The Twitter Search interface is brilliant.

Thousands of tweets are posted per minute. And this tool allows you to search all of them — in real-time. It’s been affectionately called the “Google of Twitter” in the past, and it’s sometimes viewed as a threat to Google itself. Simply put, it’s a tool you can’t miss.

Journalist or not, it’s hard to get the full Twitter experience without delving into Twitter Search.

Not only is it a great way to find people talking about things you’re interested in (keyword searches) or to find people who live nearby (geographic searches), but it can also be used to track brand names, user mentions, company mentions, general emotions, pictures, and a whole lot more.

But how does a journalist use the real-time search capability effectively? In all of the following ways:

1. Track mentions and interact: See what people are saying about you and your company. Reach out to those paying compliments and thank them, and equally get in touch with the nay-sayers and start a dialogue so you can gain valuable feedback.
2. Utilize trends to see what’s hot: The top 10 trending topics are listed in blue links on the Search home page, as well as on your Twitter.com Web profile page. Keep an eye on these at all times. You never know when breaking news will pop up or a topic of interest to you makes the trends.
3. Find breaking news tweets: Nothing is more exciting than breaking news on Twitter. But you need to be quick to find the goods. Before a discussion gets too spammy, and everyone joins the fray, jump on breaking news stories fast and search keywords and the locale to find tweets that add context.
4. Don’t be afraid to go back: The “Older” link at the bottom of the first page and at the top and bottom of the rest is your best friend. While Search.Twitter.com is the Google of Twitter, results aren’t sorted by relevance; instead, the best in the bunch is oftentimes a few pages back — especially during breaking news.
5. Click the links: The tweets alone won’t be enough to satisfy your information hunger. Click the Twitter user’s name to learn more about them and see their past tweets. Click “Show conversation” when it appears to find context to Twitter dialogue in a threaded format. And most importantly, click the Web links in the tweets themselves (but first — for shortened URLs like bit.ly — try clicking “expand” to see that they’re not spam).

These are just five ways on how to effectively use real-time search in your day-to-day duties. Got more? Let us know how you use Twitter’s Search capabilities and other ideas you can think of. Just leave a comment or contact us at @TwitJourn.

Related links:
“How to make Twitter content searchable” | SEO for Journalists
“Researching news on Twitter” | Media Helping Media