This is part of a biweekly series on tools, resources and apps to help PR and media professionals be more productive and effective.
TweetCharts.com is a free tool that enables you to call up charts with data about hashtags, words/phrases, usernames or URLs on Twitter. You can basically search for anything on Twitter and see pie charts, line graphs and bar charts conveying various nuggets of relevant and helpful information.
The site, which comes to you courtesy of HubSpot and "social media scientist" Dan Zarrella, offers a simple and efficient way for journalists to get a pulse on their beat, see what's trending in their assigned coverage area or find new Twitter users worth connecting with, among other things. For public relations professionals, TweetCharts.com can be a helpful tool for tasks like keeping tabs on brand mentions, tracking sentiment toward a client, or finding Twitter users worth connecting with or responding to.
TweetCharts.com's bare-bones home page doesn't leave much room for doing wrong, though it's worth noting that the second box labeled "Your Email Address" is an optional field. Once you enter your query in the first box, labeled "Search Query," you can press Enter on your keyboard or hit the "Go" button on the page.
After a transition box with some text appears on a dimmed page, you'll be taken to the report page for whatever text you entered in the search box. Here's the report page for "profnet":
At the top of the report is a yellow box telling you how many tweets for your query were found, and during which dates and times. There are also links for tweeting the report and embedding it on your website.
Below this is a section with 10 pie charts for the following data:
- Links
- ReTweets
- Replies
- Mentions
- Hashtags
- Sentiment
- Media
- Questions
- Unique Users
- Genders
After these pie charts, a line graph is displayed along with the tweets per hour for whatever you searched for. The last section comprises six series of bar charts:
- Top Words
- Most Mentioned Users
- Top Sources
- Top Hashtags
- Top Links
- Top Media (if available)
While it would be nice to have the ability to filter using factors like date/time and location, it's tough to complain about everything TweetCharts.com offers at no cost to the user.
The site acts as a dashboard of visualized data that can be used by journalists and PR professionals to quickly dig up topics, trends, people or links that might warrant their attention and action. TweetCharts.com offers a glimpse into Twitter that can breathe new life into the way you use Twitter.
Other resources:
- Introducing TweetCharts: Get the Twitter Data You Need (Dan Zarrella)
- HubSpot introduces new social media analyst: TweetCharts.com (Reynold’s Center for Business Journalism)
- Example TweetCharts.com report for "profnet"
Another tool for reporters is ProfNet, a service of PR Newswire, has helped journalists and experts connect since 1992. Writers can search the ProfNet Connect database of more than 50,000 profiles; send a ProfNet query by email to thousands of subscribers around the globe; or get timely experts and story ideas by email.
