How to analyze Twitter (X) followers effectively

Having a lot of followers on X (formerly known as Twitter) only matters if you’re able to keep them engaged. That means sharing relevant content that resonates with your audience and gets them to take action. If you’re not sure what that looks like, it’s time to learn how to analyze X followers.

So much attention gets put on follower count, but audiences of all sizes can yield strategic insights. When you use Twitter (X) analytics to confirm assumptions about your audience’s tastes and preferences, you uncover valuable data that shapes your marketing strategy.

In this article, we’ll share how you extract valuable audience insights from your X follower data.

What is Twitter (X) follower analysis?

X follower analysis means examining demographics, engagement patterns, interests and activity times of your followers to optimize content strategy and increase engagement. This process transforms follower data into actionable insights that drive better content performance and business results.

Routine X follower analysis creates a feedback loop that strengthens more than just your X marketing strategy. If your X followers are consistently responding to specific messaging shared on the platform, you can repurpose the message for email subject lines or ad copy. If certain visual assets perform better than others, relay that information to creative and web teams to inform their design choices.

Let’s explore the key steps and considerations for a comprehensive X follower analysis.

Why Twitter (X) follower analysis drives business results

Follower analysis isn’t just about counting heads. It’s about turning audience data into a competitive advantage. When you understand who follows you, you stop guessing and start making data-driven decisions that accelerate business impact.

These insights directly inform your content strategy, ensuring every post resonates and drives action. You’ll uncover what your audience cares about, which strengthens brand messaging across all marketing functions, from ad copy to product development.

Understanding your followers positions you to capitalize on purchase moments. When you know exactly when they’re active, what content moves them to action and which messages drive the strongest response, you transform social interactions into business opportunities. Follower analysis protects brand health, improves customer retention and uncovers new revenue opportunities you’d otherwise miss.

Get the right tools

Manually reviewing the accounts that follow your brand on X is time-consuming and inefficient. If you want to win back hours in your schedule, adopt an analytics tool that consolidates performance data into a single dashboard so you can analyze X followers at scale.

X’s native social media analytics can show you your top posts based on impressions, engagements and engagement rates. If you want to go deeper, you’ll need a third-party tool. For example, Sprout Social’s analytics reports will surface important data about your followers—think engagement patterns, popular hashtags, conversation history and more.

Between X and Sprout, you have everything you need to dive in and analyze your followers. Now that you have your toolkit ready to go, here’s how to analyze X followers effectively.

Test out Sprout‘s powerful X tools

Once you learn how to easily analyze your X presence with Sprout, you might wonder how you ever did without.

Get an overview of what posts are working and which ones aren’t resonating, as well as competitive insight into the hottest topics being discussed online.

Put these tips in this article to the test with Sprout Social.

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Key metrics that matter in follower analysis

To get the full picture of your audience, you need to look beyond follower count. These metrics provide real strategic value:

Essential follower analysis metrics:

• Follower demographics: Age, location and gender data to confirm you’re reaching your target market
• Engagement rate: Shows how followers engage with your content and whether it resonates
• Follower growth rate: Tracks acquisition speed and measures campaign impact
• Audience interests: Topics and hashtags your followers engage with for relevant content creation
• Active times: Peak activity periods for optimal post scheduling

How Sprout Social streamlines metric tracking:

Sprout’s analytics dashboard consolidates these metrics into actionable reports. Our Smart Inbox reveals engagement patterns, while Social Listening uncovers audience interests and sentiment. Tracking these metrics provides the foundation for a smarter, more effective X strategy that moves you beyond vanity metrics and into actionable intelligence that drives business outcomes.

What are your Twitter (X) follower demographics?

X no longer provides demographic data directly. But you can collect demographic information by relying on what we know about X users in general.

2024 social media demographic data found that X:

• Has 368 million monthly active users.
• Is more popular with people ages 25-35.
• Has a gender distribution of 37% female, 63% male.
• Users spend 34 minutes on the platform per day on average.

The platform saw a decline in monthly active users after rebranding from “Twitter” to “X” in 2023. While some alternatives like Meta’s Threads and Bluesky have gained traction, X remains the fourth most visited social media site in the US.

If these demographics align with your target audience, prioritize X in your social strategy.

What do your followers post about?

To analyze your X followers’ interests, you can manually go through and browse each followers’ timeline. But that’s going to take you a long time. Alternatively, you can use X’s audience analytics to get a high-level view of what your audience responds to.

If you want to take things a step further, you’ll need a third-party tool, like Sprout. We offer social listening features that support your understanding of consumer emotions around your brand, your competition and trending topics. Our Twitter (X) sentiment analysis tools provide an overview of audience sentiment, as well as historical data that can show how sentiment around a topic has evolved over time.

Between these two reports, you have the ammo you need to create and share more of the content your followers actually like. Also, by understanding topics your followers post about, you’ll increase your chances of being discovered by new people searching for the same type of content.

When are your followers active?

Sharing content without knowing when your audience is most likely to be online is kind of like gambling. While there’s a chance your followers might see your post, there’s also a good chance they won’t.

Increase your odds of being seen by learning the sharing habits of your followers. Posting when your followers are active increases the likelihood of getting seen.

So how do you find the best times to post on Twitter (X)? After reviewing social media usage data from Sprout Social customers over the past year, Sprout’s Data Science team discovered that X posts get the most engagement when shared during:

• Mondays from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Tuesdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This data can offer a strong starting point for businesses beginning to explore X, but keep in mind they’re broad averages. It’s possible your followers may have unique usage patterns that defy these recommendations.

