7 Ways You Should Use The Powerful Twitter Search Engine
Twitter users produce an enormous amount of content every single day.
In
fact, every second an average of 6,000 tweets are posted on Twitter,
which comes out to 500 million tweets per day. That’s right, 500
MILLION.
The question is, with so many tweets going out every single day, how do you cut through all the clutter?
Well the easiest way is by using the Twitter search tool, or, more specifically, the advanced Twitter search tool.
Did you know that the Twitter search engine receives over 2 BILLION searches a DAY.
That’s some pretty serious searching going on via Twitter.
Here are 7 ways you can use the all so powerful Twitter search engine for your business today!
Do a location-based search.
This
is particularly useful for local businesses wanting to connect with
people in their area. This feature enables you to easily search for
conversations happening locally that you can jump into. This is also a
great way to find people in your local area who you can follow (and who
hopefully will follow you in return).
To use this feature, go to the advanced search page and in the Places section enter the neighborhood or city you want to search for.
Find people asking questions.
People are asking questions every day on social media and Twitter is no exception.
How
powerful would it be if you were able to jump into a conversation
(which is completely acceptable on Twitter) and answer someone’s
question that is related to your business or industry? Better yet, what
if you were to create an entire blog post answering their question in
detail and then share it with them?
This would drive traffic back to your website, help establish you as an authority figure and likely would create a loyal fan.
The
easiest way to search for questions on Twitter is to just check the
“question” box at the bottom of the advanced search page.
To search for questions around a specific keyword, type: ‘keyword’ ? -filter:links lang:en.
Use
a keyword that would be used by the audience you’re trying to connect
with. The question mark allows you to see only tweets that contain a
question. The filter:links addition to the search enables you to filter
out the posts that contain links. You could leave this out of your
search, however, including it means you’re less likely to see
promotional tweets and more likely to just find people who are genuinely
looking for answers to a problem.
Finally, the lang:en means you are instructing Twitter to only show you tweets in English.
Search for Twitter Lists
Okay, so admittedly, you won’t be using the Twitter advanced search to find Twitter lists.
However, this tip is extremely useful if you’re trying to find great
content for curating or people to follow around a specific topic. It’s
also incredibly easy!
Simply go to Google and type: site:twitter.com/*/lists/keyword
Search within a specific date range
If
you’re looking for content around a specific event, it may be a good
idea to include a date range for the search. For example, Social Media
Marketing World 2015 has come and gone, but because content from the
event is still being accessed every day, people are still tweeting about
it. However, you may just want to access the tweets/content from the
time the event was taking place. This is where the Dates fields come in
handy. Simply enter the date range you want to search and you’re set!
Save your searches
If
you’re constantly searching for content within specific search
parameters, it may be useful to save your searches, allowing you to
quickly access them with just the click of a button.
To save
your searches, go to the top of your search results page and click the
Save button in the top right hand corner. To return to your saved
searches, go to the search box and click within the box. All of your
most recent searches as well as your saved searches will appear.
Use a negative search operator
There
may be occasions when you want to ensure the keyword you’re searching
for is in the right context. On those occasions, you can tell Twitter to
EXCLUDE tweets that contain a word by adding a dash before the word.
(Think of it as subtracting the word you want excluded.) Note: make sure
you don’t put a space between the dash and the term or it won’t work
properly.
If you were looking for tweets about the apple fruit,
for example, but didn’t want to get hundreds of tweets about the Apple
technology (because you know that would happen), you would search for
“apple –ipad –iphone” to remove any mention of the Apple products.
Search for (or avoid) retweets
Easily
search for retweets by adding “RT” to your search query. Note that this
doesn’t require the letters RT to actually be a part of the tweet. Even
when someone clicks the retweet button and “RT” isn’t added to the
retweet, it will still show up in a search for retweets.
While
this could be useful, chances are you’re probably more likely to do a
search where you’re looking to exclude retweets. In that case, simply
include “-RT” to your search and it’ll focus on just original tweets.
Final Thoughts
Thanks
to the advanced search tool and the ability to use Boolean search
operators, the sky is the limit for what you can search for on Twitter.
Use these advanced search tips to create lists and curate content, find
conversations going on where you can jump into and provide value, and
find ideas for your own blog content. You definitely don’t want to miss
out on all the relationship-building and content generating opportunities Twitter provides through its powerful search engine.
What are ways you utilize the powerful Twitter search engine?
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