If you manage a lot of social media profiles on different services then chances are you’ve used Hootsuite. But what if you only want to see chatter that is near a specific location? Like the town you live in or a city you’re about to visit?
Use Tweetdeck? See this location-specific Tweetdeck column tutorial.
You can configure a search stream on Twitter to just show tweets from a specific location. This is helpful for anyone who wants to listen to a local area and find out what people are saying.
Use Twitter as your own open city-wide chat channel via Hootsuite by following these very simple steps.
Step One: Figure out what the Geocode for your area is.
See this short tutorial for getting your geocode coordinates. For this tutorial, I’ll be using searches centered on Burlington, Vermont as examples.
Step Two: Add a new Hootsuite stream for your geocoded Twitter search.
In the upper left corner of the Hootsuite interface, just below where you enter a tweet, there’s an “add stream” button. Click that button to add a new stream for your geocoded Twitter search.
Step Three: Select Twitter as a source for your stream and then search as the kind of stream.
A preference pane for your new Hootstuite stream will appear after you’ve completed the previous step. Hootsuite will default to using Twitter as a source, but just to be sure check to be sure that Twitter (1) is highlighted. Then in the right portion of the prefence pane, select the Search (2) tab.
Step Four: Enter a geocode query into the search field of the Hootsuite stream prefence pane.
This is where the magic happens. Here is an example of a geocoded search query:
#btv geocode:44.467186,-73.214804,2500km
If you want, you can copy and paste this code right into that search bar and be done. The rest of this tutorial is probably mostly interesting for locative media geeks.
The first part of this string, #btv, is any text you want to use in your search. In this example, I’ve used the hashtag for Burlington, VT, which is named for our airport code. If you don’t care if any particular words are in your location-based twitter search Tweetdeck column (say that five times fast) then you can just start with the next part.
The magic words which allow you to search near a location are next:
geocode:44.467186,-73.214804,2500km
The first word, geocode:, tells Twitter that we’re going to be sending it some map co-ordinates. The first number is the latitude of your location, which you should have retrieved back in the first step of this tutorial. Then a comma. Then the longitude, which you also should have retrieved at the start of this tutorial. Then another comma and then the radius.
The largest radius Twitter will accept is 2500km. Sadly, this isn’t large enough to cover all of the US without moving the center of the geocode. Don’t worry though, there’s a link to a reference collection of geocoded Twitter searches at the bottom of this post.
Step Five: Hit the “Create Stream” or “Save Changes” button in the Hootsuite preference pane and you’ve got a location-based stream.
Hootsuite will now create your stream, based on the keyword search you entered (if any) and the geocode data you entered. Instant localized Twitter search. Awesome!
Fancier location-based Twitter searches
If the example above doesn’t fit the way you want to filter Twitter, be sure to check the reference of examples of geocoded Twitter searches along with maps to show their radius and so on.
First of all, thanks so much for sharing this. I’ve been using it since you first published this last year, and it’s been a wonderful way of ensuring that people Tweeting with, e.g., #BTV are more likely to be here in the US.
That said, it’s started failing on me lately, and I’m seeing more posts from Bahrainians in my “#btv geocode:44.467186,-73.214804,2500km” HootSuite stream. I wonder if you’re seeing the same thing or perhaps it’s just limited to my account?
Sometimes the Twitter search breaks but then comes back online later. Most breakings are less than 24 hours.
Also, if someone has a Twitter handle and does not indicate where they are either in the profile or via the location settings of their app, then sometimes you will see results filter in this way as well.
I’ve checked my settings today and everything seems to still be holding.