Twitter has made it fairly easy to monitor using Twitter search features and hashtags.

1. Browse to Search.Twitter.com

2. Enter the word or phrase you want to search, such as your department name.

3. When the search is completed look in the upper right of the page for “Feed for This Query” That is the RSS feed for the search query.

4. Copy the RSS into your RSS reader.

5. Anytime the query appears in a tweet it will update the feed.

I would suggest monitoring for these terms:

• Department name
• Department name acronym
• Chief’s name
• Your name
• City name and key words like fire, police, ambulance, emergency

Use the results of your searches to refine the queries and select new queries.

Also use the Advanced Twitter search features to refine your search to your area. For example, searching NYFD might pull tweets from around the world. Narrowing the search to within 5 miles of zip code 10001 will limit the tweets to those coming from Manhattan and the surrounding Burroughs.

About the author

Greg Friese wrote 58 articles on this blog.

Greg Friese, MS, NREMT-P is an author, podcaster, blogger, and advocate for emergency response agencies to use social media before, during, and after any incident. Greg is the Director of Education for CentreLearn Solutions, LLC. He is also the co-host of the EMSEduCast podcast and is a paramedic for a 911 agency in northeast Wisconsin

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