Business Insight Zone

I spelled out this dead-simple method earlier today in a discussion on LinkedIn — thought I’d share it here, too.

1. Go to TweepSearch.

2. Enter a relevant set of keywords in the search bar. Let’s say you’re an expert in fundraising for nonprofits. Your first few searches might run like this:

• philanthropy
• not-for-profit development
• nonprofit development
• not-for-profit fundraising
• nonprofit fundraising
• foundation development
• alumni development
• arts fundraising
• . . .

Note that you could also limit each search to a particular area by including a geographical term. (Be sure, though, to try variations, e.g. try “Portland” and then “Oregon” and then “PDX.”)

Click the image below for a full-sized view of the results page:

3. For each query, scroll through the results that TweepSearch returns. The freshest accounts — the ones updated most recently — appear at the top, and each entry lists the full biography for the account and tells you how many followers and updates the account has. In a minute or two of scanning, you can decide which accounts are interesting enough to look at more closely.

4. Using a tabbed browser, right-click on each Twitter name to open a separate tab for the Twitter page for that account. (As with my lightning-fast Twitter follow-back method, I find that the tabbed approach makes things much quicker to work through.) Once you’re on the Twitter page, you can read some of the person’s recent tweets to get an idea of how frequently they post, what they talk about, and how they come across. If you’re interested, click the “Follow” button to follow them, just as you would normally.

That’s it. I’ve used this method a lot to find relevant people to follow. By using new combinations of keywords, it’s easy to keep finding great new folks to follow day in and day out.

Two more notes:

1. You might do better to repeat this process for a few minutes each day — maybe at the end of the day, or when you’re waiting on hold — rather than trying to follow hundreds of new people at once. At some point, all the biographies start to run together.
2. There are many other good ways to find new people to follow — this is just one more arrow to put in your quiver.

Ah, but the title here promised how to find followERS, not just people for you to follow. Persuading the new people you follow to follow you back is the subject of my next post. Stay tuned . . .

Category: Social media