Ever wanted to know how to use Twitter.com to get more leads for your business? A lot of people often dismiss Twitter, saying they don’t understand it or that it’s too complicated. In a nutshell, Twitter is pretty easy to use — in fact, it has a lot of great benefits.
One thing I especially like is that it’s a social network that actually let’s you listen in on conversations from anyone on Twitter without having to send a friend request or be connected to that person. Additionally, you can search through Twitter conversations and learn more about the people, businesses, celebrities and brands on Twitter BEFORE you attempt to make a connection.
Why is this important? Think about it. If I were to go up to a complete stranger and start a sales pitch, not only would they look at me as being weird, but if they’re like most people, they have already made up their mind because of the awkward approach that I took.
The typical Twitter user would go to search.twitter.com; unfortunately, you’ll probably end up spending more time sifting through results that may not be relevant to what you’re looking for. That’s where Twitter’s ‘advanced search’ feature comes into play.
For anyone who owns a business, where advanced search will help you is that you can target the tweets you’re looking for. For example, if I am looking for real estate agents, instead of looking for the broad topic of ‘real estate,’ I can specify to show tweets with the keyword of real estate within a 50 mile radius of California. This will help me not only narrow down the tweets I am looking for about a particular subject, but also show me just people in the area I have specified.
To start using Twitter’s advanced search, follow the instructions below.
Step 1: Login to your Twitter.com account
Step 2: Visit search.twitter.com, click ‘advanced search’
Step 3: On the ‘advanced search’ screen, enter in the keywords you want to search for. Ex: real estate. If you want to specify tweets in a particular location, in the places section, enter the location you are looking for along with a distance. When finished, click the search button.
Step 4: Take action! When looking through the tweets in your area, you can do a number of things – retweet that persons tweet, send an @ reply to establish dialog, add them to a Twitter list as someone to consider, or follow them (they’ll be notified and can follow you back).
Not only can Twitter’s advanced search help you target new leads centered around a specific keyword that you’re looking for, but you can also save time by specifying a location to improve the quality of the tweets you get.
One last thing I wanted to mention – once you’ve had the ability to read through the tweets, the key thing is to take action – you can do this in a passive way, such as adding them to a list of people you have some interest in, or be bold and take a more active approach and establish a connection with them by following them or sending then a tweet. In your tweet, don’t be overly agressive. Rather, make the initial connection and then slowly work your way up to talking about business with them when the time is right.
Should you have questions on using Twitter’s advanced search feature, feel free to leave a comment below.