Who's driving my impressions on Twitter? Part 1 of N

The number of  "impressions" received is certainly one measure of influence that is being incorporated into many social media marketing and measurement services. I recently wrote about using Klout to analyze 4,000 of my followers as I hope to continue exploring new and innovate online services to help tell me more about my (mostly IT professional) audience. As a new media company I suspect that that getting more impressions is a one of many metrics to eventually populate my business dashboard, so why not start now and better study where I'm currently getting my "free" exposure?

I recently discovered Crowdbooster which conveniently displays impressions given per my individual  "ReTweeter." Perhaps their service will help me learn a bit more about my more "engaged" followers. Their tools also helped me quickly find out who has been retweeting my content and the impressions earned per retweet.  I also like it because it generated some pretty pictures for my blog:

Example output graphic from Crowdbooster

Topping my list is a retweet by @tristanwalker whom I believe has the official title of evango-technologist over at foursquare. I must have caught his attention when I tweeted the following iPhone screen capture a few months ago:

Interesting special use of @Foursquare http://yfrog.com/klbxzkmj

The W hotel San Diego offers 250 Starpoints for check-in.

I was rewarded with a retweet by Mr. Walker which earned me the (potential) exposure to his 287,000 followers. Thanks again Tristan! That's a lot of potential impressions I received for making an innocent observation about a social media marketing campaign I discovered while downtown at another San Diego Event.

Any correlation between @PainPoint follower increase "bump" and retweet from a celebrity technologist?  

Speaking of celebrities, posting the following picture with Australian Rugby star Wendell Sailor @realbigdell earned me about 25,000 possible impressions and over 300 clicks itself. Thanks "Big Dell" for the pictures! It was great to meet you at the Marina Bay SandsSky Park in Singapore and if I lived in Australia I'm sure I would be a big fan... but you know here in the states we have the NFL. :)

Me and Wendell Sailor (Australian Rugby Star) in Singapore http://twitpic.com/4i30rw @realbigdell - YouTube: http://bit.ly/AF_WS

I earned another nearly 17,000 impressions by tweeting a quote that I overheard during a Gartner interview with Marc Benioff (CEO of SalesForce). Benioff then retweeted me:

@Gartner_inc - I'm looking for how we transform the industry..... I'm looking to reinvent salesforce.com - @Benioff

In total, Crowdbooster offers the raw data to show that my tweets have received about 650,000 impressions over the last year due to user retweets alone.  Excluding these rare celebrity retweets produces the following simple series distribution about the "reach" of my retweeted content:

Distribution of extra impressions "earned" over the last year via retweets

In other words, 33% of my tweets saw less than 500 extra impressions beyond the possible 4,500 from my base followers. 55% of my retweeted content earned between 500 to 2000 possible impressions. About 12% of my retweeted content exceeded 2000 possible impressions and 5% exceeded 5000.

As a new media company I am interested in maximizing the impressions on any original material that I produce or source from a 3rd party.  Of course I am also interested in maximizing the relevancy of any content that I am responsible for putting in your stream. With these goals in mind, does anyone have suggestions for websites or other tools I should look at next?

Best regards,

Andy Fields

CEO Vendor Voice Media, LLC

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