In October, I first introduced Searchtastic, a new search engine for Twitter, whose claim to fame is archiving Tweets longer than the standard database, as well as letting you refine your search through live addition and deletion of keywords. This weekend, the site upgraded with a minor addition that has major potential - the ability to export search results to Microsoft Excel databases with a single click. This opens up significant opportunity for marketing and sales teams alike who are looking to track who discusses their brand or select keywords, and track this data offline.
As social media aware businesses are looking closely at Twitter and other online networks for potential prospects and influencers, it comes as no surprise that it would be desired that these future customers be stored in the company's CRM, or as part of a marketing database, even if not all the information is complete. Also, as third party social media contractors are often hired to find these folks, there becomes a need to compile frequent mentions of your brand and products and report into Marketing or Sales.
Any Searchtastic Result is Now Exportable to an .xls File
Now, I can go to Searchtastic, enter a keyword or string of words, and see the results, powered by standard Twitter search.
For example, I may search for the word Maytag.
On the right side of the search results from Searchtastic, there is a new function that says "Excel Report". If I click that, I am asked to enter a simple number-based Captcha, and the report is downloaded.
Included in the report are all the relevant details around the mentions, including:
- Login of the individual
- Name listed on Twitter
- Homepage provided on their profile
- Location (if reported)
- Followers (by number)
- Following (by number)
- Total Tweets
- Tweet Date (of the mention)
- Tweet (the tweet in its entirety)
- In Reply To (the URL of a reply, if there is one)
Since our initial report on Searchtastic, the developer has made a number of behind the scenes enhancements, fixing search string bugs, adding the expansion of URLs from URL shorteners, and migrating to more powerful servers to enable a greater number of tweets for indexing. You can check out Searchtastic at http://www.searchtastic.com. It is obvious to me that this new addition could be very powerful and useful. I will absolutely be using this.