Twitter for Local Business: Tools for Finding Followers

Twitter for local business is about finding the right followers. Wait a minute, don’t followers find you?

First, a dose of reality. Most normal people don’t join Twitter to find something to buy. Mostly Twitter is a networking and socializing tool. Most likely followers will not come to you, you will have to find followers, and that means following people first. Here are 10 tools to help you follow Twitter users that might follow you. Remember, don’t try to follow everyone you can, follow only those that may be interested in your product or service. If you just start following everyone, your follow to follower ratio will be imbalanced and you will lose credibility.

In Twitter Marketing For Dummies, Kyle Lacy (@kyleplacy on Twitter) assembled an extensive list of tools to find people to follow. Because local business is mostly about geography, I’ve narrowed Kyle’s list to a shorter list of geo-based Twitter Tools

Tools For Finding Twitter Users

Twitter Advanced Search – Twitter’s own search engine is pretty powerful. Use the advanced search option to create a potent local search cocktail. Combine keywords and location to get local results of interest: http://search.twitter.com/advanced

Twitterfall - Allows you to combine multiple keywords and geo-location in the same search. Twitterfall also allows you to exclude words from Twitter keyword searches. Let’s say you’re a plumber in Dallas. Use “water heater” as your keyword search term, then Dallas as your location, and exclude “selling” from the search. The results will be a big list of Twitter users who had water heater problems in the past 24 hours. Follow and engage them for potential customers: http://twitterfall.com/

TweepSearch – Searches Twitter bios. Find Twitter users that have your town or neighborhood in their bio: http://www.tweepsearch.com/

Tweepz - Simple interface with lots of options. Use the advanced search to search bios, names, and locations. http://www.tweepz.com/

Twellowhood - Cool interactive map that lets you narrow down potential Twitter follows by location. http://www.twellow.com/twellowhood/

Nearby Tweets – Combine keyword and location searches to find Twitter users in your area. http://nearbytweets.com/

Twitterholic.com – Lets you find Tweeters near you buy first entering your username, and then clicking on your location. Lists Twitter users in order of their popularity. http://twitterholic.com/

A Bonus Three

Here are three addition tools, not listed in Twitter Marketing for Dummies, that I use:

Geofollow - A location-based Twitter directory. Search by City, State, Country, keyword and the results are displayed in a dashboard, 24 Tweeters at a time. Click one box and you can follow all 24 at the same time. http://geofollow.com/

StreetMavens – Find your city and get real-time results from Tweeters in your area. You can also register your business into their directory. http://usa.streetmavens.com/

Twitter Grader – Find the Twitter users by location. Works like Twitterholic but the results are slightly different. http://twitter.grader.com/location/

Continue reading here: Show them the money on Facebook and Twitter? Not so Fast.

Was this article helpful?