Before you begin creating Twitter searches, ask yourself “how do my targeted prospects phrase their tweets? What are they tweeting about and how do they word what they say?”
Language is important… if you want to search for tweets from teenagers for example, they might use different terms of description than retired people. Remember, you will only find results if you search for what is actually being tweeted.
So, for example, if you are a Hairdresser and you look for “need a haircut” but the term your prospects use is “hairdesign” you won’t find many results for “haircut”.
I know it is highly unlikely anyone says “hairdesign”… but it does demonstrate my example so just humour me for a minute.
When you set up a search in Twitter, you want to use as few words as possible in your phrase… but more than one or the number of results will be overwhelming… I usually recommend each search term consists of 2-4 words.
To find which 2-4 words to use in a search phrase, I go through a process of whittling down to the common denominator phrase. These are the words that identify the situation after removing any words which could be substituted…
For example;
You see a tweet from someone saying
“Congratulations @xxx and @xxx on their engagement” which is a tweet from someone congratulating friends on their engagement
The thought process I follow to determine the common denominator phrase…
I strip out the word “congratulations” because someone else might say “congrats” or “shout out” etcI strip out the names… obviously!
I also strip out “on” because someone else might say “for”
And I’m left with “their engagement”
If you search “their engagement” in Twitter you’ll see all tweets from people congratulating other people on their engagement
Now… if you’re s wedding related company, you can connect with the newly engaged couples and there is your target market right there!
The number of results will vary… if nobody is tweeting the term you are searching then you won’t find any results… but don’t give up because Twitter is real time… new tweets are being added every second!
In my book “Social Prospecting For Twitter“I take you several layers deeper than these examples so you are able to search and find your targeted prospects based on their random thoughts… even if they don’t specifically mention any obvious terms.
You’ll also learn how to engage effectively so you build relationships that drive a consistent stream of leads and sales to your business. CLICK HERE to purchase my book in Kindle or Paperback format
EDITED TO ADD Video demo of this example search in progress as requested in the comments and link to Social Prospecting For Twitter which was published in November 2012
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That’s why your tweets must never be salesy – what you do is to find tweets from people who would likely be interested in what you offer, then you engage with them on THEIR terms, not yours.
So if you see a tweet from someone saying they are looking forward to visiting their wedding venue tomorrow, your response should be sharing in their excitement – let them talk about their excitement.
If your reply is “hello I can help you plan your wedding” for example, that would be considered spam.
Just think about what you would say if the same conversation was taking place offline, and respond to the tweets you find in the same way you would if you were chatting to a friend over a coffee.
If businesses start sending tweets to users who are engaged (for example) for promotion purposes would this not be considered spamming?
How does this stand in the realms of ethically promoting ones business or is the idea to simply start following these ‘twitter finds’ first?
Thank you this is very helpful. It makes total sense and why I haven’t done this before is beyond me!
Regards
Emma
Thanks for the great feedback Anne and Alison. Anne, as you asked so nicely, here is a video demonstrating this search on Twitter so you can see how the results appear Vx
Excellent help, thank you. It’s made me think about ideas for searches, and actually “their engagement” could be useful to me anyway.
Regards,
Alison.
Very intuitive clever process to whittle down what people are looking for on Twitter…what would be a useful add would be a link to the twitter search page…so that people could see that…or even a small video showing me exactly how you did the search above..
thanks.