There’s so many auto-generated list of tweets out there but the results are mostly spam. So why not make it ourselves?

With a service called TwitBlend you can easily create your own “collection of tweets” or “tweet list” yourself and it’s very easy to use!

This is what I got from spending two minutes on TwitBlend, The Foursquare Cling

TwitBlend helps you search for tweets and arrange, color, share and put it on your website.

How can I make one?

1. Click on “Create new blend” on top-right menu
   
2. Enter your Twitter’s account information and click “Allow” to login (TwitBlend uses Twitter’s API so you don’t need to sign up separately.)
   
3. This is “New Blend” page. You can use menu on left-side to search for your tweets, you can see your tweets from your “Home” timeline, “@ mentions”, “Sent by you” and your favourites. You can also find tweets from your own list.
   
4. There’s a search tab for you to search tweets from a keyword or username.
   
   

   Below is the search dialog:

   

5. After you search for tweets you will see something like this:
   
6. You can drag and drop tweets from the right side to the dropbox on the left side, arrange and color it with “color button” on the bottom of each tweet.
7. After you are happy with this list you can click “Save…” at the bottom.
8. In this save dialog you can enter the title and tweet it to share it with your friends.
   
9. Now that you have created your own blend, you can share it with your friends or put it on your website using TwitBlend’s widget. Below is an example of TwitBlend widget on my Wordpress blog.
   

Have you used TwitBlend before? Let us know what you think in the comments!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Create a Custom List of Tweets with TwitBlend

This is kind of a follow up to Thomas Baekdal’s excellent article here on Twitip “7 Secret Ways To Use Twitter Search” which you should check out as well.

1. Who’s saying stuff about me outside of Twitter?
This search will show you Tweets that people write about you or your company that link out to an external page. This is useful for finding what people are writing about you, or indeed when people link to your site without using your Twitter name
[your name|company] filter:links
Live example: mailchimp filter:links

2. Free Stuff
If you’re on the hunt for freebies, create variants of this search and save them to monitor when companies or bloggers are giving away freebies or offers across Twitter. This will work best if you monitor it over time. Use the “near” search operator to try limiting this to your local area (e.g. near:Sydney).
free code|coupon + keyword
Live example: free code|coupon iphone

3. Who’s showing me love/hate?
The one is a bit sporadic in terms of how effective it is, but if you add a smiley or frown to your search, Twitter (in theory) will show tweets that mention your search term in a positive or negative light. As mentioned, results are not always accurate but this is useful to setup as a monitor if you’re running a marketing campaign and want to keep an eye on the haters …..
@yourname|your real name|company name -filter:links
Live example: ipad

4. Create customers out of thin air
[variants of questions you can answer] ? -filter:links
This one needs a bit of thought and tweaking, but it’s potentially powerful. Essentially, this search finds people asking questions that your product/service/blog post can answer. So if you’ve written a great article on how to use solar power, you might search for:
“solar power” ? -filter:links

That search should show people asking questions related to Solar power due to the ? search operator Twitter supports. Adding the -filter:links will strip links from the results, which are unlikely to be people asking questions of their followers. To further target people asking for advice, just add a “How” or similar at the front.

This creates a constant stream of users you can approach with a recommendation to check out your offering.

Live example: “solar power” ? -filter:links

5. Snipe your competitor’s customers
A variation on (3), this one will find everyone saying negative things in relation to your competitor’s Twitter account, which means it’s time to swoop in and show those neglected souls some love. Add words like “problem” “useless” “unhelpful” to really zero in on unhappy folks.

@competitoraccount
Live example: @microsoft – (switch for your competitors, I didn’t want to single anyone out!)

Bonus Link

Going outside of Twitter, this article on searching Twitter via Google has some absolutely oustanding ideas to try. Lastly, for more on Twitter’s advanced search operators, check out their guide here.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



5 Awesome Twitter Searches

For all the hoopla that surrounds Twitter and the myriad of apps (applications) that have sprung up to help people manage and make sense of it, I haven’t seen a single article singing the praises of Twitter’s basic search tool. And sing they should! The basic search tool that resides in the sidebar of everyone’s Twitter page is one of the quickest and easiest ways to find people, answers, trends and, if used wisely, customers and clients the world over. Here is a brief explanation of how it works and some suggestions for how it can work for you! To begin, it is a search box, just like any other. You type in a term and it searches the Twitterverse, returning, in moments with a list of posts including that word. Now, at first glance, this may not seem impressive – Google has spoiled us so badly that short of bring us a cup of coffee with the list of results, we just aren’t going to be impressed. But the power here is that through this box, we are able to essentially listen in on a zillion mini conversations throughout the world and target those that are about things that are of importance to us. Then we can introduce ourselves and join those conversations! Used wisely, this tool really can, pretty much, introduce you to a world of potential customers and clients.

