important company conversations.

Tools like Sprout provide you a bird’s eye perspective of your Twitter presence and those all-important conversations.

Could a Twitter audit boost your company’s profile?

An audit may help ensure your brand is communicating effectively with prospects and consumers on Twitter.

These suggestions might help you refine your presence. Prioritize doing so.

In the long run, enhancing your profile today will lead to increased engagement and meaningful customer interactions Because Twitter audits are so quick and easy, we recommend doing one right away.

Also, check out our social media audit template to improve your presence on Twitter and beyond.