We get a lot of inquiries every week regarding different aspects of social media and the art of social recruitment. However, when we received a particularly intriguing Twitter-related question last week, we felt compelled to share the answer with you all.
How do you look up the followers of another person's or company's Twitter account?
First and foremost, why would you want to look up a company's Twitter followers? Take, for example, Jamie Oliver's @jo jobs Twitter account for job openings at his restaurants. It now has just over 2,900 followers, and I believe it is fair to say that the majority of those who follow it wants to work at one of Jamie's restaurants. We may assume that chefs will make up the bulk of those interested in working at Jamie's restaurants. As a result, if I were another restaurant or culinary business seeking to recruit outstanding chefs, I would certainly reach out to the Jamie Oliver Jobs account's followers.
Searching for a certain account's followers is not presently feasible on Twitter, and it is also not possible on Followerwonk (a site we use for most of our Twitter searching).
We conducted some research and testing and discovered that, although there are few websites that offer this kind of service, there is one called Twiangulate that does an excellent job. Here's how to put it to good use.
How to Use Twiangulate to Find Another User's Followers
To begin, take the first step.
1. Go to Twiangulate and create an account. A registered user account is required to use the site's features. It's completely free to join, and it only takes a few minutes (you can register using your Twitter account).
Step two is to create a plan.
2. Select the Keywords tab from the drop-down menu. When you first open this tab, you'll see two search boxes: one with journalist written in it, and another with @(optional) written in it.
If I really want to discover brilliant chefs who follow the Jamie Oliver Jobs account, I'll create a Boolean string to seek chefs or culinary professionals who reside in the area I'm interested in and put it in the e.g. journalist box, along with the @jo jobs handle.
Important facts about Boolean operators:
Triangulate does not utilize the traditional AND, OR, and NOT operators. For these operators, it employs a variety of alternate characters:
Instead of AND, use &. Take, for example, human and financial resources.
Alternatively, you may use the pipe sign | instead. Holding Shift + Backslash will reveal this (found on a standard PC keyboard to the left of your Z key, or to the left of the return key on a Mac). (recruiter | recruiting) is a good example.
NOT TO USE! Instead, use the exclamation point immediately in front of the term you're omitting, with no spaces between them. Junior, for example! senior
In this search, I'm searching for individuals who have used the terms chef, commis, sous, cook, or culinary in their Twitter bio, as well as those who have specified London or the United Kingdom as their location or bio. In this case, I've told the system not to look for applicants who have selected Birmingham or Glasgow as their preferred location.
Step three is the most important.
3. Select Retrieve from the menu. My test search yielded 15 items. That's 15 individuals who have stated or referenced London or the United Kingdom as their location or in their profile, who contain any of the keywords I used in my string in their Twitter bio, and who follow @jo jobs – just the people I want to contact about my job opportunity! @husvedat: @husvedat: @husvedat: @husvedat: @husvedat
If you click on his Twitter account, you'll be taken to his profile, which is full of his tweets on food, recipes, and culinary programs. I may follow him, interact with him through DM, or just tweet him openly from here.
I can also tell from his Twitter that he uses Instagram often. On closer examination, his Instagram account (which has over 2,170 followers) is very popular, and he uses it to share photos of his culinary masterpieces and items that inspire him. Not only are we salivating like crazy, but it's also another way for us recruiters to interact with him:
However, I can learn a lot of valuable information from chefs like @husverdat, such as the hashtags they use while tweeting and the other similar-minded people he talks to and mentions.
Fourth step:
This is a really helpful step, even if it isn't required.
4. One of the greatest features of Twiangulate is that it allows you to export the list of followers you get as an a.CSV file (which you can save for future reference or add to your ATS), as well as generate a Twitter list with all of these followers. Both are great methods to assist you in building your own database of potential contacts:
Conclusion
Searching your competitor's followers is a brilliant way to discover prospects on Twitter, and it may lead to a wealth of connections for you. All you have to do is spend some time studying who has an audience of individuals who would be ideal for the position you're looking for and then create a search string to locate those possible leads.
