In case you haven’t heard, Twitter is the greatest business development tool in history. Says who? Says me. Back in June I posted an article about my 7 favorite Twitter tools, which turned out to be a pretty popular post. And I also wrote an eBook about Twitter, in case you are interested in things like that. So today I wanted to share some information from that book with you about how to find stuff on Twitter. The Twitter search feature is unbelievably powerful in digging through the millions of tweets that happen daily. So below you’ll find some tips on how to find stuff.
Listed in bold will be an example of something that you might want to find on Twitter. And underneath each one I give you the exact characters you need to type in the search field to find it. In all the examples below I am going to use the example of Lady Gaga, whose actual Twitter account is @ladygaga. To use Twitter search you simply click in the ‘search’ field at the top of the Twitter website, or go to www.twitter.com/search-advanced
Search Examples:
Find tweets asking questions about Lady Gaga:
Search for: “Lady Gaga ?”
Find tweets about Lady Gaga, but filter out retweets, include tweets with links, and finally look 50 mi around Miami:
Search for: “Lady Gaga” –rt filter:links near:Miami within:50mi
Lady Gaga wants to search for everyone talking about her but not mentioning her Twitter account directly:
Search for: “ladygaga” -to:ladygaga -from:ladygaga -@ladygaga
Lady Gaga wants to see all tweets mentioning any of her 3 accounts: (I don’t believe she has 3 accounts, so this is simply an example)
Search for: to:ladygaga OR to:ladygaga2 OR to:ladygaga3
Lady Gaga wants to see tweets from her competitors’ Twitter accounts (@madonnanation & @beyonce):
Search for: from:madonnanation OR from:beyonce
See all the links tweeted by Lady Gaga from her Twitter account – @ladygaga:
Search for: from:ladygaga filter:links
Search for Lady Gaga pictures:
Search for: “Lady Gaga” twitpic OR yfrog OR post.ly filter:links
Use Twitter search to find stuff being talked about and then respond. Help people. Solve their problems. Brag on your customers. Share helpful and useful information. You’ll be able to reach out to people like you never have before.