Suppose you have a high end snowboard and ski shop. You sell equipment both in a brick and mortar location (a store) and over the internet. Type the word “skiing” in the search box and voila, you have literally pages and pages of people talking about skiing. Ditto on the term ‘snowboard’. I tried this as an experiment today and, since it is September, there were a lot of people still tweeting about water skiing but, being that the Twitterverse is truly worldwide, there were also posts by a lucky few that were enjoying some beautiful Spring skiing. And there were plenty of people already talking about snow skiing, about their ski plans and even about ski and snowboard equipment. As you can imagine, you could also plug in a key destination like ‘Vail’, a company who’s equipment you carry or a term like ‘Alpine’ and each search would give you literally dozens of people that are skiers and snowboarders, many, if not all of them, potential customers!

Now, you just need to decide which of these people you would like to introduce yourself to. Read through the posts and see which seem like a good match. Are there people you can help, people that could use your advice? If some guy is talking about buying a board that is known to be unstable in some way – you can reach out and mention that. Or your shop offers it at a great price – share that too! Someone may be tweeting about having a hard time finding equipment because she is really tall – you can send her an article you wrote about that or hook her up with a product line that specializes in big and tall items. You can do this by hitting ‘reply’ to the post, or, if you are both following each other, via direct message. Keep in mind that these posts can only be 140 characters long or less so if you want to share more info, you will need to follow each other and share your email address via direct message.

Someone that posted “I hate skiing” or “I dread the snow” may appear in your search results but is probably not someone that you need to reach out to. But if they are talking about how they can’t wait to start skiing or if they are out shopping for a new snowboard, you may want to contact them. The great thing about this tool is that you decide which conversations to join!

You can start to ‘follow’ some of these potential customers to get to know them better and to start a relationship. To ‘follow’ someone, you click on their @name (this is their username, it may not be their real name) which take you to their Twitter ‘page’ where you can click on the button below their icon that says ‘follow’.

Then you need to make sure that you keep up your end of the conversation as well. Post links to interesting snow sport related articles, new product, Mass Unfollow People You Follow, info and tips on finding the right equipment. Post snow reports and anything else that might be of interest. The idea is to build a relationship but even more importantly, to share your expertise and to let them get to know you. And to make sure that someone out there using the search box to look for snow sport equipment, can find you!

Depending on how much time and energy you want to devote to this effort, you could potentially gather hundreds of people to ‘follow’ at which time you would probably want to utilize an application like TweetDeck or one of the other ‘follower management’ tools to keep track of who you are following and which are potential customers.

The next step is to convert these followers to customers. To facilitate this transition, I would suggest creating a page on your website with a special “Twitter follower” coupon geared to encourage people to walk into your store and another for discounts on online purchases. You can then offer these to your potential customers by simply ‘replying’ to one of their posts or, if they are following you back, via direct message. To do this you can just write a note and post the url of the page that has the offer. If these people have grown to know and trust you, they will follow the link, driving traffic to your site and hopefully to your stores – both online and off!

And all of this because of the humble little search box. Let us all take a moment to give thanks!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



An Ode to Twitter’s Search Tool

Let’s face it, Twitter is all about search. Real time search. Why else would they redesign their home page to show off their search functionality? The amount of real-time information pulsing through their service at any given minute is impressive, to say the least.

But for all that, Twitter’s built-in search is a frustratingly limited tool, providing access to a very limited amount of the data set available via the web site or their API.

Enter TweepSearch, a search application built by Damon Cortesi that allows you to search through the profile information of over 10 million unique accounts.

Here are three things you can do with TweepSearch that you can’t do with Twitter Search:

Search By Profession

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could find other marketers on Twitter? Other journalists? Other social media experts? Well it turns out that you can, at least as far as people volunteer their professions in their profile.

Searching for “journalist” on Tweepsearch yields, at the time I write this, 16,099 people you could potentially follow. “Marketer” pulls in 89,061.

These are all people who have added the term “Journalist” or “Marketer” somewhere in their Twitter bio information. You’re not going to get everyone of course, but then again, you’re probably not going to follow 16,000 people, either.

Search by URL

Let’s take the “profession” trick one step further; what if you wanted to find out who, on twitter, is associated with a certain business URL.

It’s a bit of a hack because TweepSearch won’t independently search the URL field, so if someone types a URL into their “bio” field, it will also show up too. That said, it works pretty well.

