I love Twitter. It is an absolutely fantastic service. However, once you get into using the service, it is easy to become overwhelmed with the amount of information coming to you. This is compounded if you pump the messages of all those you are following to your mobile phone. And if you don’t push the messages to your phone, you will often miss out on much of the value that the near real-time Tweets gives you. So, what do you do?
After asking a lot of Twitter black belts, I have come up with a simple setup that works great for me.:
- “Follow” everyone that you are remotely interested in hearing from. The more the merrier.
- Turn “Notifications” on for the 8-10 (or so) people that you really care about. Personally, I receive notifications for several close friends that live in my area since I may want to join them if they Tweet about being at a location near me.
- Use Twitter’s “Track” feature. I was missing this one for a while and it has really helped me out since adding it. By submitting a “track topic” message to Twitter, you will receive all notifications for the topic you enter even if you are not following the person that sends the message. This is great for following mentions of your business or other areas of interest, but there is an even better use. If you track your Twitter username (e.g. “track toddsampson” for me) you will get notifications for all messages that mention @username. You will never miss a message that is to or about you!
- Always send notifications to your mobile phone. Yes, it is easy to switch to IM — and this may be preferable on occasion — but you have to remember to switch back to the mobile before leaving the computer. After forgetting too many times, I now just stick with the phone. (Note: It would be great if Twitter would check to see if you are Away/Offline on IM and automatically re-route to the mobile; but the service isn’t there yet.)
When you are at your computer, you can follow the full flow of conversations — as time permits. When you are away, you are still in the loop. It’s the best of both worlds.
So, what’s your best Twitter tip?
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