You need to find out when your followers are most likely to engage. You can analyze follower activity patterns using these approaches:

Manual method:

• Review high-engagement posts and record send times
• Analyze hundreds of posts to identify patterns
• Time-intensive and requires spreadsheet organization

Sprout Social’s automated approach:

• Post Performance Report shows all published content with engagement sorting
• Optimal Send Times powered by ViralPost® automatically identifies peak engagement windows
• One-click scheduling optimization based on your specific follower behavior

The most efficient approach is to use Sprout‘s Optimal Send Times feature. Powered by ViralPost®, Optimal Send Times finds the best time to share content each day based on when your followers engage the most, then it automatically schedules your posts in those time slots.

Which influencers are following you?

Connecting with influencers is a great way to grow your audience and become an authority in your industry. But in order to get the most out of your relationship with an influencer on X, you need to engage with them.

Now that badges are available under a subscription model on X Premium, identifying genuine influencers in your follower list requires more than just checking for a checkmark. You’ll need to analyze your X followers and spot the VIPs. Instead of manually reviewing profiles every time you get a new follower notification, try one of these options:

• BuzzSumo: This content analysis tool can surface the top sharers who have amplified your content on X. It’s not an exhaustive list of everyone who has shared the article, but a sampling of those who reposted it 2-3 days after it was first published.
• Sprout Social: Audience Size Influencer Indicators in Sprout Social provide a visual cue about the follower counts of users that appear in the Smart Inbox. Follower counts between 10,000 and 100,000 are labeled in green, and follower counts over 100,000 are labeled orange. Sprout users can create a custom Inbox View to quickly see which notable accounts have engaged with their brand within a given time period.

In addition to finding the influencers who are already following you, get on the offense. Be proactive by finding influencers and getting them to follow you. Check out our full guide on influencer marketing to learn how to activate influencers in your industry.

Which followers engage the most?

Influencers aren’t the only followers that matter. If certain followers frequently celebrate and engage with your brand on X, a little proactive attention can go a long way. According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, the most memorable thing a brand can do on social media is respond to their customers.

When you ignore your fans, you risk losing brand advocates and worse, sending potential customers to your competitors, regardless of their follower count. Sprout’s Listening features can show you which users engage with you the most, and the users who are frequently mentioned alongside your brand.

You can use this functionality to look for co-marketing opportunities, get ideas for user-generated content or just to highlight your loyal brand advocates.

Analyzing who’s following you on X is important. But knowing who’s mentioning and promoting your account is just as valuable, if not more.

What type of content resonates with your followers?

Seeing what your followers post can spark ideas for new content. But if you want to consistently hit your goals for X, look to your historical data to see what’s worked well in the past.

Your followers’ posts spark content ideas, but historical data reveals what consistently drives results. Focus on topics and post types that generated the highest engagement rates.

Content analysis methods:

• Native X analytics: Review top posts by impressions, clicks and engagement
• Sprout Social’s Post Performance Report: Compare content across channels with sortable engagement metrics

• Advanced filtering: Organize data by post type, topic and engagement statistics

Track engagement-focused metrics rather than impressions or reach. Keep in mind the metrics you should be monitoring here are the ones related to Twitter (X) engagement. You need content that drives action, not just visibility.

How to use Twitter audience insights

Data transforms into strategy when it informs meaningful updates to your approach. Use audience insights to build your social media presence on X with confidence.

Actionable insight application:

• Visual content testing: If audience engagement spikes with bright, bold visuals, A/B test standard product shots against illustrated graphics
• Messaging optimization: Test different content types, timing strategies and messaging approaches
• Strategic experimentation: Turn hunches into data-driven tests that enhance strategy effectiveness

Every insight becomes an opportunity to refine your approach and accelerate results. Use Twitter to test content types, messaging, timing and more. The findings you gather can significantly enhance your strategy’s effectiveness.

Real-world impact of Twitter (X) follower analysis

This case study on Entercom (now Audacy) and 96.5 (WTDY-FM) Philadelphia highlights how social listening increases X follower growth and insights.

To run a massive “Artist of the Summer” voting poll, they used Sprout Social’s Social Listening tool to track millions of votes and interactions.

Key outcomes for X follower analysis:

• Significant follower growth: They gained over 168,000 new X followers, demonstrating how engaging campaigns directly expand your audience.
• Deep audience understanding: By analyzing 21.9 million messages from over 637,000 unique authors, they understood follower passions and engagement methods.
• Quantified engagement: The campaign generated over 17 million engagements, providing clear data on follower activity and effective content types.
• Actionable content insights: Data supported their efforts to refine future content, aligning it with their growing audience’s demonstrated interests.

This shows that effective X follower analysis, especially through social listening, drives growth, boosts engagement and leads to a more effective social media strategy.

Start analyzing Twitter (X) followers today

Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to start analyzing. Go through the steps above and start learning about who your audience is. But don’t get stuck at the analysis stage. Put your findings to use and improve your Twitter (X) marketing strategy.

Twitter (X) follower analysis FAQs

How do I check Twitter (X) follower analytics?

Access analytics via the Post Activity dashboard on web; some analytics entry points or advanced metrics may require X Premium. For comprehensive analysis, use Sprout Social’s integrated dashboard that consolidates demographics, engagement patterns and content performance.

Is it safe to use a third-party tool for follower analysis?

Yes, when choosing reputable partners with enterprise-grade security like Sprout Social’s SOC 2 compliance. Sprout processes over 1 billion messages daily with top-tier data protection protocols.

How often should I analyze my Twitter (X) followers?

Conduct deep analysis quarterly for strategic planning and monitor key metrics monthly for timely adjustments. Consistent analysis ensures alignment with evolving audience interests and emerging trends.