6 Steps to Finding Your Twitter Audience

Use this step-by-step guide to find and connect with the people who want your content most.

learn more about Mana Ionescu

By Mana Ionescu

sproutsocial

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Targeting an audience on Twitter is critical and no simple task. Fortunately, there are a number of smart tools available that make it easier to connect with your market and build highly curated audience lists. These six steps help you find "your" people and segment them to monitor and engage them more effectively.

#insert related here#

1. Target keywords in Twitter bios. Say you're promoting an app for a half-marathon in Chicago. With the help of a few tools you can quickly create lists of your targets.

  • Social Bro: Those with a subscription can search all Twitter bios by keyword (runner) and location (Chicago), name and url to find the active profiles that fit your needs. Additionally, you can organize your search results into Twitter lists.
  • FollowerWonk: With this free tool you can search profiles by keyword, name, location and url. The results can be exported to xls or csv.
  • Twitter's "people search" feature: Any user has access to this recently launched feature, however, searches are limited to keywords.
6 Steps to Finding Your Twitter Audience
In this example, a keyword and location search on Social Bro shows how you can search for Chicagoans who self-identify as marathoners in their Twitter bio, and who were active on Twitter in the past month.
Image credit: Social Bro

2. Find active users and influencers. You're creating a targeted list, so for efficiency's sake, it's best to filter out those who haven't tweeted in 30 to 60 days. Tools such as Social Bro allow you to select only those who have tweeted within certain period of time (the last month or 90 days, for example). It can also lead you to those with influence or who have a certain number of followers.

6 Steps to Finding Your Twitter Audience
This Social Bro search filters out profiles who have been inactive for longer than one month.
Image credit: Social Bro

3. Find those who use a particular hashtag. What hashtags would your audience use? It's likely that your audience might be linked by certain products or events associated with specific hashtags. Brainstorm to find two to three hashtags that might lead you to your audience. Once you're ready, input them into a tool such as TweetBe, run a search and create a list of profiles that fit your specific needs.

6 Steps to Finding Your Twitter Audience
In this example, the hashtag #runchi was used on tweetbe.at to find runners in Chicago through TweetBe.
Image credit: TweetBe

4. Organize your results. Once you've found profiles based on keywords, hashtags or locations, you'll want to organize them in a list. Of course, any Twitter user can use the platform's built-in "lists" feature to group certain profiles, creating up to 20 lists, with a maximum of 500 contacts each. For many this might be sufficient, but if you need more advanced list-management features there are plenty of tools to fill that gap, including SocialBro, Tweetbe.at, and Tweepi.com.

6 Steps to Finding Your Twitter Audience
After creating a filtered list to find Chicago marathoners, SocialBro will let you add the results to a Twitter list.
Image credit: Social Bro

5. Don't forget your tweeps. We've dealt mostly with finding new contacts but your old friends might also be a fit. Using any of the tools mentioned here you can use the "Advanced Search" to find your personal friends and add them to lists where they might fit.

6 Steps to Finding Your Twitter Audience
In creating a targeted Twitter lists, don't neglect your older contacts who might be a fit for your new projects. In this example, Social Bro is used to find "Friends" who fit a particular profile.
Image credit: Social Bro

6. Interact and monitor. After you build your segments, you're ready to interact with them. Use a dashboard such as HootSuite or Tweetdeck to import your new Twitter lists into columns so you can easily monitor your lists and build relationships through targeted content. Every few weeks or months consider updating your lists to ensure that your audience grows proactively. Go and get'em!

Mana Ionescu

President of Lightspan Digital

Mana Ionescu is the President of Chicago Digital Marketing company Lightspan Digital.

Related Topics

Editor's Pick

Everyone Wants to Get Close to Their Favorite Artist. Here's the Technology Making It a Reality — But Better.
The Highest-Paid, Highest-Profile People in Every Field Know This Communication Strategy
After Early Rejection From Publishers, This Author Self-Published Her Book and Sold More Than 500,000 Copies. Here's How She Did It.
Having Trouble Speaking Up in Meetings? Try This Strategy.
He Names Brands for Amazon, Meta and Forever 21, and Says This Is the Big Blank Space in the Naming Game
Travel

6 Secret Tools for Flying First Class (Without Paying Full Price)

It's time to reimagine upgrading. Here's how to fly first class on every flight, business or personal.

Business News

These Are the Most and Least Affordable Places to Retire in The U.S.

The Northeast and West Coast are the least affordable, while areas in the Mountain State region tend to be ideal for retirees on a budget.

Business News

Amazon Driver Donates $10,000 to Charity After Being One of the Most 'Thanked' Drivers

Greylon Anthony was one of the most popular drivers in Amazon's 'Alexa, Thank My Driver' Program.

Business News

I Live on a Cruise Ship for Half of the Year. Look Inside My 336-Square-Foot Cabin with Wraparound Balcony.

I live on a cruise ship with my husband, who works on it, for six months out of the year. Life at "home" can be tight. Here's what it's really like living on a cruise ship.

Business News

TikTok Influencer Reveals She Makes $350,000 a Month on OnlyFans. 'Absolutely Unreal.'

When Tara Lynn promoted her OnlyFans page on TikTok, she saw her income more than double.