Historical Twitter Data: 3 Easy Methods To Get Twitter Data

Out of all the social media platforms, Twitter is widely known as the fastest medium for accessing the latest news and a platform for users to share their opinions. Around 6000 tweets are sent out on Twitter every second, which gives 500 million tweets posted each day, and over 200 billion tweets every year. This quantity of user-generated data posted on this platform is vastly diverse and at the same time, mind-boggling.

User-generated content (tweets) is essentially a virtual cornucopia of valuable audience, competitors, and industry insights. Brands and marketers are always on the lookout for such actionable insights to enhance their social media strategy. Twitter provides a feature with which anyone with a Twitter account can access tweets. This feature is called Twitter Advanced Search. But there is a limit to what you can do with it. While it can provide you access to all the old tweets posted by any public Twitter account, the task if done manually, can be taxing as well as time-consuming.

So, check this article out to get all the data easily you need about tweets from the past and how to best access them.

What is Historical Twitter Data?

As a result, Twitter historical data includes every tweet, retweet, and reply that has ever been published. When it comes to historical tweets, Twitter’s APIs can provide you with the raw data you need, but Twitter analytics tools provide you with analytical insights along with the tweet data. It is estimated that there are approximately half a billion tweets being sent out everyday. That’s a lot of money. However, should we care? Definitely. As a result of the overwhelming volume of data that is posted on Twitter, but also due to its cultural, economic, and social influence.

How to get Historical Twitter data and Old Tweets?

With Trackmyhashtag, you can access any old tweet ever sent in Twitter’s History as long as it remains public. Historical Twitter data is one of our top products, but before you keep reading you must know that getting old tweets or Twitter’s archived data is a premium feature that is not free.

 Follow these easy steps to download historical Twitter data with TrackMyHashtag:

It’s really easy to download or get access to historical Twitter data of any search term or criteria, just follow these simple steps :

1. To get custom Twitter data, you need to fill requested historical Twitter data form.
2. Fill out the form with your email address, and search term, select the date ranges and submit.
3. Once you have submitted the form, our team will get back to you with the pricing and dataset specifications.

After a while, you’ll receive your Twitter dataset and the details associated with it.

Analyzing Twitter Archives

You can analyze several types of “Twitter archive History” content:

• Tweets sent by one account: For example tweets sent by @username
• Historical hashtag data (Hashtag or multiple Hashtags): It could be #—— or a TV show like #—- or both combined
• Mentions to one Twitter account: @— or @—
• A keyword: Like “Tornados” or “Vaccines”
• Tweet Timeline: Search all the tweets posted in a time interval.

Today, analyzing all social media data related to your industry is a must for developing effective marketing strategies. Brands and marketers are more inclined towards a data-driven approach. They need effective tools that can help them access and analyze specific Twitter data with ease, and a manual analysis of the data is not really an effective option. TrackMyHashtag can help you access Twitter data related to any specific search query or time period. You can choose to track and monitor tweets in real-time or access tweets from historical Twitter data dating back to 2006. The intuitive analytical dashboard provides tons of actionable insights that can boost your social media presence and increase ROI.

How Do I Get Historical Tweets?

Method 1 :

Steps to find Historical Twitter data or old tweets of any public Twitter account by using Twitter’s advanced search :

1: Go to Twitter.

2: Now enter the time limit like this: @username since: year/month/day until: year/month/day 

3: And press search, then you’ll see the desired result. See the below image for example.

Method 2 : 

1: Click on the three dots beside the search bar.

2: Now, select the Advanced Search option.

3: Use the various filters to access required tweets.

Three sections to customize your search results:

• Words: You can use this section to input keywords, hashtags, or phrases that you want to search in your Twitter history.
• Accounts: Use this section to input the Twitter handles from which you want to search Twitter history.
• Dates: This section can help you access Twitter history from specific periods.

1. You can customize search results with various keywords and hashtags or time to get relevant results. 
2. Go to the accounts section further and input your Twitter handle to search Twitter history from your account.
3. “Dates” option where you can look at your Twitter history from a certain date range. Try to check out a few months at a time to make sure you can scrub anything which may not be relevant to your brand any longer.

The quantity and rate at which users share data or post tweets on social media platforms is simply incredible. While Twitter has a much smaller user base compared to social media giants like Facebook or Instagram, Twitter thrives on real-time conversations. It is the most sought-after platform for accessing the latest news and updates about brands along with the happenings or events all around the world. It is also a major hub for users to discuss and debate important social, economic, political issues, and more. The quality of conversations on the platform further increases the value of the tweets.

