Do you know what Twitter advanced search is and how to use it to grow your business?
Well if you don’t you are missing out on one of the most powerful tools on any social media platform! It’s like having a supercomputer that you’re able to tap into and find what 300,000,000 people are thinking and feeling.
The best part about it – it’s FREE!
In this article, I will review with you the top three ways to use Twitter advanced search to grow your business online.
1. Social Listening
You may be thinking what the heck is social listening? Well just imagine you want to find people that are talking about a specific topic, let’s say I am looking for people that need help with social media. I can type in the “This exact phrase” field “how do I use social media” and search everyone on Twitter that has used that phrase in a tweet.
Once I hit “Search” the Twitter machine will search their entire database for anyone who has said this in a tweet…it’s like magic!
As you can see the examples below these were two people that were looking for help with using social media for their business. At this point, I can start a conversation and see how I can possibly help them…yes, it’s that easy.
So now what I do is come up with 5 to 10 different phrases around people needing help with social media. Then every morning I search these phrases and get a list of people that I can start a conversation with.
2. Target Location Search
This is an amazing feature that allows you to search keywords, exact phrases and hashtags in a specific location. Let’s say you’re a real estate agent in Los Angeles, CA and you want to search for people that are house hunting in your local area.
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You can search a specific neighborhood or city with a search term like “house hunting”…
As you can see these are two people that are house hunting in Los Angeles, CA one is happy and the other is sad. The good thing is as we talked about previously you can start a conversation and add value to their search.
Again come up with multiple phrases you can search daily and you will have instant leads at your fingertips.
3. Username Inquires “People”
This is one of my favorites as you can target specific usernames in a few different ways.
From these accounts:
This report will return only tweets from that account. It’s very useful for learning more about the kinds of tweets that account is posting.
To these accounts:
This report will return only direct replies to that account (where the username is the first word in the tweet). This is useful for learning about what type of audience this account has and targeting the same audience.
Mentioning these accounts:
This will return all mentions of that Twitter account (including retweets and replies), as well as all tweets from that Twitter account. It’s the most comprehensive set of information for a specific Twitter account.
One of my favorite ways to use this feature is when I am looking to target a specific user’s audience. Let’s say you are starting a podcast around business, I would search a few different successful users and start learning about how they are using Twitter, what they are tweeting and how they are connecting with their audience.
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If they are already interested and listening to their podcast then assuming you have great content you should be able to peak the interest of the same audience.
In conclusion, this is really just the tip of the iceberg with Twitter’s advanced search but should give you three things you can start using today to generate leads for your business as well as learn more about certain audiences you would like to attract.
This article was contributed by Mike Scott.
