Twitter Analytics: Follower Count & Reporting Inconsistencies

[mirabile]

Our number of followers on Twitter has suddenly dropped (yet not dropped) in a really weird way.

Twitter Analytics shows follower counts in two places: Monthly increases in followers, and then also in the Audience Insights tab, where you can see three months of follower counts mapped in a chart.

Month-to-month, the total number of followers continues to rise.

What’s inconsistent, however, is the total number of aggregate followers shown in the cart. Twitter just dropped our to total count of followers by about 600.

But it’s not like we just suddenly lost 600 followers last month (in fact we gained far more than that), but rather that Twitter seems to have adjusted the aggregate numbers across the board retroactively for all months. So while month-to-month continues to show gains, overall, we still went down.

The only way we would have even noticed this, by the way, is because we have a record of the OLD total follower count that Twitter had previously displayed as recently as last month.

So confusing.

We’re trying to figure out what happened, and the only thing that seems to make sense is that Twitter may have done a huge spam account purge, and instead of making it look like we suddenly lost a lot of followers, they just updated the aggregate total # of followers across all time……?

[For the record, we do not buy followers, but we don’t always do the best job at blocking spam followers when the do follow us either.]

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

[MeganSingley]

Hey Mirabile! My name is Megan and I work on the Moz Community team running our social accounts, including Twitter. I'd love to dive into Twitter Analytics and see if I can figure out what's going on with your follower count for you. I was taking a look at Moz's Twitter Analytics and I was having a hard time finding the follower chart under audience insights. I've attached a screenshot of what the top tabs/sections look like when I go to our audience insights section. Are you seeing the same thing? Can you direct me to the specific spot?

n7IQvPj

[mirabile]

Hi Megan,

Thanks for the response!  Your Interface for Moz is a little bit different from what I see.  If I go into Twitter Analytics, there's a link on the menu bar for "Audience".

I added two screenshots under my (brand-new lol) Imgur account (see link below)

Basically, wherever you can find a chart of the past 3 months of Twitter follower numbers - there, it displays your TOTAL number of followers.

What happened to us is that our total number of followers dropped across all 3 months, over all time.

We keep track of the numbers on this page, and when we logged in recently, we were bewildered because none of the numbers for the past 3 months matched up to any of our records.  They had all changed, as if adjusted en masse.

So while we have accrued new users month over month, the total numbers are all different, so it's like we lost followers... even though we didn't...

[MeganSingley]

Whoops! It looks like those attached imgur pics aren't public. Sorry for the hassle! Hopefully one day we'll be able to upload images directly into Q&A questions.

In good news, I was able to login to one of our other Twitter accounts we own and I'm now seeing the same follower graph you're referring to. I'm just not seeing any discrepancies on our account, so any screenshots you can provide would be helpful. Thanks!

[mirabile]

Hi Megan,

We would not have noticed any discrepancy either at first glance.  Each month, we record numbers from the last day of each month on the graph. The graph only shows the past 3 mos.

Imagine that on April 31, you recorded the following monthly #s from the graph.

February = 3,500
March = 4,000
April = 5,500

And then, next month, when you looked at the same interface in Twitter, the numbers were all different.

February = n/a (won't go back that far)
March = 3,200
April = 4,000
May = 4, 500

At first you'd think - wait.  I recorded 5,500 followers in April, and now in May I have 4,500.  Did I lose 1,000 followers?

Nope, because according to Twitter, because the graph still shows growth, and we can see the # of users added in May.

**It's just that for whatever reason, the aggregate #s were all lowered.  **All data, across the board, is lower, even though it shows relative growth.

---

I see a few possibilities here:

1. Our records were wrong. 
This is a possibility, but kind of unlikely since we pull the data each month, and we create a separate report for each month (so we have multiple historic record of the numbers being different and higher over time)...  But who knows, human error happens.

2. Twitter Purged Spam
Maybe they purged a bunch of spam accounts? If so, I would have expected to see a dramatic decrease in followers over one month - but maybe instead, they deleted all record of them, included when they were added, so while overall this lowered numbers, it didn't mess with the monthly growth pattern of legitimate followers.

3. Twitter Analytics Bug???  

---

Thanks.  It's possible there may not be an answer to this, but it would be nice to know if anyone else has experienced something like this.

[MeganSingley]

Thanks for the clarification!

I've looked at quite a few different Twitter follower tools and ran this by a couple of other people on the community team and I've pretty much come to conclusions #2 or #3 that you mentioned. Unfortunately, there's just not really a clear cut way to figure out what happened.   Sorry I don't have a more definitive answer.

You might want to consider tracking your account in Followerwonk going forward if you aren't already. It's a good way to see if you've lost a bunch of followers, who those followers were, and look at the date to see if you posted something in particular that could have led to a dramatic follower loss. Doesn't really help your current situation, but might help if anything strange happens in the future.