I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time now and as it’s a dreary Sunday afternoon here in Dublin, filled with rain cloud skies so I thought I’d enlighten some of you with how I use Twitter to help pull some traffic and ultimately customers from Twitter.

I had been pondering about various ways for finding what people had been talking about and looking for solutions to problems they were having, and utilising the Twitter platform to ask their friends for help. if you’re not familiar with how Twitter works, here is a brief introduction to the topic.

I had taken a look at a few web solutions out there and one good one is Twilert (http://www.twilert.com) which is Twitter Alert shortened). I tried this out for a couple of days and whilst it did what I wanted I found it limited to only getting the results once a day; I needed them as they happened.

So a couple of weeks ago I was pottering around on http://search.twitter.com looking for words people were using that may have been related to either memory improvement or Vedic maths (my two hobbies and IM cash cows), when I noticed this:

I am of course pointing to the “Feed for this query”.

Now, not being a big RSS user by any means of the imagination, I now had to go and take a quick review of what RSS can do, how I can use it and what the best RSS reader was for me.

What is RSS?

“RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site’s email newsletter. “

Source: http://www.whatisrss.com/

So with that refreshed in my mind I thought “Wouldn’t it be cool to imlement the Twitter search feed with an RSS reader so that EVERY TIME someone typed in that search term in Twitter, the RSS reader would pick it up and NOTIFY ME.” And that is what I did.

To cut out all the Bull sh*t of finding the best RSS reader for me – and I had tried many, FEEDREADER was the easiest to use and manage. (http://www.feedreader.com/ – it’s free).

Go ahead download it and install it. What I’m going to do now is take you on a live demonstration that allows me to show how I utilised Twitter search via the RSS feed to make contact with a potential website visitor.

Step 1. Input the keywords you want feedreader to notify you of when someone uses them in Twitter. A while back I wrote a post about how to know the difference between stagaltite and stalagmite.

For step one I am going to use the search work “stalagtite” because it’s spelt incorrectly and many people use it.

Step 2. Add the search term into feedreader like so:

Click on File > New > Search Feed.

Next we are going to enter the search phrase, and then ensure you click on “Twitter” and that the check box is ticked.

You don’t need to worry about any quotes here when searching for a keyword. The reader will notify you of ANY comments that are made on Twitter with the search term “stalagtite” as they happen.

After clicking on OK you will get notification of any results for the search term “Stalagtite”. Here’s a screen shot of the results I got today:

As you can see there’s one there today from someone saying “…trying to remember the difference between stalagtite and stalagmite…” and there’s my response at the top (…this should help you remember…”).

So how is this useful?

Here was a person who needed help with a problem he had. His problem was that he couldn’t remember which was which when it came to stalagmites and stalagtites. He used Twitter to a) say he had a problem and b) to see if any of his followers could help him find the answer to his problem.

As I had written a fairly in depth post about the differences I felt I could offer him a concrete solution to his problem.

Now, imagine the potential to this.

Your provide sales training/ web design/ mobile phone repairs /ad infintim and you have solutions to peoples problems.

You might set up a search term in the FeedReader like: sales training dublin OR web design tralee OR phone repairs sallynoggin so that when someone types in:

“anyone know where i can get my phone repaired in Dublin? I’m in Sallynoggin”

“Looking to get a website designed. Anyone any recommendations for someone local in tralee?”

then your RSS feed will pop up the second the term is searched for.

Drop them a message from your Twitter control panel (I use seesmic and love it) by using:

@PERSONSTWITTERNAME I see you were looking for a designer. I’m local if that suits.. here’s a portfolio link http://www.myurl.com

I have spoken to many people who say “I can’t see the benefit to using Twitter” or “Twitter’s useless. What’s the point in following people, it’s a waste of time.”

Using it like I am using it as described above certainly isn’t a waste of time, and once it’s set up its automatic and you only need to look at it when you get notified.