How to Find Twitter Users in Your Area

June 23, 2010 Jillian Koeneman search, twitter blog

As a small businesses that targets a local customer base, being able to find Twitter users in your area is a great way to connect one-on-one with your potential customers.

Here is an easy way to find Twitter users in your local area:

1. Login to your Twitter account

2. Go to Twellow.com (a Twitter search engine)

3. Search for the specific city or state you are looking for by typing it in the search box.  For example if I was looking for Twitter users in Chicago I would type in @location Chicago. This would search Twitter for people who have the word Chicago set as their location.

If you want to find users in a city but they is more than one city with this name you can add your state to further clarify what you are looking for. If I were looking for people in Goshen, Indiana, I would type in @location Goshen (IN | Indiana). This would search for people who set their location to either Goshen, IN or Goshen, Indiana. ( the “|” symbol means “or”)

4. Follow users by clicking on their Twitter username. You will be directed to their profile which you can review before deciding to follow them.  You can also add users to a Twitter list that you created. There is also an option to register with Twellow so you can follow users right from the site, but I don’t like this option as much because I can’t see people’s full profiles and I can’t add them to a list.

5. Try creating an advanced search using Twellow’s advanced search options. You could first search by city or state and then further drill down by searching for specific keywords.

Chicago PR diva Gini Dietrich turned me onto another tip she found on Small Business Trends for keeping a pulse on people within a specific area.

Stop what you’re doing and go to Twitter Search. Click on the Advanced Search option (or just click that link) and create a Saved search designed to pick up ‘sitting ducks’. For example, if you’re a local mechanic, you may want to set up a search for [brake job], [car inspection] or [oil change]. Set the distance for 25 miles from your place of business and then save the search. Now any time someone in your local area tweets about needing a brake job, a car inspection or an oil change, you’ll be notified. And then you can reach out to that person. You can also create searches for you competitors and try to steal those conversions away.