A lot of clients ask QW Consulting questions about expected Twitter click results. How much traffic should you expect from Twitter? Is there a secret trick to get more clicks (like the length of the tweet or the position of the link in the tweet)? More importantly, clients want to know if you have to have a lot of followers in order to get results?
To help answer these questions, QW Consulting conducted a study of a smallsample set of clicks on large and small Twitter accounts. The results are below. All data was pulled in July 2011. The data looked at approximately 47 million clicks on 61,577 unique tweets from 120 Twitter accounts. For questions, please email info@qwconsulting.com.
How many clicks does an account get on average? Do accounts with more followers get more clicks? This graph gives a relative measurement of activity at different follower levels. Measuring by followers, instead of raw clicks, gives a sense of account size and importance. Note that measuring clicks per follower is not the same as measuring a click through rate as followers are not impressions. However, from these numbers you can get a general sense of what kinds of activity levels are normal on Twitter at different follower levels.
| Followers Low | Followers High | Clicks Per Follower (Average) |
|---|---|---|
| All records | All records | 1.107% |
| 0 | 500 | 3.281% |
| 501 | 1,000 | 1.182% |
| 1,001 | 5,000 | 0.372% |
| 5,001 | 10,000 | 0.249% |
| 10,001 | 50,000 | 0.976% |
| 50,001 | 100,000 | 1.068% |
| 100,001 | 500,000 | 0.320% |
| 500,001 | 10,000,000 | 0.398% |
Does the length of the tweet matter? These graphs looks at length in characters and length in words compared to clicks. It shows a relative measurement of clicks per tweet at the different lengths. That way the numbers aren't skewed because of a higher volume of tweets at different lengths.
| Character Low | Character High | Tweets (Raw Count) | Clicks (Raw Count) | Clicks Per Tweet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 29 | 82 | 384,957 | 4,694.60 |
| 30 | 39 | 343 | 405,608 | 1,182.53 |
| 40 | 49 | 1,328 | 762,030 | 573.82 |
| 50 | 59 | 3,250 | 2,607,035 | 802.16 |
| 60 | 69 | 5,918 | 4,308,239 | 727.99 |
| 70 | 79 | 7,503 | 5,465,388 | 728.43 |
| 80 | 89 | 7,320 | 5,314,802 | 726.07 |
| 90 | 99 | 6,022 | 4,583,600 | 761.14 |
| 100 | 109 | 4,329 | 4,839,662 | 1,117.96 |
| 110 | 119 | 3,446 | 4,917,259 | 1,426.95 |
| 120 | 129 | 2,778 | 3,462,412 | 1,246.37 |
| 130 | 139 | 16,990 | 7,123,807 | 419.29 |
| 140 | 500 | 2,268 | 2,637,885 | 1,163.09 |
| Word Count | Tweets (Raw Count) | Clicks (Raw Count) | Clicks Per Tweet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 62 | 275,823 | 4,448.76 |
| 5 | 66 | 202,811 | 3,072.89 |
| 6 | 127 | 333,169 | 2,623.38 |
| 7 | 361 | 515,410 | 1,427.73 |
| 8 | 790 | 506,768 | 641.48 |
| 9 | 1,463 | 1,046,340 | 715.20 |
| 10 | 2,398 | 1,921,068 | 801.11 |
| 11 | 3,448 | 2,514,643 | 729.30 |
| 12 | 4,404 | 2,895,492 | 657.47 |
| 13 | 4,937 | 3,470,094 | 702.88 |
| 14 | 5,008 | 3,258,852 | 650.73 |
| 15 | 4,534 | 2,702,163 | 595.98 |
| 16 | 3,898 | 2,111,694 | 541.74 |
| 17 | 3,463 | 2,683,128 | 774.80 |
| 18 | 3,071 | 3,389,101 | 1103.58 |
| 19 | 3,102 | 3,261,570 | 1051.44 |
| 20 | 3,216 | 2,360,728 | 734.06 |
| 21 | 3,567 | 2,356,677 | 660.69 |
| 22 | 3,621 | 2,429,962 | 671.07 |
| 23 | 3,304 | 2,321,643 | 702.68 |
| 24 | 2,677 | 1,549,840 | 578.95 |
| 25 | 1,887 | 2,562,742 | 1,358.10 |
| 26 | 1,133 | 1,134,946 | 1,001.72 |
| 27 | 570 | 333,125 | 584.43 |
| 28 | 274 | 299,119 | 1,091.68 |
| 29 | 126 | 365,921 | 2,904.13 |
| 30 | 45 | 9,807 | 217.93 |
| 31 | 17 | 38 | 2.24 |
| 32 | 5 | 10 | 2.00 |
Does the starting position of the link in the tweet matter? Like the length graph, this graph shows a relative measurement of clicks per tweet at the different URL positions. That way the numbers aren't skewed because of a higher volume of tweets at different positions.
