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  Article updated: May 21, 2023

Add a Twitter stream

You can create streams to monitor activity on your connected Twitter profiles. Streams help you keep track of engagement with your tweets and monitor tweets from others in a Twitter list. You can also create search streams based on keywords or Boolean queries to focus on important conversations and connection opportunities. Learn more about Streams.

Some of these tasks can be completed in both the web version of Hootsuite and the Hootsuite mobile app. These tasks are indicated by Web and Mobile tabs.

Create a new streams board

When you select New board, you have three options for creating boards for Twitter:

  • Monitor my own content - Create streams specific to your own social accounts.
  • Discover new content - Create streams for following trends and competitors.
  • Follow personalized feeds - Get straight into building custom streams based on any theme or activity.

The options for creating a new board.

To browse all available streams, select Follow personalized feeds, select a Twitter account, and then select one of the available streams for that account.

The stream options available for Twitter.

Add a stream

You can add a stream to an existing board at any time. Boards have a limit of 10 streams.

Web Mobile
  1. Go to Streams.
  2. Create or select the board that will host the stream.
  3. Select Add stream.
  4. Select a Twitter account.
  5. Select the streams to add.

Create a Twitter Search stream

Use powerful search filters to create advanced queries, or do a geosearch to monitor activity around a specific business location.

Note: Twitter indexes their search based on how popular the search term is. At this time, this index can return tweets up to 7 days in the past. Twitter’s search service is not meant to be an exhaustive source of tweets, so not all tweets will be indexed or made available.

Web Mobile
  1. Go to Streams.
  2. Create or select the board that will host the stream.
  3. Select Add stream.
  4. Select a Twitter account.
  5. Select Search, and enter your search query.
    The search field supports up to 1,000 characters, but it's best to avoid using more than 10 keywords and filter operators. Also see Twitter search queries and filters, later in this article.

Tip: To easily identify complex Twitter search streams, select the stream title to rename it.

Create an Advanced Twitter Search stream

Much like the advanced search feature in Twitter, you can create a stream in Hootsuite based on a more narrow Twitter search, including things like specific words, people, locations, and more.

  1. Go to Streams.
  2. Create or select the board that will host the stream.
  3. Select Add stream.
  4. Select a Twitter account, and then select Advanced Search.
    The Advanced Search option for Twitter Search streams.
  5. Scroll through the available options to select a language, words, phrases, hashtags, accounts, locations, and any other options you like, and then select Add stream.

Create a Twitter geosearch stream

Geosearch streams provide Twitter search results within a specific geographical radius for a specific location. A tweet’s location is taken from Twitter’s geotagging feature; if that's not available, it uses the user’s Twitter profile. To create a geosearch stream, use Google Maps to get the coordinates for the location you want to monitor.

Using Geo-search to Find Conversations.

Find location coordinates in Google Maps

  1. Open Google Maps.
  2. Right-click a location on the map, and then select What's here? for its coordinates.
  3. Copy the coordinates (Command + C on Mac or Ctrl + C on PC).

Add a geosearch stream

  1. In Hootsuite, go to Streams.
  2. Create or select the board that will host the stream.
  3. Select Add stream.
  4. Select a Twitter account, and then select Search.
  5. Enter a search query, followed by a space and geocode: and then paste in your location. There shouldn't be any spaces after the word geocode.
  6. Enter a comma and then enter the radius of your search, followed by km for kilometers or mi for miles.
    Example: Hootsuite geocode:49.264046, -123.104358,10km

Example

Say you run a barbecue restaurant and you want to find people in your area (in this example, within 10 kilometers of Vancouver, BC) who might be looking for the type of food you serve. You could create the following Twitter geosearch stream:

(need OR want OR craving OR buy OR get) AND (ribs OR bbq OR burger) -RT geocode:49.282729,-123.120738,10km

Create a Twitter Lists stream

Twitter lists let you group users together, to focus the conversations you’re monitoring. Add streams for existing Twitter lists, or create public or private Twitter list streams from scratch. You can also access these lists on Twitter.

Web Mobile
  1. Go to Streams.
  2. Create or select the board that will host the stream.
  3. Select Add stream.
  4. Select a Twitter account, and then select Lists.
  5. Select an existing list, or select Create a new list, give it a name, and make it Public (anyone can view) or Private (only you can view).
  6. Select Add Stream.

For more about Twitter Lists and how to use them, see How to Set Up and Use Twitter Lists: 9 Great Ideas. Visit the Hootsuite blog for news, tips, tools, and tactics to help you succeed on social media.

Available stream types and stream content

The types of streams available for Twitter, and what you can do with them, depend on the functions made available by Twitter to third parties like Hootsuite. Expand the following table to see detailed descriptions of each Twitter stream type.

Notes:
  • Twitter polls are not supported and don’t appear in streams.
  • Use Inbox to manage your direct messages on Twitter (see Overview of Hootsuite Inbox).

Tip: Select the timestamp on any post in a stream to open it in Twitter and view it there.

Twitter search queries and filters

When entering your search queries, don’t use commas to separate the search terms. Instead, use spaces, which act like AND, so results will contain ALL the terms. Put OR between terms to pull results containing either term. See the following filter table for more options.

You can add filters to the end of your search queries to narrow your results. For example, you can search for tweets in a specific language, or from a specific user.

The query pizza lang:fr min_retweets:5 min_faves:10 filter:images will display all tweets in French mentioning pizza that have at least 5 retweets and 10 likes and contain an image.

Tip: To find your quoted tweets, create a search stream for your own Twitter handle plus the filter:quote. Example: “twitter.com/hootsuite filter:quote”. Then select the title of the stream to rename it ‘Quoted tweets’.

Expand the following table to see detailed filter examples.

 

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