On my travels, at talks, during training and wherever else I can, I ask people if they have heard of Twitter search. At present and in most cases, they have not. This is really scary and worrying.

Twitter search folks is the gold mine, that is where all the action is, and that is where you should be spending most of your time. In Twitter search, not Google search, you can find conversations on pretty much anything and everything.

That is where the opportunity lies for you to listen to people, and then help, engage, advise, educate, and support where relevant. It is through this approach, that over time, you will increase your visibility, your credibility, help to drive website / blogsite treaffic and you will create a powerful group of advocates who will refer you, and may well sell things as well.

So what can you search for?

Doing a Simple Search
Searching for the words internet marketing will return posts containing either internet or marketing or both.

Searching for an exact keyword or phrase
For example, “Mark Shaw” will search for messages that include that exact phrase.

From Twitter user name Search
If you want to search the messages posted by a Twitter user, just enter from:USERNAME

For example, if you want to see all the messages that markshaw has posted, just search for from:markshaw

You can also, add any search term after this from search. To see how many times Mark uses the word Haribo, just search for from:markshaw Haribo

Important – If you do not come up in the Twitter search for your own twitter user name, then it may be because you are invisble to Twitter. I have written a post here that will explain what this is, and how to rectify it..

The To Search
You can search for all the @replies sent to a specific user, for example, to:markshaw

The @ Search
Search where a certain Twitter user is mentioned, just type in @ followed by their username. For example, @markshaw will uncover all the messages that contain @markshaw

Location Based Searches
If you want to find how often the phrase “Espresso Coffee” sent by people near London, just search for

“Espresso Coffee” near:”London”

Before and After Date Type of Searches
espresso since:2010-02-06 will return all messages containing the word espresso posted since 6th Feb 2010….espresso until:2010-02-06 will return all messages containing the word espresso posted before 6th Feb 2010

Advanced Search
Or you can simply click Here and go to the advanced tab of the Twitter search. In there, you can fill out the form with all the above filters in place.

Please note that I have not listed all the commands and filters, but I would certainly encourage you to spend as much time as you have in Twitter search.

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