| Position Low | Position High | Tweets | Clicks | Clicks Per Tweet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start | 29 | 3,120 | 8,922,629 | 2,859.82 |
| 30 | 39 | 4,066 | 2,273,918 | 559.25 |
| 40 | 49 | 7,176 | 4,018,628 | 560.01 |
| 50 | 59 | 7,729 | 5,592,197 | 723.53 |
| 60 | 69 | 6,977 | 4,101,043 | 587.79 |
| 70 | 79 | 5,518 | 3,454,690 | 626.08 |
| 80 | 89 | 3,787 | 4,647,910 | 1,227.33 |
| 90 | 99 | 2,950 | 4,485,062 | 1,520.36 |
| 100 | 109 | 2,476 | 3,108,887 | 1,255.61 |
| 110 | 119 | 15,939 | 5,392,470 | 338.32 |
| 120 | 129 | 1,769 | 815,193 | 460.82 |
| 130 | 139 | 7 | 52 | 7.43 |
| 140 | Max | 63 | 5 | 0.08 |
Do more tweets with URLs in them produce more clicks? This graph looks at the total volume of clicks and sees which types of accounts get a larger share of those clicks (those who post more URLs or fewer URLs). Like with the length graphs, this measures clicks per tweet at the different percentages so as to avoid skewing the numbers because of a high volume of tweets at different percentage levels. This graph shows filtered data to remove the accounts with abnormally high clicks while the table shows all the available data. The results in both cases are the same.
| Less than 20% | 624 | 390622 | 0.83% | 625.99 |
| 20-39% | 2028 | 1179331 | 2.52% | 581.52 |
| 40-59% | 4100 | 19523555 | 41.71% | 4761.84 |
| 60-79% | 4815 | 816144 | 1.74% | 169.50 |
| 80% or more | 50010 | 24903032 | 53.20% | 497.96 |
How long do tweets get clicks? Does it change with more followers? This graph looks at the power of tweets as a long term traffic driver. Comparing it by followers helps break out the difference between different account sizes.
| Followers Low | Followers High | Day Of Post | 1 Day After | 2 Days After | 3 Days After | 4 Days After | 5 Days After | 6 Days After | 7 Days After |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Records | All Records | 81.641% | 13.6381% | 2.0554% | 0.9482% | 0.6627% | 0.4434% | 0.3522% | 0.259% |
| 0 | 500 | 93.3021% | 5.1098% | 0.6254% | 0.2839% | 0.1769% | 0.1851% | 0.2345% | 0.0823% |
| 501 | 1,000 | 60.8018% | 28.0556% | 7.9976% | 1.4645% | 0.6142% | 0.5939% | 0.3105% | 0.162% |
| 1,001 | 5,000 | 75.9905% | 13.8413% | 3.5385% | 2.1838% | 1.6274% | 1.0165% | 0.8401% | 0.9619% |
| 50,01 | 10,000 | 71.9417% | 9.0988% | 4.0705% | 2.808% | 3.8311% | 4.9195% | 1.502% | 1.8285% |
| 10,001 | 50,000 | 54.3318% | 13.0632% | 7.6409% | 5.8992% | 5.8157% | 4.9589% | 4.4741% | 3.8162% |
| 50,001 | 100,000 | 84.32% | 11.5303% | 1.6964% | 1.0186% | 0.6011% | 0.3924% | 0.2881% | 0.1531% |
| 100,001 | 500,000 | 86.2443% | 8.9754% | 1.9681% | 0.7497% | 0.7854% | 0.5256% | 0.5441% | 0.2075% |
| 500,001 | 10,000,000 | 81.0191% | 14.7782% | 1.9846% | 0.8845% | 0.5431% | 0.3428% | 0.2395% | 0.2083% |