You must be aware of the amount of data that exists on Twitter. Students, researchers, marketing agencies, brands, and any other Twitter user can access valuable information. Students can use this for school and college assignments. Researchers can carry out research related to work. Marketing agencies and brands benefit from this by better understanding the likes, preferences, and needs of their target audience. Brands and marketers can also use this data to get insights into the social media moves of their competitors.

However, to reach a conclusion, one must consider all the possible situations. That’s why researchers and marketers need a much larger data sample (more tweets). But, do they have enough time to analyze each and every tweet and then prepare comprehensive and precise reports, all by themselves. Moreover, manually doing such a task can be tiresome. Any minor mistake can change the outcome derived from analyzing the data.

Therefore, it’s best to use an effective Twitter analytics tool that can help you access and analyze Twitter data with ease. TrackMyHashtag can help you access real-time as well as historical Twitter data related to any specific search criteria (hashtag, keyword, @mention, time, lactation, language, and more). The Twitter data is provided in easy-to-navigate raw Excel/CSV files.

TrackMyHashtag can help you access the historical Twitter data of any public Twitter account. You can extract data related to any hashtag, keyword, @mention, or event. It does not matter if you want a week-old data or a year old. You can even get access to Twitter data (tweets) posted way back in 2006 when Twitter was officially launched.

So, you needn’t worry about the time period. Also, make sure to state your requirements (search criteria) very clearly while downloading historical Twitter data.

Before using any third-party tool, you should research it. Without knowing anything about the tool and its features, you shouldn’t invest your money. Cybercrimes are increasing day-by-day and handing out your information and money to just any website is surely not a genius move.

Hence, we are here with every other detail about our analytics tool and its features. Continue with the article to know more about TrackMyHashtag and the historical Twitter data it provides.

Why is it important to analyze Historical tweets?

As I said earlier, Twitter data is a virtual cornucopia of valuable audience, competitor, and industry insights. People discuss, debate, criticize, argue on various topics at the same time, so it’s important to track tweets that mention your brand. Extracting old tweets and analyzing them can help you analyze what people are talking about your brand on social media. Similarly, an analysis of historical Twitter can also help you pinpoint the origin of a trending conversation or hashtag.

Old tweets can also help in decision-making as they will tell you which marketing tactics work and which don’t. Suppose you want to conduct a campaign. If you are already aware of possible crises that can happen, you make a crisis prevention plan. Look for failed campaigns and learn about their weak points. Lastly, avoid making the same mistakes for your campaign.

Extracting and analyzing old tweets can also help you identify content topics that resonate with the audience and the ones that attract the least or no engagement. You can make a list of similar content topics and create a Twitter content strategy around it. This will help you plan an effective content strategy to keep your audience engaged.

Below listed are all the details that you will find in a historical Twitter data report. After critically analyzing all this information brands and organizations will be able to make effective marketing decisions to increase their brand’s social media authority.

Reach and Impressions: These metrics can help you evaluate your brand’s social media visibility.

• Impressions: Impressions are the number of times a tweet appears in the followers’ timelines. Although, impressions do not evaluate if the user actually clicked on the tweet or not.
• Reach: Reach is the number of users that actually saw your tweet.

Engagement: Engagement is one of the most important social media metrics for brands and marketers. Engagement is the number of times users interacted with your content or tweet.

Top media, hashtags, and URLs: This one’s a no-brainer. These are the list of most engaging media, hashtags, and URLs that are most liked by the target audience.

Most liked and retweeted tweets: As the name suggests, this is the list of tweets with the most user interactions.

Influencers: This is a list of industry influencers that engage with your brand’s social media profile.

Tweet Timeline: The tweet timeline is a record that displays the tweeting habits of the target Twitter account.

Most mentioned usernames: This metric contains a list of most mentioned usernames in the tweets of the targeted Twitter account.

Best time to tweet: The best time to tweet is a social media metric that identifies the time-frame when the users are online and can provide the needed engagement.

Top languages: As the name suggests, it is a list of the most used languages by your community to engage with you or your brand.

User rankings: This metrics identifies and ranks users based on,

• Most popular followers: Followers that often engage with your brand and help build conversations related to your brand.
• Followers with maximum likes: These are the users among your follower base that have built their own community and post highly engaging content for the audience.
• Followers with maximum tweets: These are the group of users that are tweet the most. These are also the users that assist in driving conversations and increasing the reach of the tweets.
• Followers with maximum lists: These are usually social media users that are also experts in their fields and are highly sought-after. Many users have already added them to their list of important social media users, so they don’t miss any of their tweets or content.

