Getting More Out of Twitter
August 18, 2010 by Jessica Ziegler · View Comments
While in the process of writing the new Twitter training lab documentation (coming soon!), I’ve been playing around with some of the more advanced components of Twitter. Here are a few of my favorites:
Twitter Advanced Search
This easy-to-use web based form allows you to really hone your search. You can search within specific date ranges, search tweets by or references to specific people, search retweets, etc. One interesting feature is the ability to filter by location. This piece is bound to grow more powerful as users see the value in geo-targeting themselves and their tweets, and as location-based services like Gowala and Foursquare continue to gain traction.
One of my favorite features is the ability to filter based on “attitude”, tweets that use smiley faces, frowns or question marks. This is nowhere near as thorough a view as offered by products like Consumer Base that really study and interpret the language of tweets, but it’s a pretty decent tools for the average user.
If you prefer to write your search queries yourself in the twitter search box, the Twitter Advanced Search Operators are for you. These operators reflect the same filters as the advanced search interface, but without all that annoying ease-of-use. If you write queries regularly, this may actually be faster for you. It’s syntax-tic! Moving on…
Search Widget
I love this one. Use the interface to define your search query, title and caption, test it right there, then finish and grab code. Voila! You can a display a custom stream of tweets related to whatever you choose right on your page or blog.
For example, say you run a blog called SchnauzersRock.com, because you love Schnauzers. (No, I don’t love Schnauzers, we’re talking about YOU). You could search for Schnauzers, love, I love Schnauzers. Then add a title and caption and…
Paste the code right on your site for non-stop Schnauzer love.
Or course these tools offer compelling listening tools for your business, even if it is not Schnauzer-related. Use advanced search to find people worth following, use the search widget to create a real time view into conversations that are, and aren’t, happening around your industry right now and share with your readers.
How are you using these tools to gain insight into your business?
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Google real-time search – WTH is going to happen now?
December 11, 2009 by Jessica Ziegler · View Comments
My first thought when I heard that google was going to be meshing real time search with it’s usual results was, cool, now we’ll get some real fast results reflecting what is happening at the moment.
But yesterday I read an insightful post from Rob Birgfeld on SmartBlog On Social Media called Reality setting in: What Google’s real-time search means to businesses. He brought up some very interesting points. In his post he used a different example, but what happens when my mom (or dad, let’s not be sexist while being ageist, one cliche at a time please) searches for Nordstroms to find out their hours and gets 350 links to posts about what random people bought at Nordstroms, issues and experiences they had? How much patience will mom expend trying to find a simple link to the store? Frankly, does she even know there is more than one page of results?
Mulling this over, I see 2 things happening.
Number one: Nordstroms now NEEDS to pay for placement in google search. I’m sure they already do, they are a giant company, but what about the smaller companies who have managed to do a bang up job with their SEO and have a long tail of positive comments, articles and mentions on other sites? Where do their current natural results end up?
Number two: somewhere within the depths of Nordstroms’ PR/Marketing deptartment, one of more employees (previously a bright-eyed social media pro) is furiously blogging, posting, commenting and tweeting not only about Nordstroms’ various marketing initiatives, but about simple things like store hours and locations in order to control the real time results.
Depressing, no?
What are your thoughts on real time search results? Should they be included in the broad search or segmented out?
Using saved searches in Twitter
October 23, 2009 by Tim Miner · View Comments
I use Seesmic to manage both Twitter and Facebook most of the time, but I still go back to Twitter every so often to use my saved searches. I am a creature of habit and the saved Twitter search is one of those habits for me. A saved search gives you an easy way to revisit the current results for a search that remains relevant to you.
Creating a search is pretty straight forward. Just enter your search criteria and then click search. Once your results are displayed, you will see a button for saving your search in the top right part of the search window.
But there are ways to make your search more specific. I use a few basic search operators to limit my search results like [-rt], [filter:], [to:] and [from:].
For example, searching for posts about “social media” and removing retweets and limiting results to just those with links would look like this: “social media” -rt filter:links
You can find more search operators forTwitter here or use the Advanced Search Form to perform your search.
What operators do you use to further refine your search results?