For a given period of time, it’s simply your total retweets (given by Klout, see yesterday’s post) divided by your total number of followers.

Business Goal

This metric points to is how much you are thought of as a thought leader from your follower base. Becoming a thought leader has benefits for virtually any business because it has the effect of gaining the trust of your customers. As this number increases, it shows that you are increasing in thought leadership, as more and more of your followers are retweeting (you can think of it as syndicating) your thoughts, and recognize them as useful or authoritative.

How do you increase it?

Two ways – One, target your audience better. If the people following you are really interested in your business, then it’s easier for them to pay attention to what you say. Two, work at refining your message and the delivery of message. How you say something, and the medium you use, can have a big effect. Do your followers respond better to videos, podcasts, whitepapers, case studies, blog posts, or photos? Do some experimentation to find out what works best for your audience, and link to those things from Twitter.

It’s just the total number of times that your tweets have been retweeted in a given time period. You can get this one from Klout as well.

Business Goal
If it’s important for you to reach as many people as possible with your message, this is a good metric. It’s generally good for B2C firms, as the more people that know about your product the more customers you receive. The metric shows message amplification – as the number of retweets goes up, the amount of people that see your message increases dramatically. Since the average Twitter user has a few hundred followers, retweets have the potential of reaching a lot of people. It also shows how interesting or easily sharable your message is, indicated how likely it is to spread by other mediums besides Twitter. Measuring the retweets for specific tweets would also be useful to test and try which messages are the most sticky (for this you can use tweetmeme).

How do you increase it?
You increase this by sending out messages that are useful, valuable, interesting, and targeted to your followers. Another factor is your authority – if people recognize you as a leader in your industry, they are more likely to trust your tweets and retweet them. Retweeting other people’s material (participating in the community) will also help increase your retweets by the law or reciprocity.

Twitter Engagement Metric

Business Goal

Follower mention is an excellent engagement metric. It indicates to what extent you are connecting with other users on twitter and developing real relationships. It can also be indicative of how valuable your tweets and content are to others, as the more value they see in what you have to say, the more likely they are to mention you.

If one of your business goals is to become a thought leader in a certain niche, or to build a larger community base of people that trust you and that you can do business with, then this is a good metric to follow. This is a valuable goal for almost any company, but especially for B2B firms, as sales in that situation requires good relationships and high levels of trust. To be sure if this metric is for you, you should probably ask yourself the following questions:

Is my target audience on Twitter? (try checking Twellow or Twitter search)
Are the people that influence my clients and customers on Twitter?
Is building a strong online community important for my businesses success?
Could I find potential partnerships or other opportunities from a Twitter community?
Is user engagement an important part of my brand and business?

How do you increase it?
You increase this metric by being social and helpful to others. An important part of this is reading other people’s tweets so you know who they are and what they are thinking about. Then you can start conversations with them, mention them, ask them questions, retweet them, give referrals to them, etc. Common courtesy also goes a long way; if someone else’s tweets are useful to you, let them know and thank them. And if you are mentioned in that way, be sure and let them know their mention of you is appreciated.