How to Monitor Twitter for Job and Business Opportunities



Contributing Writer
Photo: Businessman Credit: Ambrozjo


Twitter is a goldmine of information that job seekers and businesses alike can tap into for lucrative opportunities.  It is by far the best virtual marketplace where business is conducted every day.

According to last year’s estimates, there are more than 200 million tweets sent out per day.  How does one tap into this rich, virtual database of information?

The good news is that there are several tools that specifically help job seekers and those businesses looking out for opportunities.  In fact there are more than one million apps created for Twitter and more are being added each day.

Twitter for Jobs, Freelance and Consulting Opportunities

There are several ways candidates can monitor Twitter for finding the right job opportunity:

Twitjobsearch and Tweetmyjobs

You can set up job alerts on sites such as twitjobsearch and tweetmyjobs. Twitjobsearch promotes itself as a job search engine for Twitter. Tweetmyjobs is one of the more active sites, where job opportunities are tweeted directly to you and you can track them in your mentions.

Twilerts

Twilerts are similar to Google Alerts. You type in the keywords that you want to monitor on Twitter and you also have the option of receiving them daily, weekly or monthly. You can also set the time you’d like to receive each alert. I’ve set mine up for 6pm each day (end of my work day).

Advanced Twitter Search

Advanced Twitter search is a very powerful way of finding jobs, followers and prospects. You could type in your keyword with location. It helps if your keyword is a hashtag. For example: #jobs #real estate NY.

Following Twitter accounts such as @allfreelancejob, Freelancer (@Work__Freelance)

Sites such as All Freelance Jobs and Freelance Jobs have Twitter accounts that are updated sometimes hourly with their latest opportunities. I would recommend this method only if you are in between gigs. Most of the gigs at these freelance broker sites are low paying and you have people bidding from international locations.

Monitoring Questions to Find a Need for Your Product or Service

The best way for businesses to increase their customer base with the help of Twitter is to reach out to prospects who are interested in their product or service. If anyone has a need or query that matches your product or service you could answer them or send out helpful info.

There are several tools on the market that help you efficiently track twitter conversations, monitor hashtags, keywords and questions. Here are a couple of my favorites:

HootSuite

HootSuite is a great application for monitoring your keywords. Hootsuite allows you to:

Track brand mentions and keywords
Monitor hashtags
Track questions
Track keywords and hashtags

Expert Hootsuite users set up several searches with an effective use of hashtags to monitor relevant conversations. You can also type in your keywords. For example, if you are a small business consultant and you want to reach out to people who need help, you can put in a search for certain phrases such as ”need help with” “small business” or “small business advice.”

You could monitor questions on a particular topic by creating searches such as:

How to blog?
lose weight ?
make money blogging?

Also, if you find that your search is producing more people promoting their own posts as questions as opposed to people asking general questions, simply add -filter:links to your search query to remove any tweets that already have links in them.

InboxQ

According to their website, InboxQ identifies about 1,00,000 questions per day. About 1/3 rd of the questions asked relate to product advice or recommendations and 11% of these questions can be answered by local businesses. I think that this is a tremendous opportunity for local brands to answer questions and gain loyal customers.
InboxQ lets you create campaigns with different keywords. When someone asks a question with those keywords, you will be updated with their question and twitter handle and you can directly answer their question.

Twitter is an open marketplace that every brand, business, consultant should be tapping into. It has enormous potential and as with any social media channel, it ‘s up to each of us as individuals and small businesses to make the most of it’s opportunities.

With that said, I wish you all the success in finding the right opportunities on Twitter.

Gazalla Gaya

Gazalla Gaya

I am a freelance web editor, writer and blogger. I began my web journey as a web developer. This experience increased my passion for creating the perfect user experience especially with a site’s content. I write about content marketing, content strategy, seo and social media.

Gazalla Gaya

@Gazalla

I love content marketing, content strategy, writing, seo and social media.. Philosopher, poet and foodie.

Questions That Readers Want Answered In Your Marketing Content http://t.co/j9zidcvdIQ via @CarolLynnRivera – 6 days ago

Gazalla Gaya

Latest posts by Gazalla Gaya (see all)

Gazalla Gaya

Related posts

  • jimdougherty

    @gazalla:disqus - Phenomenally piece – I have been excited to post it ever since reading it the first time.  What I appreciate about this (and your other writing on webcontentblog.com) is how you identify tools and then go further to develop actions to take with the tools.  This piece is so exceptional – thank you for contributing!

  • http://twitter.com/Gazalla Gazalla Gaya

    Thanks, Jim. I thought it would be helpful especially in these times with so many people looking out for opportunities. Thanks for giving me the opportunity for sharing with your audience.

  • http://twitter.com/gonzogonzo Frederic Gonzalo

    Great post, Gazalla. In the tourism & hospitality industry, I see more and more companies using Twitter to enhance their employer branding, appealing to both existing and potential employees. Marriott and Hyatt have dedicated twitter handles for HR purposes. This isn’t exclusive to tourism though: you can follow @StarbucksJob for tweets related to employment opportunities but also to understand corporate values at Starbucks.

  • http://twitter.com/Gazalla Gazalla Gaya

    Thanks, Frederic. I see this trend rising across the board. A couple of years ago, LinkedIn used to be every job holder’s main resource among the social media sites. Twitter is fast becoming an importance resource and companies are using Twitter more and more as a recruiting tool.

Top