There's a reason digital marketers love Facebook, and it's not just the fact that it's the largest social media network in the world. With its 'Insights,' the service also offers the industry's largest internal analytics dashboard, offering valuable nuggets from audience demographics to the best times to post.

Until this summer, marketers utilizing Twitter were not quite as lucky. Sure, native ads on the network received their own metrics of reach and engagement, but those looking for social media analytics of organic posts had to rely on external, often paid services.

That all changed last month, when Twitter rolled out its very own Analytics dashboard. In the weeks since, we've been able to analyze the tool. Here are our conclusions:

The Good

Above all, Twitter now offers numbers on how every tweet - organic or otherwise - performs. After previously having to rely on limited estimates by external services such as TweetReach, marketers can now see exactly how their Tweets perform, both in terms of impressions and engagement.

For those more interested in long-term trends, the platform also has a solution. It offers a 28-day overview of how your Tweets perform, measuring engagement rate, link clicks, retweets, favorites and replies and offering percentages of how those numbers compare to the previous 28-day period.

The Bad

Unfortunately, as of now, the service does not allow users to specify a time frame in order to analyze these trends. The 28-day trend tool is great, but those looking for a 7-day option or wanting to go back in time to compare will be disappointed.

As a result of the missing time and a few other options, users are left to themselves to draw conclusions. Facebook, by analyzing reach along with its knowledge of when the most users are online, is able to suggest ideal post times in its Insights dashboard. Twitter offers the impressions for each tweet, but the user has to guess whether higher impressions are due to a lot of retweets or the time of day.

The Future

Despite these shortcomings, the future is positive. Facebook's Insights did not arrive as complete as they are today; in fact, its post-time recommendation feature was only installed this year. Twitter's move to an internal analytics platform shows the company's commitment to metrics, which can only be a positive sign that more is to come for the popular social media network.

If you're having trouble accessing or interpreting the numbers in Twitter's new Analytics tool, don't worry! We're here to help. Contact us to let us help you with your social media strategy and execution.