You’re probably familiar with the Twitter Search Bar, but have you heard of Twitter Advanced Search? If you haven’t, you’re not alone. Twitter has unintentionally done a terrific job hiding this little gem. While the normal search bar is sufficient for finding your friends, looking up hashtags, and doing a simple phrase search, Twitter Advanced Search offers a great deal more. From location specific tweets to questions containing a specific keyword, you can tailor your searches to find exactly what you’re looking for. Every business using social media for marketing needs to be utilizing the advanced search features on Twitter. Thankfully, we’re about to tell you everything you need to know.
Advanced Search Web Form
There are two ways to access Twitter’s Advanced Search features. The first, and easiest way, is to manually type in the URL for the Advanced Search Web Form (https://twitter.com/search-advanced).
You’ll see you have a number of different options for your search including, keywords and phrases, hashtags, languages, from, to, or about certain accounts, location, and emotional connotation. All you have to do is enter what you’re looking for a click ‘search’. In seconds, a stream of relevant tweets will appear!
How can this change how your business uses Twitter? Depending on your social media goals, you can search for other professionals in your area to follow, find out what people are saying about a certain topic or company, or search for specific tweets to respond to. Let’s say you have an interior design company in Newport Beach and you want to increase clientele. You think a great strategy would be to answer home decorating questions people are asking on Twitter. You could do a search like the following:
And voila! A stream of questions you can reply to. It’s not perfect, but Virgil Griffith looks like he’s in need of an interior designer, and Janice Noske has a question related to home decorating. A quick response could turn into a client.
Twitter Advanced Search Operators
If you love using a text editor or have some programming background, consider trying out the Advanced Search Operators. You get the same freedom as using the web form, but the convenience of entering your question directly into the Twitter Search Bar. For example, if we wanted to ask the same question as before, we would type interior, OR home decorating, OR decorator, near:Newport Beach, CA within:100mi directly into the search bar.
You can write up any number of Boolean “or” statements with the Advanced Operators. If you want to find tweets that mention the company Apple, not the fruit, type apple –fruit to invoke the negative keyword command. Phrases are indicated by quotes, as in “dog park”. To find out what people were tweeting about last 4th of July weekend, use the since: and until: operators, as in since:2012-07-03 until:2012-07-05. Emotions are indicated by : ) for positive, : ( for negative, and ? for a question.
One of the best things about using the Advanced Search Operators is that you can be in control of the distance from a specified location. Let’s say you’re interior decorating business is in Newport Beach, CA but you can take clients up to 50 miles away. When you use the Advanced Search Web Form the default location will be near:Newport Beach, CA within:15mi. Using the operators you can easily change that to within:50mi, to widen your reach.
Knowing how to use Twitter’s Advanced Search features will change your company’s social media marketing strategy. It is a great way to increase clientele, find out what people are saying about your business or field, and connect with professionals in your area. Virtually any question you can think to ask can easily be created. Whether you use the web form or take a stab at the Advanced Search Operators, be sure to make use of this powerful search tool.