If you're like most people, trying to make sense of Twitter can feel
like trying to hear everyone's conversations in the middle of a crowded
restaurant.
With 100 million active users and as many as 1 billion tweets posted
every five days, Twitter can easily become a lot of meaningless noise.
The amount
of chatter is enough to drive someone away from the platform, if not
insane.
What can you do? How can you make sense of your endless tweet stream? Here are some practical tips:
1. Follow only relevant users.
The simplest way to make your Twitter stream more useful is to be
selective about the users you follow. What interests you or your
company? What kind
of updates do you want to see? Be strategic about which accounts enter
your feed. Only pick those who post content you find useful and
interesting.
Not only will this make it easier to stay up-to-date, but it will make
you look more interesting to others. On Twitter there's a common
perception that
the follower/following ratio shows how influential you are.
2. Use lists.
With Twitter's built-in lists feature you can organize users into
easily-accessible groups, whether you follow them individually or not.
When you break
down Twitter this way, it's like you have multiple streams you can
access from one location. To catch the chatter of one particular group,
simply click
on that stream.
Plus, you can also follow the lists of other users to check in on certain groups whenever you like.
To set up a list, navigate to your lists page. From your profile, click
the lists tab on the left. Click the "create list" button at the right.
Then,
add desired users to that list from their profile pages.
3. Implement tools.
If you want to follow a lot of people, take advantage of one of the many
helpful third-party apps that make it easier to keep track of many
users.
When you link your account with ManageFlitter,
for example, you can see valuable stats on people you
follow, such as who follows you back, is inactive, tweets a lot, hardly
ever tweets, etc. This will help you pare down your following list for
greater
relevancy. MG Siegler of TechCrunch says ManageFlitter helped him "eliminate over 200
people I was following that I determined I shouldn't be."
Other valuable tools for managing your Twitter stream include dashboards like Seesmic, TweetDeck and Hootsuite; Twitoria to identify inactive friends; or Tweepi to make sense of your
followers.
4. Stay updated on your mobile device.
Nowadays, it's actually more common to use your phone to check Twitter than not—as many as 55 percent of people grab updates while on the go.
Whether you check in from Twitter's mobile site or through one of the
many Twitter-centric smartphone apps, your mobile device gives you more
ways to
quickly check in on your stream and/or lists.
"Twitter is much more fun if you connect it to your cell phone," says Michael Hyatt. "By doing so, you can receive updates from those you are
following (or just some of them) as well as send your own updates."
What are your favorite ways to organize and better understand your Twitter feed?
Shanna Mallon
is a writer for Straight North, an Internet marketing Chicago
company that provides SEO, Web development and other online marketing
services. Shanna writes for B2B clients in various industries, from
providers
of an
environmental monitoring solution
to makers of
fire retardant clothing.
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