Twitter is a powerful tool in any company’s or professional’s arsenal. The platform can help you rocket to success and stand out like the majestic unicorn you know yourself to be. But, you’ll only get out of this world results if you truly know how to release its potential.
Chances are, you aren’t getting everything out of Twitter that you could, and you may even be wasting valuable time, or even losing followers, by performing the wrong actions or focusing on the wrong places.
You might also be missing out if your content isn’t engaging your audience.
To really see what is and isn’t working, you need access to hard data. It also helps to be able to find your older messages, in case you need to access the content of some of the highest performing tweets you’ve ever sent out.
And, luckily, Twitter has you covered – so long as you know where to look.
To help you truly become the unicorn user you know yourself to be, here are six Twitter tools you’ve probably never used before, but can provide significant benefit.
1. Find Your Old Tweets
Maybe you’re feeling a bit nostalgic, or you simply want to locate some information you sent out in a tweet way back in the day. Regardless of the reason, finding your old tweets doesn’t seem like an intuitive process.
Twitter only shows your last 3,200 tweets in your timeline, so if you’ve been using the service for just shy of a decade and have crossed that threshold, you aren’t going to find your old messages there.
Luckily, you can use advanced search operators to hunt down your old messages.
How do you do it? Using Twitter’s advanced search operators, you can filter your results by date.
For example, using a search command like this, within Twitter’s Search bar, would uncover all your tweets from the chosen time period:
from:[your Twitter @handle] since:2009-05-12 until:2009-06-12
For an example in action, click here to view my first 2 tweets from 2008 (notice the use of the “since” and “until” advanced search operators).
2. Get Your Stats for Any Tweet
While viewing your tweet gives you some basic stats (like the number of comments, retweets, and likes), you might want to dig a little bit deeper to find more valuable metrics.
The Tweet Activity view lets you do just that – just click on the bar graph icon and you’ll be presented with a wealth of information.
Now you can see data about the number of impressions and total engagements, as well as a breakdown of the various interactions, as you can see here.
This lets you learn important details about how your tweet performed, and can provide you with valuable insights about how to increase your engagement in future.
3. Promote Your Tweet for Increased Exposure
You may have noticed a section in the image above which enables you to promote your tweet. This Twitter service allows you to increase the number of impressions, getting your message in front of the eyes of more users.
If you press the ‘Promote Your Tweet’ button, you’ll be presented with a panel where you can select a target location, choose a spending budget, and an estimated reach if you decide to go forward.
While you don’t need to promote every tweet, investing in the right ones can really pay off (if you want to learn more, check out this article: 6 Big Reasons You Need to Use Twitter Ads).
And, if you select your top performing posts, the true unicorns in the bunch, the cost per click can actually be very low. Twitter uses an algorithm to determine the price, and engaging content is rewarded with lower costs.
To find your top performing tweets, head over to the Analytics section, select the ‘Tweets’ tab and click the ‘Top Tweets’ button.
4. Gain Super Valuable Insights About Your Audience
You know your audience is special, but do you actually know much about who they are?
Another feature in the Analytics section is the ability to view demographic information about the people who read your tweets, including their various interests.
By gaining a deeper understanding of what your audience is interested in, you can create content that speaks to these areas. This can help you avoid getting stuck in a restrictive niche, while still allowing you to cover topics your audience wants to read about.
5. Download ALL the Data
If you want to take your data offline so you can really analyze the results of your activities, then downloading it is your best option.
This will give you your full Twitter data in a format that makes research a breeze. Then you can figure out what’s working (so you can do more of it) and what isn’t (so you can stop doing that).
While in the Analytics section, head to the Tweets tab and click the ‘Export Data’ button located on the upper right-hand side.
6. Create a Twitter Moment Worth Remembering
Twitter also gives you the ability to create ‘Moments’, a sort of slideshow collection of a set of tweets that makes it easier to tell a more compelling story.
You have to use the desktop version of Twitter to access the Moments feature.
Begin by entering the Moments section (the icon on the upper left that looks like a lightning bolt) and click on the button on the upper right-hand side that says ‘Create new Moment’.
From there, you can enter a title, a short description, and choose a cover image or video. Make sure your title is captivating, but do try to keep it short.
You then select the various tweets you want to add to the collection. They don’t have to all be your tweets, so you do have some power to create a stunning Moment using a mix of your content and tweets from other accounts that you admire.
Once completed, you can share your Moment through a tweet to get the word out.
There’s a range of Twitter features that are not as well known, and can better enable you to share your message. Hopefully these tips provide some inspiration for your strategy.
A version of this post was first published on Inc.