Finding Folks Who Need You on Twitter

I've not posted anything for a while, I've been busy with things over at Just Search, so I thought I'd share a quick tip for using Twitter. I'm often asked about conducting Twitter outreach, and here's something you can do that doesn't involve a lot of expensive custom tools.

I use this trick with Hootsuite, having the searches running all the time to look for engagement points for clients and making a point to reach out using these every day. It's really simple, and it's a conversation starter that genuinely leads to interaction, connections, and ultimately sales or donations. Twitter is a weapons-grade listening device, it just takes a few simple tricks to make it easy to use.

Weapons Grade Listening Device

Go to the Twitter search box and try this. Run a search with "-filter:links" in it, that'll search for things with the keywords you use but without links. This is kinda important for what we're going to add next as we're not interested in people 'providing links', we're looking for people who want help, need support, and are looking for info.

Next try typing a few phrases (and add your keywords) like this, and don't forget the -filter:links in your search (I believe using '-http' also works). This'll show the people who are looking for folks who need help or are asking questions about your Twitter accounts subject matter:

• where can I get 'keyword' -filter:links
• how to 'keyword' -filter:links
• anyone know 'keyword' -filter:links
• what's the best 'keyword' -filter:links
• how do I 'keyword' -filter:links
• need help 'keyword' -filter:links

Give it a go. Different phrases will work better for different topics, try your own. Try adding some regional words for better targeting. For me, this was a proper hallelujah moment. Oh, and if you ever need to, 'filter:links' will pull back tweets ONLY containing links. Let me know if you find this useful, and I'll post more stuff like this if you do.

Have a great weekend.