So if you’ve gone to a conference in the last year you may have had trouble trying to keep track of all the tweets and hashtags on Twitter.
If you’re trying to track mentions of your product on Twitter and have several, it may seem like a waste to keep searching for each one.
Tweetdeck, a very popular Twitter, allows you to create "columns" based on searches. If you make too many, you can be easily overwhelmed by all the info!
What is a conference going, company owning, Twitter loving person to do?
Check out the following tutorial on how to make your Twitter searches easier
The Search
You need to start at http://search.twitter.com
Events on Twitter are often followed using hashtags (a # "pound sign" and then an abbreviated phrase)
For SXSW, it looks like the primary hashtags are
- SXSW
- SXSWi
- SXSW10 (@Baratunde recommended this one)
So off we go to do some searches!
Hello Operator
Now most people know how to search. You put in a question or phrase and hit, "search".
To speed up your search, you can often use something known as "search operators. These are available on many sites where people look for things including Google, Ebay, Gmail and Twitter
They allow you to combine words, phrases, exclude things and more!
Sometimes this is referred to as "advanced search" and you can find the one for Twitter at http://search.twitter.com/advanced
Search the hash
Here I did a search for "#SXSW" and all tweets including that show up.
Missing in hashction
Searching for "#SXSWi" shows a totally different set of results
GTD Your Twitter Searches
So rather than creating several different searches, you can create just one using the "OR" operator which means, "Find at least one of these words". This allows you to combine several searches into one!
Look how many results there are for, "#SXSW OR #SXSWi OR #SXSW10" in Twitter search
Works with Tweetdeck too!
I also do this in Tweetdeck so I don’t have 40 columns when tracking events
So with that, enjoy and look for me at SXSW!
I speak on Friday, March 12th at 2pm, "How Sci-Fi Shapes The Internet" and then I’m free to attend sessions, discussions and dinners! yay!
