In December of last year, Twitter started to roll out view counts on tweets. View counts now show below all tweets and are visible to all users, not just the tweet author. They appear as a small analytics graph icon below the tweet just like this 👇

This is one of the steps Elon promised when looking to build transparency of the platform, and in his own words, how ‘alive’ Twitter is. The rationale behind this seems fairly solid. Elon notes that over 90% of Twitter users read a tweet but don’t take any public actions like retweeting, quote tweeting or liking it. This is a huge portion of impressions, a key metric in marketing, that was being overlooked. 

Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video.

Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2022

It also helps users understand why suddenly they might be seeing a tweet from an account they don’t follow. Having the view count on a tweet, especially viral content helps you to understand why this account has made its way into your timeline.

Whilst I love a nosey at how many views some of my favourite famous faces have garnered on their content, I can’t help but buzz over its potential when it comes to content marketing strategy. View counts are basically a competitor research gift - a great tool for new content ideation, not to mention social listening. Let’s break it down…

🕵️‍♀️ Who doesn’t love a casual snoop of the competition? If anyone in marketing tells you that they don't like to keep an eye on what their peers are doing, I would suggest they might be telling you a wee bit of a fib. Being able to see the unaltered facts of how many impressions their tweets get means you have a great way to benchmark your performance as well as spot content that does well with the audience you are also hoping to reach which brings me nicely to my next point, content ideation.

💡 For a lot of businesses trying to find new and creative ways to talk about their services without sounding like every other business in the same space can be really tricky. Social media is saturated with content and it can sometimes feel like you are shouting into a void. Using the view count you can now actively look at posts of businesses and creators in your niche and see what topics get people talking and use that as the basis for everything from blog posts, and social posts right up to full-scale campaigns feeling more confident that what you are sharing is what your audience is looking for.

🦻 Social listening takes it one step further and allows you to potentially use view counts to shape how you deliver your service and products. In this sense it is much less about looking at what a business has tweeted and much more about scrolling through the comments and seeing what is resonating with that audience. In this way you can identify customer pain points as well as start to understand what motivates them to make a purchase or use a service.

I don’t know about you, but I am all for this change and unlike some of the other features Twitter has introduced, I hope it is here to stay!

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