You are following 100+ members on twitter?
Learn how to read tweets from persons you care most.

Twitter is a great way to stay up to date and receive always the latest news. Social means engaging and there is still the twitter etiquette suggesting to follow your followers back.
Some twitter users are following 50 users and some are following 60K users.

Problem

I’m currently following a small number of users but I got some heavy twitter users in my list which are posting more than 8 times a day. Now count in all the other users and you are busy for some hours reading all those tweets.
Again: I’m following only 100+ members, imagine the twitter screen of someone who is following 60k users.

But I’m always looking for content of some specific persons which I call my own “A-List” or “TermToEnterHere-List”. Tweets of those persons are quickly lost within the flood of status updates each single minute.

I showed you how to filter your search based on keywords, now I would like to show you how to filter it by your “A-List”.
I find it quite helpful to keep up with my closer friends and I don’t want to miss any of their tweets. But how to keep on track without checking each single profile?

Solution

As you already know, I highly recommend HootSuite as your Social Media Dashboard. It has so many great features and is available for free and paid – if you need to manage a lot of social profiles.

Now let me show you how to use HootSuite to filter your stream of users you are following.

First I would suggest to create a new tab, call it whatever works for you.
Next step is creating a new Stream, just click on “Add Stream”.
What we are doing here is selecting “Twitter” as the Social Network and choose the tab “Search”.

Within the search field we need to write down our search query which looks like the following:

from:chrisbrogan

[singlepic id=11 w=320 h=240 float=none]

This stream would show all tweets by Chris Brogan.

[singlepic id=12 w=320 h=240 float=none]

No worries, we don’t need to create a new stream for each users, there is a better way. Take use of the twitter operator “OR” and enter another username, it should look like this one:

from:chrisbrogan OR from:ambermac

[singlepic id=10 w=320 h=240 float=none]

Now the stream is showing all tweets by Chris Brogan and Amber Mac in their chronicle order.

[singlepic id=9 w=320 h=240 float=none]

Currently I don’t know how many usernames you are able to search for with this method but you always have the chance to create a new stream. Create streams based on topics or friend circles or whatever you want.

Note

This method allows you to read tweets of users you are not following or having them listed.
Curious about the twitter activity of your competitors but don’t want to follow or list them? Now you know how to monitor them.

Which ways do you use to filter your stream from specific users?