Matt Dulin shared a bunch of tips and tools last week in class. Here they are. And now there is no excuse for you to not develop super ninja search skills.

Thanks, Matt! And thanks Joy Mayer and everyone else who helped compile this valuable list.

Original by Joy Mayer (bit.ly/joysocialsearch) // Updates by Matt Dulin

Social searching

Ways and reasons to listen to your community

As representatives of our brand on social media, we need to be paying attention to monitoring what our audience is saying to us. Anywhere we’re talking to our audience, we need to be listening for what they say back. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit … we need to be on top of mentions of our brand.

In addition to that, we have an opportunity to eavesdrop on what our audience/community members are talking about to each other — in general about related to the things we cover. We look for conversations or posts that the newsroom should be aware of. Are there…

• Posts we should share/retweet/repost?
• Story ideas?
• People curious about things we’ve covered lately? Would they appreciate a link?
• Windows into what matters to our community?
• Conversations about our content? Feedback we should be aware of?
• People we should invite to contribute their own content?
• Conversations we should capture to share with our readers?
• Posts we should hit “like” on as the brand? Or ask about? Or ask permission to republish?
• New followers we should follow back?
• On Twitter specifically, set up lists with people whose conversations you especially want to keep tabs on. And search “near:zipcode” to get a sense of local conversation.

Twitter searching

• Twitter Advanced Search: Recommended starting point.
• Follow based on location using a column in Tweetdeck
• Sarah Marshall has great tips for Tweetdeck searching.
• Hootsuite: Listening. Searching. Sorting (FB and twitter)
• Who tweeted it first?
• Really detailed Twitter search operators
• Followerwonk (search twitter bios and compare accounts, among other things)
• Tweetreach (who’s talking about what you’re sharing and who saw it)
• Tweetchart (report of custom data for anything you can search Twitter for…crazy stats)
• it (identifies who helped get a hashtag trending)
• me (identifies related tags and influencers)
• Trendsmap (real-time trending reports based on location)
• A directory of Twitter directories, from Aram Zucker-Scharff
• Tools for hashtag tracking, from Social Media Examiner
• BBC story about using private Twitter lists to piece together narratives
• Genius tips from Daniel Victor about search words to use to find potential sources
• co (simple way to visualize hashtag use)
• Twitonomy (offers analytics on accounts, followers, searches, lists) (added by Samantha Sunne)
• twXplorer (searches tweets related to a topic) (added by Samantha Sunne)
• Twiangulate (finds overlap between Twitter accounts) (added by Samantha Sunne)
• Great tips here from Mandy Jenkins and Fergus Bell, including how to search for existing Twitter lists

Facebook searching

• Tutorial on search
• People who work at a specific place
• People who live in a specific town
• People who are friends with a specific person
• You can apply for Facebook Signal (usually granted to pro. journos)
• tips (suggested by Hannah Cushman) — Somewhat creepy, effective way to do targeted searches.
• Also, try pasting a link or headline straight into Facebook’s search bar. You’ll see posts that shared the link or used text from the headline in the post.

Instagram searching

• Facebook signal (mentioned above) allows Instagram searches
• Banjo – premium service only – there’s a limited “free” tier for verified journalists
• Hashtag and location searching within the app

Other searching tips and tools

• This is a great PBS MediaShift roundup of social tools (many of them search-related) by Cordelia Hebblethwaite.
• info is cool for rumor tracking (from Shannon Wink)
• Izitru tells you where images came from (from Shannon Wink)
• SUPER COOL: Storyful Multisearch searches across Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and other social media (added by Samantha Sunne)
• Lifehacker’s Google search tips
• Mashable’s Google search tips (infographic)
• Google tools you didn’t know existed (Mashable)
• A guide to Boolean Logic for search engines, from Aram Zucker-Scharff
• YouTube trends

Some paid tools worth mentioning

I’ve been persuaded to add a section for paid tools. Help me fill it out. What tools does your newsroom invest in? (I’ll try to track down the ones I’ve deleted from my list because they’ve started charging!)

• Geofeedia (recommended by Eric Carvin)
• SAM (recommended by Eric Carvin)
• Trendspottr (real-time viral search and predictive analytics service that identifies trending info)
• DataMinr (finds trending Twitter topics, searches by defined geographical areas, sends alerts) (recommended by Jeffrey Meesey)
• com (by user or keyword) – $28 per year to deep search Instagram