Want to keep daily tabs on a particular Twitter profile, like a certain politician, corporate executive or celebrity’s page?

Maybe it’s a business competitor you’re spying on for competitor insights.

Sometimes, the “follow” button just doesn’t do the trick. You need a Twitter monitoring tool.

Here’s how to be notified when someone posts on Twitter.

To stay on top of new posts from certain Twitter profiles, many Twitter users use the “follow” button. You’re telling Twitter you’re interested in that user’s Tweets, and you want them to appear on your Home timeline.

But “following” a Twitter profile doesn’t mean you’ll catch meaningful updates to their Twitter profile, such as an interesting change in their Twitter bio, job title or follower count.

The follow button also doesn’t guarantee you’ll catch all their new tweets. While it trickles their posts into your Home feed, you still have to manually sift through the feed to check if they posted anything new. Or, manually look up their page to see if there’s anything interesting.

The follow button also doesn’t let you view tweets or retweets the user has since removed – like when politicians tweet something newsworthy and then delete it. Once deleted, it’s gone forever. Like that time Sarah Palin took the incorrect use of the verb “to refute” to a whole new level by mangling it into a whole new word – “refudiate” – and then compared herself to Shakespeare because of it.

Then there’s the visibility issue. When you “follow” a page, their name appears on your own profile, as one of the pages you’re following.

But let’s say it’s your business competitor, and you’re monitoring their profile for competitive intelligence purposes. That’s publicly displaying – and inadvertently advertising – your competitor's brand. Oops.

You can monitor your competitor, or that public figure, without relying on manually looking up their profile. You can get automatic updates every time there's a change to their Twitter profile.

There’s simply a better way to do it. And that’s with a Twitter monitoring tool, like Visualping.

Twitter Monitoring Tool: The Better Way to Track Twitter Profiles

Automatic Monitoring

Visualping is the world’s top website change detection tool. We automatically check web pages for changes – including social media profiles, like Facebook and Instagram. When there’s a change, Visualping sends you an email alert that includes a screenshot of the profile, with the changes highlighted. Check it out.

Visualping automatically monitors Twitter profiles daily, and notifies you of changes – to their bio, job title, images or follower count – perfect for competitive intelligence monitoring.

You can also be notified when someone posts – like when your competitor announces a new upcoming product or promotional discount. You can monitor your competitor’s customer service Twitter account, and watch how they navigate customers’ questions and concerns.

Or, perhaps you’re a reporter, and you want early access to a public figure’s newsworthy tweets. Journalists use Visualping to keep an eye on paramount posts – whether it’s a new eye-catching tweet, or an interesting edit to a tweet, now that Twitter’s introducing an edit button.

Public figures also regularly delete momentous tweets after posting them which, with Visualping, you would now have a screenshot of.

Email Alerts

How do the email alerts work?

When setting up your monitor, simply select the area of the Twitter page you want to be alerted about (which could also just be the entire page), and you will receive alerts of changes to that area.

You can also customize your monitoring and be alerted of certain keywords, like whether a word or a phrase was removed or added to the Twitter profile.

At the bottom of the alert, the Access Site link takes you to the monitored Twitter profile, so you can promptly view the changes within Twitter.

The View Changes link takes you to your user dashboard, where you can view all your monitors, and their highlighted changes, in one central location. The dashboard also lets you visualize the trajectory of changes over time. By default, the change history is stored for 3 months.

For higher frequency monitoring and an unlimited number of Twitter pages to track, Visualping offers several affordable freemium plans to choose from.

How to Be Notified When Someone Posts on Twitter

Tutorial

Setting up your first monitor with Visualping is easy. When setting it up, you’re also registering your account.

Start on Visualping's homepage. To monitor Twitter profiles, copy and paste the URL of the page into the search field.

Click Go, and then customize your monitor: the part of the Twitter page you want checked, how often you want Visualping to check it, and the type of monitoring (visual or text).

Visual compare is the best monitoring mode for Twitter profiles, because it lets you monitor visual page changes – the web page pixels. The email alerts you’ll receive will include the screenshot, with the changes highlighted in red.

Next, enter the email address you want Visualping to send the email alerts to.

Lastly, Visualping will send you an email, prompting you to create a password to complete setting up your monitor and registering your account.

And that’s it: your Twitter monitoring tool is ready to go.

Twitter Monitoring Tool: Conclusion

To keep tabs on when someone posts on Twitter, the “follow” button isn’t enough; it still requires you to manually look up the profile to check for updates, or to sift through your busy Home feed.

For a Twitter monitoring tool that notifies you of changes to someone’s profile, use Visualping.

Happy Twitter monitoring!