At 6.26am on June 15th we received a customer support message into the Twilert inbox. This is nothing new.

Just like the social media field they work in, our users are generally very vocal about what they want and where they see the product heading. It’s what we love about them!

And having been around since 2008, when Twitter was just a two-year old baby, in the days when MySpace was still at height having just surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States (yes really), we thought we’d seen it all.

We know that our core user base is a mix of brands, PR agencies, content agencies and the odd law enforcement or public sector body. We’ve spoken to a Canadian government body who use Twilert to track deteriorating weather conditions and a UK-based local police force who use Twilert to monitor crime directly within a 100-mile radius.

Both very cool use cases, both helping us to feel as though we’re making somewhat a difference — the holy grail of any startup.

But the message we received back in June bought that home even more.

“We used your service to monitor specific conversations related to a criminal investigation by Homeland Security and local and state police.The offender has been arrested and charged and his website taken down and your service helped in that process!”

We don’t want to say too much about how they did this but let’s just say that Twilert is always listening.

For us, this is one of the most important uses we have ever been able to assist with and we are now looking to spread the word to other law enforcement companies who could be in need of the same service.

Because even if this is the only online organised crime our small Twitter monitoring tool helps to bring down, it makes it completely 100% worthwhile.

If you work within this field and would like a free session with our team on how to make the most of Twitter search to assist your organisation please get in touch on support@twilert.com.

At Twilert, we’re looking to help people monitor online conversations and pick up tweets that other services may miss. Sign up for your free trial at www.twilert.com

Our Twitter Monitoring Tool Helped Bring Down a Child Paedophilia Site was originally published in The Twilert User Diary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When I look at an influencer on Twitter I often wonder how they've done it. A follower count that ends in a K can seem like an unobtainable aspiration. How could they build up that many followers organically? Unless you have a huge ad budget (we don’t), or unethical morals, gaining followers can seem slow and painful. And yet still not as painful as when you first begin to tweet to a meagre 10 or 20 followers. So here are ten things, out of the many that we’ve tried and tested, that help you to increase your number of Twitter followers, in micro amounts of time.

Follow relevant users

This seems almost too basic to mention, but when you follow relevant users, the chances are that some of them will follow you back. But how do you do this without increasing your ‘following’ count to a disproportionate size? This is where Twitter housekeeping comes in. Employ the use of Followerwonk a free tool which allows you to analyse the accounts you’re following and work out who is engaged on the channel, who isn't and who hasn't been for a while. Unfollow anyone who hasn't tweeted in the last six months. Then take a scan through the rest of the accounts you follow — are they still relevant? Users who you followed when you first set-up your account, may have changed industries, or be posting updates that are no longer relevant to your business. Cut as much of the driftwood as possible and spend your time coveting accounts that are relevant, interesting and that you’d want to follow you back.

Help users

Many users turn to Twitter to ask for help. Some of these users could even be your customers. Create a quick Twitter Search to see if there’s anyone out there that you could help. For example, if you’re an accountant, a search containing the keywords tax + question + can + anyone + help could produce a list of confused users like this:

You may not have time to help each individual for free, but by directing them to a reputable source, article or answer, you can build credibility and show the more ‘human’ side of your business. Spend ten minutes each day, testing a different keyword variation and interacting with users and by the end of the week you will be guaranteed to have new followers and potentially even new business.

Find leads

As well as helping users, Twitter keyword search can also be a quick method that can help you to find qualified, business leads.

For example, if you’re a Marketing agency / Freelancer who specialises in SEO, a simple keyword search for can + anyone + help +seo could produce a list of users who are looking for a service that you provide.

You may not end up winning the business, but by responding to users you are still putting your business out there and gaining qualified customers as followers, who may remember you at a later date.

Setup monitoring

Once you have your keyword searches nailed, setup Twitter monitoring to do all the hardwork for you. Use Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to create columns of users who tweet with your keywords. Then spend ten minutes each day checking the lists, responding to tweets and following relevant users. If you want to go one step further you could also employ our Twitter monitoring tool Twilert. Twilert sends the tweets to you in an email alert, reminding you to follow up with users while simultaneously cancelling out the 99.9% of Twitter that you don’t need to see.

Hack through hashtags

To gain more followers quickly you have to be seen and to be seen, your tweets have to be popular. Creating a tweet that goes viral would be a great first step. But this is difficult to do and even harder to predict, so don’t waste your time. Instead, add two or three (no more) popular hashtags to each of your tweets, where relevant, and watch them tot up the favourites and retweets. There are many users out there who are using automated favouriting on tweets that contain generic hashtags such as #startup, #marketing, #diet etc. By adding relevant hashtags to your tweet you can automatically gain enough interaction through these automated ‘favourites’ to reach the ‘Top’ column for that hashtag, helping you to get found and followed.

Tweet tips

Spend a little time coming up with tips for your industry that can be sent in 100 characters. A ‘Tip’ tweet is more likely to get retweeted as it provides useful information to the user and also shows that user to be knowledgeable and helpful if they retweet it from their own account. The more retweets you get, the larger the reach of your tweet and the more followers you will gain as a result.

Comment on blogs

This may seem counterproductive but by logging into Disqus through your Twitter account and commenting on blogs, you are likely to get a hit back to your own Twitter page when the user reads your comment. If the blog owner or reader then likes what you do, they could follow you or start up a Twitter discussion. Twitter is a much smaller commitment then signing up by email, or even liking a Facebook page and you should leverage that as much as possible to gain new followers and increase interaction.

Optimise your bio

Take 10 minutes to check that your Twitter bio is optimised for your industry. Ensure that it contains a solid amount of industry keywords, so that your profile shows up when users are searching for new people to follow. This doesn’t mean ply it with hashtags, but something natural that says what you do and who you do it for, should naturally contain three or four keywords anyway. A good example of an optimised bio is below:

Recycle tweets

Automating Tweets can be shaky ground, but manually recycling content can also make perfect sense. Not all of your Twitter followers will see all of your updates — Twitter is a steady stream and unless your user is logged in around the time you tweet or shortly afterwards, it’s unlikely that they’ll see your tweets at all. Recycling content can also be a great way to test different headlines and ‘lead ins’ to your content. Think of five or six different tweets that could showcase your latest blogpost and use Twitter Analytics to see which one does best over a week period. The more users your content resonates with, the more it will be shared and the more followers you will gain.

Add social buttons

Again, this one seems basic but you’d be surprised how many people miss out on it. Add social buttons to your site so that users can share a post or page to their Twitter account at any time while they’re browsing. People are lazy, so compiling your content into a ready-made tweet that they can send instantly can also be helpful in gaining you new followers (tweet this) — see what I did there? Also, include your Twitter handle on as much company paraphernalia as possible- businesscards, sign-written vehicles, uniform, company signage — there’s basically no place your Twitter handle cannot go.

And if ten isn't enough, follow us on Twitter for more #twittertips at @twilert