The user ranking lists also include social media influencers that can help you promote your brand and increase awareness to drive engagement and conversions.

The historical Twitter data is not just about tweets. The report is divided into three Excel files. One of the files has details related to the tweets extracted from TrackMyHashtag. The second file is about the images used in the tweets along with the search keyword. And the last excel file has a structured report of videos. Every tweet has its URL mentioned in a column so that it is easier for the user to see the original tweet.

• Tweet Id: Unique ID of the Tweet
• Tweet URL: URL of the Tweet
• Tweet Posted Time: Time at which the Tweet was posted
• Tweet Content: Tweet content data with up to 280 characters (max)
• Tweet Type: Whether it is a tweet, retweet, or reply
• Client Source: Device through which the tweet was posted
• Retweets Received: Number of retweets on the Tweet
• Likes Received: Number of likes on the Tweet
• Tweet Location: Location from where the tweet was posted
• Tweet Language: Language used in the tweet
• User Id: The user ID of the user who posted the tweet, retweet, or reply
• Name: Name of the user who posted the tweet, retweet, or reply
• Username: Username of the user who posted the tweet, retweet, or reply
• User Bio: Bio of the user who posted the tweet, retweet, or reply
• Verified or Non-verified: Whether the Twitter account is verified or not
• Profile URL: URL of the profile of the Twitter account that posted the tweet
• Protected or Non-protected: Whether the Twitter account is protected or not
• User Followers: Followers count data of the user who posted the tweet, retweet, or reply
• User Following: Following count data of the user who posted the tweet, retweet, or reply
• User Account Creation date: Account creation date of the user who posted the tweet, retweet, or reply
• Hashtag count: Count the number of total tweets of any hashtag or term

This is all the information you can access through TrackMyHashtag’s historical Twitter data download feature.

Twitter historical data with no time limitation simply means that you can access all the tweets sent out by users since Twitter was first introduced to the current date. TrackMyHashtag allows you to access from any specific time duration and search query. While native analytics was first introduced on the platform in 2014, Twitter has been collecting all the tweets posted by all the users since the creation of their accounts. This means you can even access old tweets dating back to 2006 when Twitter was first introduced.

You might wonder that hashtags were introduced in 2007. Then how are those tweets extracted? Well, we extract those tweets through keyword tracking. There are a lot of applications of historical Twitter data as well as the insightful metrics derived from analyzing the data. Let’s talk about a few of them in more detail.

• Compare Twitter data

Compare tweets using historical Twitter data. A brand might want to determine if the engagement metrics of its new campaign are better performing than the older one. Brands can generate a sense of self-awareness, and improve their social media tactics to increase visibility and awareness. This historical Twitter data report has everything a brand or marketer needs to conduct a successful campaign. Further by tracking the performance metrics in real-time, you can also analyze the impact of implemented strategies and improvise tactics if the performance metrics are low. Or else you are hurting your own reputation. Brands can also monitor their competitors’ campaigns using this historical Twitter data.

• Analyze Twitter data

Analyzing the historical Twitter data related to your brand can help you identify social media strategies that have proven effective in the past along with those that don’t work at all. You can use the insights to identify and leverage proven tactics to increase your social media presence and authority. Similarly, you can also access and analyze the Twitter data of your competitors to identify effective strategies used by your competitors to increase brand awareness and visibility. Analyzing Twitter data can also help you access valuable insights that can help you better understand your audience and create content that keeps them engaged.

Using old tweets, you can perform a lot of activities. If you are a student or a researcher, you can use it to perform research. As a brand, you can monitor your campaign, identify influencers related to your brand, and track your competitor’s next moves. As an influencer, use the historical Twitter data to track content topics, hashtags, media, URLs to keep the followers engaged. Download Twitter data to keep it as an archive for the future. Why don’t we talk about all these in detail to get a better understanding?

• Research Purpose

Historical hashtag data is mainly used by scholars, researchers to perform research. For example, some researchers are using Twitter data to detect hate speech on the platform. They are also trying to analyze the sentiments expressed by users that engage with hate speech tweets. Lastly, the researchers are trying to identify the size of conversations related to hate speech on the platform.

Be it a social cause like #metoo or predicting stocks on the basis of the Historical Twitter dataset, Twitter data is being used a lot.

• Competitors’ Analysis

Twitter data also plays a key role in analyzing the social media tactics of your competitors. For a new business, it’s best to find and imitate an established and successful player from the industry. Accessing and analyzing historical Twitter data of your competitor’s Twitter profile can give you a better understanding of your competitor’s social media marketing strategy. You can identify and leverage proven tactics to increase brand awareness, engagement, and visibility. In a similar way, you can also identify ineffective tactics implemented by your competitors. It can help you avoid making the same mistakes as your competitors.

