Based on research, between 70% and 80% of visitors arrive to Twitter using specialised Twitter applications.
The unfavourable outcome in this whole situation is that these visits are recorded as direct traffic — meaning that, without putting in a little extra effort, you won’t be able to measure true visits from Twitter (in other words, you’ll only see a part of the traffic coming from the Twitter web interface).
Use the Google Analytics UTM Variables
A solution, of course, exists. The link you stored for publishing on Twitter should be “upgraded” with three parameters (read more about this on the Google Analytics Help site):
utm_campaign
utm_source
utm_medium
The modified link should look like this:
http://www.primjer.com/?utm_campaign=blog&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=micro-blog
, after which Analytics will show all Twitter visits coming directly from the Twitter website, desktop applications or mobile devices, as though from the same source.
When you consider that this is the simplest manner of “configuring” Twitter visits, it does require that you add to the end of the link the required parameters which can be a little tiring.
In case you need a semi-automated solution, explains how to add the bookmarklets with the aid of a little bit of Javascript…
