12 June 2009

As you're surely aware, there's been a lot of hype surrounding the microblogging site Twitter lately, but what might be its coolest feature is being largely overlooked by the media: its ability to tell you what people all over the world are saying right this second. Never before has it been so easy to gain real-time insight into what people are saying about anything from products, businesses, current events and life in general.

A search for “Father's Day,” at just before 11 a.m. today, yielded pages and pages of results from businesses and consumers alike, all posted within the last few minutes. (In the minute or so it took me to write that last sentence, seven more people have posted on the subject). If you think that's a lot, 46 people tweeted the word “iPhone” in less than 30 seconds; 105 did after about a minute and over 1,000 after 10 minutes. Apple must have a team of people who do nothing but monitor real-time Twitter postings around-the-clock. The tweets on just that one product are too much for one person to handle.

What's more, you don't even need an account to use Twitter's search function to your benefit nor must you sit at your computer all day typing queries. Here's what you can do to monitor what people are saying about your company, your industry or anything you want:

1.Go to search.twitter.com.
2.Type the phrase(s) you want to monitor in the search bar.
3.Click the link that says “Feed for this query” on the right-hand side of the results.
4.Press the “Subscribe Now” button or, better yet, add the RSS's URL to your email box's feeds so they'll arrive in your inbox throughout the day.

Have you discovered any other ways to use Twitter to your company's advantage? Feel free to let us know using the comment section below.