3 Twitter Tools for Gathering Online Market Intelligence

A lot of business people still are not convinced of Twitter’s value as a social networking powerhouse, and it’s easy to see why. It doesn’t have the bling of Facebook nor does it permit the wordy redundancy of online forums. But whatever opinions you may currently hold about Twitter or social media in general, you’re a fool to ignore the vast market intelligence that is streaming into this microblogging phenomenon every minute of every day. And all it will cost you is a wee bit of time and attention in exchange for returns I’m not sure you can get anywhere else online today.

Three fab tools for tapping the online zeitgeist of my target markets include:

1) I have to thank Danny Sullivan, King of Search, for pointing me to this one. If you use twirl to tweet, there is a feature that permits you to stream tweets containing your selected keyword into your twhirl interface. This means you can see who is talking about a specific subject without necessarily following them. Simply click the search icon (looks like a little magnifying glass) and enter your keyword. Tweets containing this keyword will show in the live stream. Click Activate and twhirl will flow these tweets into your twitter stream.

2) Twilerts are like Google Alerts but for Twitter. Simply create an account and tell twilerts which keywords you want to watch for in the global twitter stream. Then twilerts will send you an email for each keyword at intervals determined by you (every day, week, or whatever). Each email will contain tweets found containing your keyword or phrase. You can narrow the results using exact match or not. If you find you’re getting too many irrelevant matches, try more specific terms surrounded by quotations.

Twilert Tip: Make sure you include your name, company name and homepage or blog homepage URL. It’s always good to see who’s talking you up and what they’re saying! Also include competitor names or other important URLs that you think might be getting mention on twitter.

3) Twitter has its own search engine (formerly known as summize) and you should use it. It’s old fashioned but it works as a powerful way to locate tweeps who are talking about things relevant to your products or services. For example, if I sell pink widgets I might search for “pink widgets” once a week and then follow those tweeps who demonstrate an interest in the types of products I sell. I might also follow competitors and potential alliances. (Competitors can be your best allies and source of market intelligence so get to know them on twitter can be a smart networking strategy.)

Even if you’re an online introvert who poo-poos social media, the above tools just might convince you to give twitter a try. And once you see it’s power to capture timely market intelligence for your business, well, you might feel the need to jump into the twittersation yourself