Borrowing some definitions from this blog post by the amazing guys at Blog Paws (be sure to check them out – stellar content), hopefully this will help when you are trying to understand what the various metrics actually mean when you are looking at your Twitter dashboard.
Impressions measure the times a user is served a tweet in timeline or search results. In other words an impression is actually a calculation of how many people saw your tweet when you tweeted it on twitter. Twitter does not account for people who may have seen your tweet a while after you tweeted e.g. in your feed. So what helps increase impressions?
Favourites do not give impressions, but do help show the engagement rate. Replies add one impression to your total, just for reference. Retweets do help increase your impressions as it gets more eyeballs on your tweet, however, if someone ‘edits’ your tweet, i.e. ads a comment to it, this actually changes the url of the tweet. Thus, all engagement and impressions gained as a result of the tweet are not measured on your channel. This is helpful to know if you are retweeting content, and want the ‘glory’ for your own channel!
By creating fun, engaging, useful, and shareable tweets you will increase the likelihood of someone retweeting your tweet.
Engagements are the total number of times a user interacts with a tweet: Clicks anywhere on the Tweet, including retweets, replies, follows, favorites, links, cards, hashtags, embedded media, username, profile photo, or Tweet expansion. Just helpful to know that this really can mean any type of engagement. Take a look at this blog post to help you decide which key metrics you should be looking at.