Say you want to know who on Twitter is associated with the game Spymaster. A good start would be to search for people who list playspymaster.com as their profile URL. Type:

www.playspymaster.com

into TweepSearch, and you’ll see a list of 22 results. Easy enough to comb through and pluck the real ones from the list.

Search within someone’s friends

Another cool trick you can pull with TweepSearch is to search within the bios of someone’s friends only. For example, if we wanted to see how many of Robert Scoble’s friends mention Rackspace in their bio, we’d type the following into the search box:

@scobleizer rackspace only:friends

This particular search turns up 69 friends. I Guess Scoble is popular at the office

There are a number of other cool types of search you can do based on the data Damon has available through TweepSearch. If you’re interested, there’s even a handy help page to walk you through it.

Happy hunting.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Three Twitter Searches You Didn’t Think Were Possible

Twitter and Tweets are the most fascinating creation on the planet. At present there is no other place on earth to engage and reach tons of millions to draw brand credibility more powerful than Twitter. Luxury is a perception and for luxury brands Twitter presents an opportunity to target niche audiences.

Within the Twitter universe it is easier to target and find those who like $1,000 Prada Tessuto Baby Bags or searching for Christian Louboutin luxury French shoes. This is why top luxury retailers such as Net-A-Porter, Louis Vuitton, and many others are all actively using Twitter!

Every luxury brand should be Tweeting about their luxury niche. Apart from building Twitter equity, popularity, followers etc. This also helps to build EXPOSURE, endorsements and referrals that can open the door to more revenue. One key factor is that Twitter can help luxury brands establish brand awareness and credibility. Every brand will need to build these elements to sustain and overcome the recession.

One Tweet can be picked up by a leading luxury blog or top luxury magazine. Yes! media outlets are on Twitter hunting for the next big luxurious thing. For all those luxury brands who posted a Twitter follow me button on their website because everybody else was doing it, you might want to get serious now.

How can Twitter help expand the exposure of a luxury brand?

The most valuable solution that Twitter holds for luxury brands is the capacity of its audience reach. The number of Twitter followers a luxury brand has including the followers of the luxury brand followers expands the reach exposure.

Example: I have over a 15 million reach with 2000 plus followers because of the followers following the people following me. To review your reach and see how your Twitter influence ranks go to Twinfluence.

Want to know who is tweeting about luxury the best? That’s easy just go over to TwitterGrader (a system that calculate variables for grading Twitter profiles). Conduct a key search for “luxury” and receive a list of top Twitter profiles related to luxury.

http://twitter.grader.com/search?Term=luxury+

Again, it is not the number of Twitter followers that you manage to attract to your luxury brand. While followers are extremely important, it is the reach that Twitter offers that makes the exposure for your brand so powerful.

I am very interested in hearing about Twitter and luxury branding success stories. What would you like to achieve for your luxury brand using Twitter?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Tweet Cloud for Luxury Brands – Using Twitter for Exposure

New features and improvements:

• Rank: It’s getting more accurate over time, more parameters are taken into account.
• New sidebar with related content:
  • Top-ranked related Twitter users containing the searched keyword on their bio (taken from Tweepfind.com)
  • Related content from other blogs/website: Mashable, Techcrunch, R&W Web, CNN, NY Times, Venturebeat, Techmeme, BBC, Google News
  • Latest related content from Friendfeed
  • Related content from YouTube
• Google (and Bing soon) search immediately available for the same keywords and results enriched with thumbnails.

Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Tweefind – Rank-based Twitter Search Engine Update

A few days back, for no particular reason, I started thinking more about how to search for useful information on Twitter. Then Twitter announced they were integrating search.twitter.com with the main platform, so the time to learn has never been better. Not only am I interested, but it seems the hive mind has deemed it important as well (you know all this micro-blogging is turning us into a hive mind don’t you?)

The Advanced is Basic

I set out to learn more about the search feature, which is what so many are saying will be where Twitter makes its money, and found all of my advanced theorizing led me to a pretty basic page that held all of the answers. Props to Twitter. If you go to http://search.twitter.com/advanced you can literally see all of the different ways you can search the hive mind.

I’m pretty sure these advanced features aren’t going to be obvious options in the integrated version so it wouldn’t hurt to know how to use these advanced functions by just typing them into the box so you don’t have to revisit these pages every time you want to search. Twitter gives you the information you need to run these searches from your integrated search box at http://search.twitter.com/operators.

