Here’s another note on the use of Twitter. This time I will tell you a little bit about Twitter filters. If you’re using them already – great! Perhaps, you could even add to my note if you have some other tips.
If you’re not using these yet: Twitter filters are great to discover new tweets that might help you find new customers that are looking for your services.
You will need to install one of the Twitter apps I mentioned before: https://on.fb.me/15ugINP. For this post I’m going to use Tweet Deck as it’s the one I’m using most of the time.
I have created a new Twitter account for an ice cream shop to use as an example for this.
1. ADDING YOUR FILTERS
So, I started with a simple search for ice cream on Twitter. I can see what people are talking about and possibly find some interesting recipes to retweet to your followers.
I have also looked up for people who ‘want ice cream’ to see if I could send them a tweet with a recommendation to come over to my shop (or my brand). I’ve also tried ‘flavor ice cream’ to see what flavors people were discussing and also ‘dublin ice cream’ – to see if anyone was looking for ice cream in my area and what the conversation generally was about.
And you can see what tweets I found from the picture there. I have also saved these searches – so I can check them every day for new tweets.
2. GEO-TWEETS
So, if you’ve played around with the first step – let me introduce a more complicated one right away. So, you saw how I added ‘Dublin’ into my search? Well, most of the people won’t tell you where they are or what exactly they are looking for. And this is where you can use geo-location search. It involves a few steps and modifications – but I’ll try to make it simple for you.
You see the picture above? Some of these are tweets that include words ‘ice cream’ and ‘want ice cream’ within 50km radius of Dublin and also 10km radius of Rathmines (where I decided my ice cream shop is located). I can find people that want ice cream in the nearest or local area. There’s also a general ice cream talk I can join in.
So, how do you search by location on Twitter? First, find out what your geocode is. Here’s a handy link: https://www.mygeoposition.com/. So, I searched for ‘Rathmines’:
Longitude: 53.321882 Latitude: -6.265505
Now, my search code for Ratmines is 53.321882,-6.265505, (note commas)
When you found this code, decide of your radius area (I find that the code does not work properly without it) and put in the following in to the search:
want ice cream geocode:53.321882,-6.265505,10km
My key words are ‘want ice cream’, the geocode is for Rathmines and the radius is 10km. So, now I can see who wants ice cream around and close enough to Rathmines. Off course I can reduce the radius too.
Go on – have fun with some keywords and see for yourself if you can reach out to your locals.
3. OCCASION TWEETS & NOTIFICATIONS
Now that you have tried the keyword search and location tweets in your search you can see if you can tap into the trends on Twitter.
Say, it’s a hot weather in Dublin out of a sudden. I know that people would be looking for ways to cool down and they’d love to come by for ice creams and ice shakes. So, I’m going to use a combination of geo-tweets and keywords like ‘scorcher’, ‘too hot’, ‘melting’ and whatever else, that’s not as straight forward but would help my business.
You can also select your notifications in TweetDeck. So, when someone is looking for ice cream in Rathmines, I’ll have a pop up with a sound coming up on the screen. To do this, just click on the drop-down arrow of your search column where you will find ‘notifications’ and selection options.
On the note
The tweets you will find are public – which means that people have chosen to display these tweets and they realise that anyone can read them. In either way you should consider this with a bit of common sense.
You don’t have to approach the folk with the marketing pitch – be rather playful and answer their questions without directly pointing at your brand. Obviously, if someone says ‘I’d love an ice cream right now but I don’t have anything close by’ – you can point them directly to yourself.
If you’re interesting people will look into your profile anyway. So, have fun with this.
I’d love to hear your feedback – did you find this useful? Do you already use these Twitter filters? Is there something I left out or should have explained better? Comments below always welcome.
Alex
@ MicroPro Computers