Twitter is oftentimes not even considered much of a marketing platform, but those who know how to use it know how valuable it can be. It can help you identify current trends and help you discover marketing opportunities where most people don’t even think about looking.
In this article we will explore what Twitter advanced search is and how you can use it in order to discover opportunities and trends that are about to explode.
What is Twitter Advanced Search
Twitter advanced search is a search functionality available to Twitter users which allows you to search for custom tweets including specific date ranges, people, phrases, hashtags and so much more.
It can help you search for an old tweet or target keywords for a specific tweet you may have had in mind. It’s extremely useful in helping you dig up old content and discover new content that is on the verge of taking off.
How to Use Twitter Advanced Search
In order to be able to use Twitter advanced search you need to first log into Twitter. From there you can take the following steps below to custom tailor your search options.
Step 1) Open up Twitter and navigate to the search bar.
Step 2) Select Advanced Search, located under the Search filters options on the upper right of the results page and select More options and then select Advanced Search.
Step 3) Once you have opened up the advanced search you should see the following menu below.
Once you are on this menu you can begin to custom tailor your search options with different words, phrases, word exclusions, hashtags, data ranges and so much more.
Twitter Advanced Search Operators
In the advanced search, you have a good amount of search operators that can help you pinpoint very specific data in Twitter, some of these include:
- Words
- Accounts
- Places
- Replies and Links
- Engagement Level
Words
- The words filter can help you find tweets containing all words in any position on twitter
- Tweets containing exact phrases matches
- Tweets containing any word combinations
- Tweets excluding specific keywords
- Tweets including specific hashtags
- Tweets in a specific language
Accounts
- In the accounts search section you can look for Tweets from specific accounts
- Tweets mentioned as replies to specific accounts
- Tweets mentioning a specific accounts
This is a great way to see which Twitter accounts are actively getting mentioned for specific topics and news.
Places
- The places options allows you to find Tweets sent from a specific geographic location such as the city, state and country.
- Use the places dropdown menu to select your target geographic location.
This can be extremely helpful in finding out certain trending activities coming from a specific region.
Replies and Links
- The replies and links advances search section can help you filter replies and links limited to specific Tweets
- It can show you only replies to specific Tweets
- It can help you filter Tweets which only feature attached links
- It can also show you all Tweets which feature links
It’s an effective way to filter replies down to a specific action which can help you identify specific components to a conversation on Twitter.
Engagement Level
- The engagement search filter can be an extremely effective way to find real time trending Tweets
- You can filter down to minimum reply level
- It allows you to specify the amount of likes on a specific Tweet
- It also allows you to specify the amount of Retweets
This is a powerful way to drill down on Tweets that are popular and trending in a specific niche or industry.
Twitter Advanced Search Tips
With all these advanced search operator options, you are probably wondering, how can I use them to find trending topics and opportunities.
It’s important to first start off with the industry you are in or the industry you plan on targeting.
Let’s assume you are in the gaming niche and want to find out the latest updates and trends in gaming that have been occurring in the past 30 days. Below are how all the advanced search operators could look to help you find trending topics related to gaming.
Twitter Advanced Search Example
Words Filter
Here we specified words related to gaming that are widely used and also hashtags that can help us identify a broad trending topic related to gaming. From here we go further to explore.
We will skip the accounts sections because we don’t want to drill down to specific Twitter accounts yet.
We specify the Tweets to include replies and original Tweets and also to show Tweets with links. This can help us discover where a specific gaming trend or topic is occurring.
And finally we specify the engagement level. We kept the minimum Tweet replies, likes and retweets to 100. This will help us find a topic that is highly engaging on all levels.
We also made sure to run the data for the last month to make sure we pick up on current engagements. This is important if you want to find things that are currently trending.
Once you run the search we get some of the results below.
We can see that the latest topic featuring our advanced search options related to the gaming niche is about NFTs and gaming.
The Twitter Advanced Search can show us what people, companies and ideas are currently trending for a specific industry and helps us to stay current with what is going on in a specific space.