The Operators

Instead of detailing every operator you can use, I’ll pick out some of the specifically useful ones you should get comfortable with to make your search experience on Twitter better than it is on Google (that’s right, I said it!) As an aside, Google is a hive mind too, but their data is often collected as a side effect of user action, whereas the majority of Twitter’s “thoughts” are genuinely created and intentionally produced- carrying on.

• Hashtags
• Minus sign
• Near
• Since
• Until

Creating and Searching Niche Subjects using Hash tags

The hash tag is probably the most important function of Twitter search, and the most used. The chances are you probably already use the hash tag (#), but if you don’t here is a brief run down. The hash tag enables Twitter users to create searchable subject groups. Simply by adding a phrase to a tweet a user makes it easier for that tweet to be found in a relevant search. An example would be, “I like Pepsi, but I don’t really like this commercial #superbowlads”. Then anyone can search Twitter for #superbowlads and find this Tweet along with any others tagged the same.

Pro: The power of the hash tag is that it creates very specific sets of content. If you want to know what other people think of the superbowl ad that just came on you can find it much easier by searching for the hash tag than by searching for something similar in a normal search engine.

Con: The downside of the hash tag is that if you’re not an especially active twerson then it’s likely you won’t know the hash tags for all of the subjects you are interested in searching; however, if you stay plugged in you can see the hash tag groups forming right before your eyes- heck, why not create your own!

Making Your Search Clearer using Minus Sign:

The minus sign is very simple, but useful. If you have a search that you know will probably bring up irrelevant results you can filter out the irrelevant results by using the minus sign. The example that Twitter uses is if you search for beer then you might want to include –root, to prevent results about root beer from coming up.

Depending on what you are looking for a search for “beer” probably isn’t a very good search. The power of searching Twitter is plugging into the hive mind and finding real time thoughts and news. Thus, searching Twitter for beer or even “root beer” (quotations tells the search engine to only search for that exact phrase) is a waste of time- you’ll get lots of results like “mmm I could use a beer right now” and “damn that beer was good”. When searching Twitter, try to be as specific as possible, that is where its strength lies. In this scenario try searching for the exact company or type of beer you are interested in.

Finding New Friends using Near:

This is where Twitter really shines. It’s also the beginning of the operators I didn’t know about before exploring Twitter’s advanced function page. The near function lets you search for tweets coming out of a specific area. There are two very powerful applications of this function.

1. Find locals
2. Access the hive mind and see what it’s like to be at an event

I found this particular operator very interesting because I found out there are many more people in my town using Twitter (only about 100,000 people where I live) than I expected. A simple search for near:CollegeStation produced the tweets of many locals. I’ve been thinking about hosting a tweetup, and now that I realize there are more people tweeting out there, maybe I should! One thing to note: don’t put a space after the colon, and if the city name is two words make it one.

The other use of the near function is to see what’s going on at an event, or what it feels like to be there in person. I’ll go into more depth on this a little further down, but suffice to say if you want tweets from people at the inauguration rather than just news from people watching it then adding “near:washingtondc” could be very useful.

Searching Time Periods using Since and Until:

These functions let you narrow down your search to a specific timeline. If Twitter had been around for 9/11 then you might want to search near:NYC since:2001-09-11 until:2001-09-12 if you were looking for local and real time tweets, or add since:2008-01-01 to the search if you were looking for a more broad retrospective view of what people think about the event now. The options for personal interest and scientific research are both wide open with these functions. The hive mind is a powerful a thing.

Putting It All Together:

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a little more about what you can do with Twitter search. Here is an example of putting it all together using #inauguration, near:collegestation , since:2009-01-20, until:2009-01-20.

You can see the results here.

Note: Twitter’s servers went all crazy eyed when I did this search near Washington DC, my guess is they’re just overloaded. I went ahead and submitted a note via their help form so hopefully they’ll look into it. Either way, the power of the search remains the same; it’s only a matter of Twitter getting their servers more prepared for larger searches; when they do, you’ll be ready.

Happy searching, welcome to the hive mind.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Welcome to the Hive Mind; Learn How to Search Twitter

Like many who publish a blog or read blogs, twitter has become a part of the morning routine. We jump on twitter sometimes before we even open our email programs. What are people talking about and what are the hot conversations taking place is usually what we are looking for.

For me and others, twitter has become a major source of what we read throughout the day. I have actually discovered recently, not only do I go to twitter some days before I open my email program. Twitter is scrolled through before I open my RSS reader, NetNewsWire.

Collecting Links to Read on Twitter

Over the last few weeks, I have found a large chunk of what I read being provided by the links of those I am following on twitter. Many of those I follow tweet links to blog post or articles they are reading. And most are sending their own blog’s RSS feed to twitter.

