The topic of the month for my clients has been Twitter, I've received so many questions (and I love questions!). One of the most important aspects of obtaining Twitter followers is often the most overlooked, and that is to have a highly targeted following.
It really is quite easy to get to 10,000 followers if you'd like....but are those followers people and/or businesses that really share the same interests? Are they going be a potential client or customer? Could they be a possible JV (joint venture) partner? The people you follow should fall into the above sections somewhere.
So the question of the day, how do you obtain targeted twitter followers?
Tip 1 - Twitter Search
You can search Twitter by topics. Say for instance you want to connect with people interested in coffee shops (because you’re a coffee shop), then type "coffee shop" in the search bar. Once you hit the results page you can click on the People tab to see who Twitter says has the same interests. You can also click on the Tweets tab and see recent Tweets about coffee shops.
Tip 2 - Advanced Twitter Searching
This tool will have you searching like a pro in no time at all. Here is the URL so you can add it to your bookmarks: http://twitter.com/search-advanced This gives you a much more targeted search. You can search near a location, with a specific hashtag, even the mood associated with the tweets. Ya it's awesome!
Tip 3 - Twellow
This is a nice tool as well, it is an external app from Twitter so you will have to grant it permission to access your Twitter profile. I always advise everyone as a first step to set up a detailed profile for themself on this site. This will help people find you and it will help you understand how the profiles are layed out on this site and what to look for. Then you can search their directory (with excellent advanced searching). Think of this site as the Twitter Phonebook. There are searching tips available as well, so check those out to get the most out of your searches.
Tip 4 - Google
Here's a really neat trick with Google search. These two search terms will search in the Twitter bio and user name/real name areas, great targeting.
The 1st search term is:
intitle:"entrepreneur* on twitter" site:twitter.com
This search will show results based on the users title (user name or real name). With your search simply replace entrepreneur with your key term.
The 2nd search term is:
intext:"bio * entrepreneur" site:twitter.com
This search will show results based on the users bio text.
The results of these searches will be different so be sure to do both searches. And don't just do this once. There are new people and businesses joining Twitter all the time. This is a good task to add to your monthly social media maintenance calendar.
Those are just a few quick tips that are really affective. There are many other ways to target Twitter users. Do you have a great tip you could share, or a Google search condition you use? Please share them in the comments below, I love new Google search ideas.
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