• Predict future

Analyzing historical Twitter data can give you access to predictive analytics that can enhance your social media marketing tactics. For example, the average lifespan of a tweet is between 15-20 minutes. So, posting your tweets when your followers are online is of utmost importance. But if you post tweets randomly, they will be lost in the oblivion of the users’ Twitter feeds. Analyzing historical Twitter data can help you identify the time frame when your followers are online, based on the performance metrics of your past tweets.

• Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is the most sought-after paid marketing channel in 2021. In fact, many brands have already increased their influencer marketing budgets and are collaborating with multiple influencers. Brands and marketers use influencers as they are respected experts and can sway the purchase decisions of consumers in your favor. Analyzing historical Twitter data can help you identify influencers that engage with your brand. You can further extract and analyze the historical data of influencers to identify the right brand advocate to promote your brand.

Also, the influencer marketing landscape is evolving and at the same time is getting centralized. The emergence of macro and nano influencers has opened new doors to connect with consumers. On the other hand, influencers are now partnering with social media agencies that can help them find brands to partner with. This has made it easier for brands to find influencers that match their brand voice.

• Build a social media campaign

Hosting a highly successful social media campaign on your first try is difficult. But you sure can learn from your mistakes and keep improving and enhancing your marketing approach. Downloading and analyzing historical Twitter data can help you achieve just that. You can extract the historical Twitter data to identify shortcomings in the past social media campaign. You can then leverage the insights to develop an effective social media campaign that increases your brand’s visibility and awareness.

• Measure your Twitter Campaign

Monitoring and measuring the impact of your marketing strategies is an essential part of social media marketing. Analyzing historical Twitter data can help you analyze the performance metrics and audience interactions. The metrics gained from the analysis can help you measure the impact of implemented strategies. You can effortlessly identify strategies that are the most effective and the ones that do you no good.

The Super Bowl began on Sunday, 7th February 2021. TrackMyHashtag is one of the best Twitter analytics tools that can help you access Twitter data related to the event. TrackMyHashtag also offers precise analytical reports with insightful statistics. These statistics can help you identify and analyze the popular topics of discussion as well as the quality of the conversations. TrackMyHashtag also offers 7-day reports for users performing live tracking on tweets relevant to them. TrackMyHashtag is capable of extracting old tweets from the Twitter archives. It can also track tweets related to any specific event, hashtag, keyword, or @mention in real-time and provide precise analytics to analyze the flow of the conversations.

Defining the period of time to extract historical Twitter data

The Super Bowl is a widely popular event held every year in the US but is hosted by a different city each year. The hashtag #SuperBowl is excessively used during these events each year. Hence, it’s essential to define the time-period to extract tweets related to any specific year. Defining the time ensures that the tracker only extracts tweets related to the specific dates. To download historical Twitter data from TrackMyHashtag, you just have to specify the beginning and end dates to extract the data as well as the keywords or hashtags.

Sample Data on the website

TrackMyHashtag is committed to providing the best user experience to its customers. That is why a sample of the historical Twitter data is included on the website which is absolutely free to use, download or edit. The main purpose of sharing this report is to provide the customers an insight into the data and analytical insights we provide.

This sample report is an analysis of random tweets from Twitter. The data is of July and August 2019 tweets. Users can see the metrics that are provided in the historical data. An URL of every tweet is mentioned in the report so that users can personally see all the tweets on Twitter only. And then engagements like retweets and likes are mentioned for every tweet. You will find the impression of every tweet at the end. To access the sample data, click here and press ‘Download Sample’.

Historical Twitter data is full of valuable analytical insights. Until a few years ago, accessing Twitter data required specialized technical skills. But the emergence of third-party tools has made it much easier to not only access Twitter data but also extract comprehensive insights in the form of analytics. Don’t waste any more time exploring the various alternatives, initiate TrackMyHashtag’s free trial and test the effectiveness of the tool yourself.

Analyzing Twitter data has become a common practice in the social media marketing landscape. A decade ago, posting a few tweets every now and then was enough to build an engaging and loyal follower base. But today, it’s getting more and more difficult to reach users. There is an abundance of content, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to stand out.

However, historical Twitter data is something that you can leverage to better understand the likes and preferences of your target audience and fine-tune your marketing strategy accordingly. TrackMyHashtag is the perfect tool that can help you effectively extract and analyze data with ease.

Start leveraging Twitter data to expand your brand’s social media horizons, today.

Until next time. Adios!