Something strange is happening in the world of Twitter. For well over a year my average Twitter impressions count has hovered at 2.0K impressions per day. (Twitter defines an impression as anytime a Twitter user sees your Tweet.) I’ve never seen that figure deviate by more than 5% (i.e. between 1.9 — 2.1K) for a long time.
And then, starting at the beginning of March, I’ve watched my daily impression count steadily rise to 2.7K per day. Every time I check, it’s gone up. That’s a 35% increase in one month!
I haven’t changed my tweeting activity in any way recently. I continue to post each day:
- One tweet about my latest blog post
- One tweet for each of an assorted selection of 8 of my older blog posts;
- A tweet or two about my upcoming Participate! workshop; and
- A few mentions or retweets of other users I find interesting.
All my other Twitter monthly count statistics: engagements, link clicks, retweets, likes, and replies are essentially unchanged.
Yet Twitter insists that suddenly, 35% more people are seeing my tweets!
I would like to think that I’ve suddenly become 35% more interesting, but I doubt that’s what’s going on.
Is anyone else seeing this? Any ideas about what could be happening?
Adrian, I’d write this up to a probable change in Twitter’s tracking or engagement algorithms.
Four days later: the rise continues to 2.9K impressions/day. A 45% increase in one month!
Six more days and Twitter now says I am receiving 3.2K impressions/day. In six weeks, Twitter says impressions have risen 60%, Actual engagement counts have remained constant, however, so my engagement rate has dropped proportionally.
It’s hard to believe that Twitter hasn’t recently changed what it counts as an “impression”. But why aren’t other people talking/seeing this?
The latest update: I am now averaging over 4K impressions per day. That’s a doubling of the rate nine months ago! I still don’t see any obvious reason for this dramatic increase…