Reader Question: Keeping on top of Twitter

Reader (and new Twitterer) Debbie recently sent me this question:

How in the world do people stay current on twitter? I'm following some people who are also following 6,000-60,000 others. Huh? Do they only twitter all day? i don't understand how one can even spend an hour a day staying current on all that.
Any advice?

Well, of course I can't speak for how others can follow so many people (let alone WHY they do it). But I DO know it's tough enough for me to keep up with the relatively measly 399 people I'm following, so here are some of the things that help me make sense of it all.

Remember what Twitter is all about.

This is not an e-mail or IM application where you can expect to get involved in lengthy or linear conversations. People pop in and out at all times of the day or night, often posting several tweets in a row then disappearing again for several hours. (I think of it as "drive-by chatting.")

This model is good for some forms of communications, but not for others. For example, I find Facebook to be a much more useful system for keeping track of what my friends are actually doing. However, I do find Twitter better for other purposes, particularly:

Keeping up with breaking news stories where people on the scene can get info out much more quickly than other forms of communication.
Asking questions where I can take advantage of a much broader audience than I could reach any other way.
Finding links to articles/blogs/videos, etc. on the web that I would never have stumbled onto on my own. (This is probably my favourite use, because I've discovered some really cool stuff this way.)

Your list will likely be different than mine and it will probably change as you get more comfortable with the system and discover things that work/don't work for you. But don't be discouraged if you feel like you can't keep up with it all—you're not really supposed to!

Take advantage of the Search function.

If there's a particular topic that interests you, run a search on it. You may not find every related post, but with the volume of tweeting going on, I guarantee you you'll have plenty to wade through. Recently Twitter also added the capability of saving your favourite searches. A link pops up under the Update button on your search results page and, when you click it, the search terms will appear in the right-hand panel so you can access it again later.

Don't forget to check your @Replies page.

When you post something fascinating (as you often do, I'm sure), people will want to reply to you. Or they'll retweet something you posted yourself. Or maybe they'll just mention your name in a tweet—for example, if they're recommending that their followers follow you as well. In all of these cases, they may do it when you're not actively checking your timeline, so you may not see these posts when they come in. (The more people you're following, the more likely it is that any given tweet will be far down the list each time you check in again.)

Fortunately, Twitter collects all these tweets on your @[YOUR USERNAME] page, which you can link to from the right-hand panel. Unfortunately, for some reason I simply cannot understand, they refuse to provide a means to proactively inform you that new tweets have arrived there. I can't tell you how many people I know (especially Twitter newbies) who end up clicking that link by chance, only to discover there are dozens of tweets with their name in it that have piled up over days or weeks that they had no idea about. So, assuming that tweets that refer to you are of higher interest than those that don't, make sure you check that page regularly.

Create groups in TweetDeck.

Debbie mentioned she was considering installing TweetDeck, a third-party Twitter client and I will say it has been a big help for me in this regard. (For information on installing and using the app, see my earlier post, Manage Your Tweets with TweetDeck.)

In addition to automatically creating columns for your full Twitter stream, @Replies, Direct Messages, and Favorites, TweetDeck lets you add columns of your own (up to a max of ten—you can delete the default ones as well). You can create them by doing searches and using the resulting columns like the saved search option I mentioned above. An even more useful feature is the ability to create groups of people based on whatever criteria you want (e.g. "real-life" friends, common interests, etc.) and then those columns will only display the tweets that come in from those people.

For some more advanced options to help you manage your Twitter life, check out these
earlier posts:

Use a Feed Reader To Keep Up To Date with your Favorite Blogs (can also be used with Twitter feeds)
The Twitter Hash Tag: What Is It and How Do You Use It?

Thanks for the question, Debbie! I'm sure many other people have wondered the same thing and I hope the above suggestions will help you and others overcome that sense of being overwhelmed that many new Twitter users experience. (I still feel that way sometimes!)

And, of course, if anyone here has any other suggestions for how to find the Twitter gems among the noise, please let me know and I'll share them here as well.

Did this post help you? Share it with others!