Community Building Strategy Series: 5 Twitter Search Engines

Last week we introduced our Community Building Strategy Series and 7 ways to grow your fans on Facebook.  To continue the series and in honor of Twitter’s 4th birthday, we wanted to introduce you to a few tools, specifically Twitter Search Engines that will help you to broaden your horizons and your community through Twitter.

Many people who are new to Twitter wonder how they find and connect with others who share common interests, whether personal, professional, or both.  The following sites will give you a head start to connecting with the right folks.  Once you start engaging and begin sharing interesting and relevant content with others that operate in a similar space, your community will begin to grow naturally.  So, without further ado:

Twitter Search

Twitter Search is a search engine that covers topics exclusively on Twitter as they occur.   Use this search tool to look up any topic and see what is trending on a moment’s notice.  For instance, I’m passionate about wire jewelry and when I just typed in "wire jewelry" the following search results came up:

The results yield wire jewelry artists as well as people who teach wire jewelry techniques.  Both of these are right up my alley so I'd be interested in following the folks that posted these messages on Twitter, engaging with them and seeing more Tweets from them in the future.

WeFollow

WeFollow is another resource you can use to find people or organizations on Twitter who cover certain topics.  It is a user-powered Twitter Directory that shows you the top users of Twitter specific to particular subjects or tags.  For example, when I type in the tag "handmade" the following top users come up:

Make sure to also add your Twitter profile to WeFollow so others can also find you!

Twibs

Twibs is another search engine based on Twitter.  It is a resource that gives users a place to find businesses on Twitter.  You can also add your business to Twibs by filling out the registration form.  This is another great place to find organizations to build relationships with and learn from.

Twellow

Twellow is the 'Yellow Pages' of Twitter.  You can search on Twellow by specific topics within the search bar or select from existing categories.  Twellow is a little more distracting to me than the other sites I mentioned due to all the ads, but it’s another resource you can visit to track down relevant Tweeple.

Listorious

Last, but not least is Listorious.  Listorious is a service that helps you discover the best lists and people to follow on Twitter.  You can sort through the existing categories provided on the home page or you can search on whatever topic you're interested in.  For example, from the homepage under the Art Lists category, I see a list called "Best of Photography" and when I click on the link, it provides more information about the list, including the curator, the people who are followed on that list, as well as how many others are following the list.  It also provides a link for you to follow the list.  So in this case, if you are passionate about photography, you could join this list and immediately follow some of the best photographers without doing the leg work of finding them individually.

Hopefully I haven’t overwhelmed you with too many tools to broaden your Twitter community.  If you have any favorite Twitter tools, please share them with us in the comments section below.  Oh, and if you’re aching for more Twitter knowledge, you may want to read these articles by a few social media superstars:

• Ten Twitter Tools to Organize Your Tweeps by Josh Catone on Mashable
• Driving Targeted Twitter Traffic by Chris Garrett on Social Media Examiner