Analytics. It’s what makes us smarter, better at what we do. Analytics helps us to learn what works, and what doesn’t work.

Often, however, when a new social network starts up, building in analytics is the last thing on their mind. Third party applications often become available before the actual application’s analytics do.

This has been the case both for Twitter and for Pinterest. Both have had analytics available for a while, but they weren’t great–there were other programs (in Twitter’s case, Hootsuite, Twitonomy, and Tweetchup are some of my faves) that simply did it better.

Well, recently, both have improved business analytics for Twitter and Pinterest, and the improvements are pretty great.

Twitter’s Analytics (http://analytics.twitter.com) not only give you an overall snapshot of how your tweets have done over the last month, they also break down every single tweet, and tell you how many impressions that tweet got, what kind of engagement (@replies, RTs, faves) it got, and what the engagement rate was. It’s nicely laid out, easy to read.

Pinterest Analytics (http://analytics.pinterest.com) similarly is stepping it up. I found the last version of Pinterest Analytics buggy–sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. This one works great. They give you an overall idea of how much activity is happening on your account, as well as which are your most popular pins, and even which are the most popular pins from your site.

Now go get smart about your Tweets and Pins!