TwitSprout is a new Social media measurement tool and you know I love statistics, so I decided to spend two weeks giving this new tool the going over! I will do the evaluation over two blog posts. The first one is this one all about the Twitter capabilities. The second one will follow about how TwitSprout handles Facebook. TwitSprout are still tracking any accounts that were added during the beta, so if you used it in the beta, just re-add the accounts once you go through the log-in process.

Setting up accounts in TwitSprout - Twitter

Once you log-in and select a Twitter account, the data then has to be collected. It takes 7 days to collect data for a new Twitter account and 3 days for a new Facebook Page. The wait is due to the various API limitations, but once loaded I found I had 6 months of Twitter data to analyze in the tool. Once the data is in, TwitSprout makes hourly updates. The great thing is that you get an email when everything is ready to go.

The image below shows the basic dashboard summary for the week and timezone I selected. Timezone can be changed in the settings menu.

The key stats section shows the follower ratio, and gives you a grade for it.



The results section goes on to show the hourly change in followers data and the daily tweet data. I used these to benchmark the performance of my competitor Twitter account. Very handy and revealing.

Dashboard options

Changing the date of the report
The TwitSprout dashboard has 3 useful options. The first one is for changing the date of the report. The historical data that is available depends on the choice of network. I could go back 6 months and pick any 7 day period with Twitter, but the range is much less with Facebook.

You can also output data in a PDF or CSV, or you can print.


PDF output



CSV output

TwitSprout are very approachable.

While setting up my accounts, Dan from TwitSprout encouraged me via the integral chat tool, so watch out for this! I also continued my dialogue with Dan via Twitter as well.


The tone of voice from the team at TwitSprout is very open and it is clear that they are willing to help you if you have a question. A quote from their support center - “If you can’t find the answer here, please email us! We’re tons of fun to  hang out with and always ready to help you!”.


In summary.

TwitSprout did a very good job in creating easy-to-read, one page dashboards. The leader board enabled me to get an overview before diving into the dashboard for each account.

I learnt from the Twitter analysis what my most fertile period of the week could be for acquiring the most followers. I could see how effective weekend tweeting would be and my most productive hours of the day for gaining Twitter followers. I could also compare a competitor account to see what worked for them compared to my company Twitter account or just use my personal Twitter account.

The feature that I liked the most? Exporting detailed PDF reports and the rich Excel CSV dumps! You can also upload a logo to customize the dashboards!

I hope this post has made you thirsty to give it a try? TwitSprout has some fun names for their services. “Sapling” is free for 3 Twitter accounts. Paid options start at 5 accounts ending with “Redwood” for 60 social accounts. There is a 15 day free trial.You can also contact TwitSprout direct;

Twitter - @TwitSprout
Blog - http://blog.twitsprout.com/
Online tool - http://twitsprout.com

TwitSprout was featured in my recent list of top 30+ Twitter tools

The next blog post will be in a few days time. I will report back on how the TwitSprout Facebook evaluation went, which included a competitor Facebook page.