Twitter Search Tricks: Monitor Your Brand & Reputation

Monitoring Online Conversations with Twitter

For website owners and freelancers seeking to build an online presence, understanding public perception is crucial. Individuals may be referencing your work, detailing their experiences with your services, or offering recommendations.

Actively monitoring these discussions allows for direct engagement, question answering, and valuable networking opportunities.

Leveraging Twitter for Online Listening

Twitter stands out as a particularly effective platform for tracking online conversations. Its real-time nature and widespread usage make it an invaluable resource.

Below are several practical strategies for utilizing Twitter to stay informed about what's being said about you or your brand.

Keyword Monitoring: Regularly search for keywords related to your name, business, or services.
Hashtag Tracking: Monitor relevant hashtags within your industry or niche.
Mention Alerts: Set up alerts to notify you whenever your Twitter handle is mentioned.
Advanced Search: Utilize Twitter's advanced search operators to refine your queries and pinpoint specific conversations.

By consistently employing these techniques, you can gain valuable insights into public sentiment and proactively manage your online reputation.

Remaining engaged in these online dialogues can foster stronger relationships with your audience and contribute to long-term success.

Generating Twitter Feeds: A Comprehensive Guide

Although Twitter has discontinued the straightforward method of obtaining RSS feeds for searches, the existing RSS links remain fully operational.

Constructing an RSS feed involves appending your desired search term to the following URL structure:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=

As an illustration:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=innovative technology

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q="innovative technology" (to specify an exact phrase match)

Furthermore, a user-friendly online application facilitates the creation of Twitter search RSS links:

http://sociable.co/social-media/twitter-rss-feed-creator/

We have previously detailed several helpful techniques regarding RSS feed utilization, which may prove beneficial when employing the search methods outlined in this article.

Understanding the fundamentals of RSS feeds
Utilizing Yahoo! Pipes to combine and modify existing RSS feeds

Below are practical strategies for establishing RSS feeds to monitor mentions of yourself and your company on Twitter!

Creating Effective RSS Feeds for Tracking

RSS feeds provide a powerful mechanism for staying informed about specific topics or keywords on Twitter. By leveraging the search.rss URL, you can curate a stream of relevant tweets.

The inclusion of quotation marks around your search query ensures that only tweets containing the exact phrase are included in the feed. This is particularly useful for brand monitoring.

The Sociable.co tool offers a convenient alternative for generating these feeds, especially for users less familiar with URL construction.

Leveraging Existing Resources

Familiarizing yourself with the core principles of RSS feeds will enhance your ability to effectively utilize these search-based feeds. Understanding how they function is key.

Tools like Yahoo! Pipes allow for advanced customization, enabling you to merge multiple feeds or filter results based on specific criteria. This provides greater control over the information you receive.

Monitoring Your Online Presence

These techniques are invaluable for tracking brand mentions, monitoring competitor activity, or staying abreast of industry trends. Regularly reviewing your Twitter RSS feeds can provide valuable insights.

Streamlining Twitter Monitoring: Eliminating Retweets

Retweeting is a valuable tool for broadening the visibility of information. However, retweets essentially duplicate the same message multiple times.

This repetition can create unnecessary clutter within your reputation management monitoring, potentially obscuring critical updates.

Fortunately, Twitter’s search functionality includes a negation operator, allowing you to exclude specific terms from your search results.

"Your Brand Name" -rt

Illustrative Instance

This search query will display only original tweets mentioning your brand, effectively filtering out all retweets.

By utilizing this technique, you can maintain a clearer and more focused view of the conversations surrounding your brand on Twitter.

Focusing on Genuine Feedback: Excluding Links from Twitter Searches

A significant portion of Twitter activity revolves around sharing web links. Often, when individuals actively blog, their online presence on Twitter is largely associated with the promotion of their latest posts. However, if the goal is to track authentic discussions, a different approach is needed.

Twitter provides a powerful tool for this purpose: the filter:links operator. This function specifically identifies tweets that include links. By strategically employing this operator, it’s possible to achieve the opposite effect – removing all linked updates from your search queries.

["Your (brand) name" -filter:links]

Illustrative Instance

Furthermore, it's also possible to filter out updates that directly mention your Twitter handle. Twitter already notifies you of these mentions through email or your Twitter application.

[-from:username] - excludes tweets originating from a specific user;
[-@username] - excludes tweets that mention a specific user.

Practical Application

Tracking Unfavorable Commentary

This strategy proves particularly beneficial for those managing online stores and technically inclined customer service teams. Focusing on negative feedback can be achieved by incorporating ":(" into your search queries.

["Your (brand) name" :()]

Illustrative Instance

Tracking Mentions of Your Brand or Business

For service-based businesses, a valuable strategy involves establishing a dedicated feed to oversee all inquiries specifically referencing your brand or business name.

Employ the search query "[Your Brand Name] ?" – remember to include a space preceding the question mark.

Illustrative Instance

This approach allows for direct observation of public questions and discussions related to your company.

By actively monitoring these mentions, you can promptly address customer concerns and engage in relevant conversations.

Monitoring Online Mentions: Leveraging Multiple Identifiers in Search

Finally, a straightforward technique involves recognizing that you are likely identified by various names across the internet. These can include your full name, usernames, and the name of your website or business.

To ensure comprehensive tracking, incorporate all these potential identifiers into your search queries using the OR operator.

"Your business name" OR "Your name" OR "Your online handle"

Illustrative Instance

Are you actively monitoring mentions of your name across platforms like Twitter? It is hoped that this information will encourage you to begin doing so.

Please share your feedback and any insights you may have!

Image courtesy of krossbow, licensed under BY on Flickr