Twitter remains a popular platform for brands, influencers, and marketers to promote content, make important announcements, and engage with the audience. If you would also want to make the most of the power of Twitter, then it is time to run a Twitter audit! You may want to assess whether your account is really gaining genuine, interested followers and engagement from your intended audience. Wondering why genuine?
Twitter and other social media platforms forbid fake followers. However, most accounts have a large number of fake followers. According to an estimate, 5–30% of the Twitter followers are fake and may include bots, inactive users, spam accounts, propaganda, and non-engaged or unreal users. This gives you an illusion of popularity but without tangible engagement and impact that you may accept from big numbers.
In this blog, we will discuss how you can run a complete Twitter audit to strengthen your brand reputation. So, let us dive in!
What is a Twitter audit?
A Twitter audit is a thorough check of your account to identify potential issues and determine what is and what is not working. It can help you get some useful insights to get you on the right track. For instance, does your account aligns with your social media marketing goals, what benchmarks or KPIs to set, is your audience engaging with your content, and much more!
Usually, a Twitter audit will include the following:
- Audit of profile
- Audit of tweets (including content type and frequency)
- Audit of followers
Audit of Twitter profile
When auditing your profile and branding, this checklist can help you know if you are on the right track.
- Are you using the latest brand logo or imagery for your profile and header photos?
- Are you following the size recommendations? (Pro Tip—profile photo: 400×400 pixels & header image: 1500×500 pixels.)
- Does your Twitter username and profile (image, messaging, etc.) align with the information used on other social media platforms?
- Are you making good use of 160 characters in the Twitter bio? Does it explain what is your brand about, reflect your brand identity and voice, and make you stand out from your competition?
- What is your pinned tweet about? Are you using the space for an announcement, product launch, generating new leads, etc.?
Note: Make sure your Twitter profile aligns well with your business goals!
- Audit of tweets (content type and publishing frequency)
- Audit of your tweets is the key to knowing whether your content is grabbing attention! Here’s your checklist to get it right.
- How many times are you posting on Twitter—each day or week? (Pro Tip—It is completely okay to post on Twitter more than once a day. You can analyze native Twitter analytics to determine when your tweet is getting maximum impressions to know the best time and frequency to post.)
- What type of content are you posting? Have you categorized it into different types—infographics, images, videos, blog links, memes, GIFs, how-tos, tips, etc.?
- Have you analyzed which type of content is performing well for you? (Pro Tip—you can analyze your tweets regularly or use a social media analytics tool to help you identify what’s working for you and the recent trends.)
- What is the engagement rate of your tweets? Have you set a benchmark or baseline based on your performance to set your goals? (Pro Tip—Under the Engagements tab, you can view engagement rate, link clicks, likes, replies, and retweets without comments.)
- Do you respond to tweets in which your brand is mentioned? What is your response time?
- Do you understand the sentiments of your audience when they use your brand hashtag, mention you in tweets, etc.? (Pro Tip—you can utilize social listening tools to not miss critical conversations around your brand.)
Now, let us focus on the last aspect, which is the audit of your Twitter followers and why you should be wary of fake followers.
Why audit your Twitter followers
The number of followers reflects your target audience or potential and/or existing customers. Ideally, they follow you for the interesting content you publish.
Auditing Twitter followers will help you establish authenticity and understand the engagement level of your account. It will also help you polish your content strategy to improve your outreach, gain new followers, and improve visibility as well as brand awareness.
You can also assess the growth of your followers, the quality of your followers including influencers who engage with your account, identify and analyze the accounts you follow, their engagement, and the impact.
Can you identify fake Twitter followers?
Even if businesses refrain from buying fake followers, there are chances of still finding some that may be inflating numbers. In fact, such followers are inevitable. However, too many can damage your reputation and make your account look like spam. Here’s how you can identify fake followers.
- Profile picture: Fake Twitter accounts or bots usually do not have any profile picture. They may be either using a default profile picture or may have sourced images from the internet or other social media handles.
- Bios: In bios, users generally describe themselves uniquely with their titles or profession and what they do. However, in the case of bots or fake followers, the bios are not so detailed or unique.
- Engagement level: Fake followers just inflate numbers and do not engage or add any value to your Twitter account.
- Twitter handles: You can also assess Twitter handles to identify fake followers. For instance, usually, their account name and Twitter handle names won’t match. If you find such discrepancies, be mindful!
- Generic/duplicate tweets: If you notice generic or duplicate tweets from the same account in different conversations, then it is likely a fake account.
- Unrealistic count: Fake accounts usually have an unusual or unrealistic follower count. You may notice a very skewed followers-following ratio.
Now, manually checking your Twitter followers may sound easy when you have a few hundred followers. However, this task becomes more complex and time-consuming when you add more followers. Identifying and blocking fake accounts or bots manually from thousands or millions of your followers definitely is not a welcome idea.
This is where the use of social media management tools that offer follower analytics such as Sociality.io or platform-specific follower trackers such as Spartkoro, Twitteraudit, or FollowerAudit can help you gain valuable and accurate insights. These tools provide a comprehensive fake followers audit report to assess the authenticity of your followers and weed out the non-real lot.
✨ Bonus article: How to audit fake followers on TikTok? Here are all the answers
Audit of Twitter followers
Here are the important analytics that you need to look at when auditing your Twitter followers.
1. Followers growth rate
You can either use native Twitter analytics or social media management tools like Sociality.io to assess how your followers are growing on a monthly basis. You should also keep a close look at your impressions, profile visits, and mentions. This will help you understand if you are really gaining valuable engagement from your followers.
2. Relevant audience data
This may require some manual effort. You need to determine if your Twitter followers are a representation of your target audience. The bios and hashtags they follow can give you an initial indication of their interest.
You can have a look at your followers in Twitter analytics. Primarily, you have to gather data on whether you are being followed by players in your industry, do your actual customers tag you in or mention you, and whether you have verified followers.
If you do not find the type of followers you were expecting, then your content strategy may need some rejig.
3. Twitter followers audit report
As discussed earlier, you can use social media management platforms or Twitter follower trackers to get a comprehensive audit report on your followers to assess the authenticity of your followers.
Fake followers audit report snapshot by SparkToro
Fake followers audit report snapshot by FollowerAudit
Twitter follower trackers or fake followers audit tools
You can use fake follower audit tools such as SparkToro, Twitteraudit, FollowerAudit, and others to get a comprehensive audit report. Such Twitter follower trackers tools analyze and report various metrics including but not limited to
- Number of followers/ following
- Age of the account
- Inactive accounts
- Fake followers or bots
- Trolls or spam accounts
- Verified Twitter accounts
- Engagement rate
- Unfollowers
- Most engaging followers
- Followers with high lists or follower count
Final Words
Running a Twitter audit can help save your brand’s reputation. When auditing your account, you should audit your profile and branding, tweets, including content type and frequency, as well as followers. Especially to determine the authenticity of your followers, you can either use social media management tools or Twitter fake followers audit tools.
Sociality.io, a one-stop social media management tool, is equipped with powerful reporting features to help you understand Twitter performance, including reach and engagement analysis. Moreover, with our sophisticated Twitter analytics features, you can analyze your content and benchmark competitors’ performance. Our detailed reports offer you insights on
- Post frequency
- Engagement rate
- Follower growth
- Number of followers
- Post types
- Total number of interactions
- Interaction types
- Day and time for posts and much more!