The great benefit of or perhaps the natural evolution occurring by the growth of twitter is the fact most of those blogging are also on twitter. And we are using twitter as a way to publish what we are writing about.

• How do you as someone on twitter collect links to read?
• How do you find the hot topics on twitter to read?

Just as twitter has evolved into a great social tool. We are seeing new twitter apps being pushed out developer’s doors daily. And some of the best apps are those which help you find what to read on twitter.

Twitter Search

Twitter Search works a lot like some of the other search tools in your browser.

Simple type in your search query and Twitter Search will go and find the tweets matching your query.

You can then continue to follow updates as it refreshes to bring in new tweets as they come in on your search term(s).

Tweet Scan

This app reminds me a lot of Google Alerts for twitter. You can setup your search terms which you want to follow and your results will be sent to you via email, RSS, JSON, and Twhirl. Smart businesses are using this tool to follow what is being said on twitter about them too.

TweetBeep

Similar to Tweet Scan, TweetBeep alerts you by email of conversations taking place which discuss your search terms on twitter. You can then use the results as you see fit. You might want to follow those discussing the topic or you might want to respond to them on twitter. You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your Web site or blog, even if they use a shortened URL like tinyurl.com.

Not only are the above mentioned apps available to feed you information to read, those you follow will do so too. Which is why it is important to follow those who will add to the conversation and provide relevant information on twitter. Many of those you are following will do what is called “retweet” tweets they have found on twitter they think their followers may be interested in. And many of those you are following will feed their RSS feeds from their own blogs to twitter. And that is why I have found twitter has become a huge source of my RSS feeds each and every day.

I know each morning when I first go to twitter some of those I follow will have either retweeted some great links they found interesting. Or they will have tweeted new blog post they have published, either the night before or during the day.

Feeding Your Own Links (and RSS feed) to Twitter

As a blogger, one of the ways to use twitter is as a “micro-blogging” tool. I have found I get involved in more conversations taking place since I am using twitter. And there is no way I can blog about them all on my blog. Another way to keep your followers informed and a way for you to provide information to those who are following you is to tell them what you are reading and what you are blogging about.

Like the search tools mentioned, there are a number of twitter apps which make this easy to do.

TwitThis

This is an easy way for you to send tweets about what you are reading, listening to, watching and more. And to make it even easier to use, you can put the bookmarklet in your browser tool bar and whenever you are reading something you want to share, you simply click the bookmarklet. TwitThis then shortens the URL for you and you click send and it goes out to those following you on twitter. It also includes the title of the blog post you are reading.

You can also put TwitThis on your own blog as a way for your readers to share your content on twitter. TwitThis makes it easy for your readers to share.

twshot

An application very similar to TwitThis in that you can use it to share what you are reading on the Internet. However it has the added ability to allow you to add your own take on the post or article within the limits of twitters 140 characters.

Easy Tweets

“EasyTweets is a set of tools that can help online marketers leverage the power of microblogging. You can use it to post to and switch between multiple Twitter accounts in seconds, check replies, and track new followers. EasyTweets interfaces through Twitter’s API.”

This is the one twitter app I have come to use a lot. It not only allows you to feed to twitter what you are reading. You can use it to feed your own blog’s RSS feeds to twitter when you update your blog with a new post. You can set it to send your updates immediately. And you can set it to send tweets to twitter at specified times during the day.

Easy Tweets also gives you the ability to tweet to your followers what you are reading. Just use the available bookmarklet and it will shorten the URL for you and give you a space to add your thoughts on what you are reading too.

Twitterfeed

Is another twitter app you can use to feed your blogs RSS to your twitter followers. Twitterfeed works completely in the background once you set it up for your blogs RSS feed. Each time you post something new to your blog, it will send a tweet out to your followers.

One word of caution on feeding your own RSS feeds to twitter. If this is all you are going to use twitter for, you will quickly find you will have no followers. While I would agree it is important to share with your followers what you are blogging about, don’t make this the only thing you contribute to twitter. Key to twitter are the conversations taking place. And the key to having a successful twitter experience is to engage in these conversations. More is involved in engaging in these conversations then just feeding your own RSS to twitter.

One of the keys elements to remember is that twitter is about interacting and learning from those you follow and who follow you. Finding the conversations, entering into those conversations and engaging in them is important. You can use the tools and apps mentioned above to find and engage in those conversations. And you can add to the conversations by providing your own RSS feeds to twitter.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Links – How to Find Them and Share Them on Twitter