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
This stream would show all tweets by Chris Brogan.
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
Now the stream is showing all tweets by Chris Brogan and Amber Mac in their chronicle order.
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?
Hello Nick,
I think the “List” function is probably the best way to group twitter users and content per field of interest. For example, I have created various lists: social media expertes, hotels, marketing, ski, cruise, etc. That way, using Hootsuite as you do, you can follow streams based on these lists, so it makes it easier to sort out content.
Of course, the problem comes back if you start putting everybody in lists, thus I try to be more selective when putting a twitter user in a list, since I know adding more and more will clutter the stream…
Cheers,
Frederic
Hi Frederic,
Thanks for stopping by!
You have made a valid point, lists are great! But how do you handle your hotel list with maybe 60+ hotels if you want to make sure to follow up 4 hotels each day? 😉
Lists are great but as far as I know it’s limited to 20 lists per account. So let me group my closer friends into one list. I think I will be getting some DM’s complaining that I haven’t added that person as well to my closer friends lists…
I could make the list private and unfollow the members but this would result in a bad ratio, if you are a person looking out for this. I know some people still keep on the twitter etiquette which says you should follow everyone back.Â
So if you have  a follower base of 500 but following only 15 as you have listed the other 485 members, it will decrease your ratio as your visitor doesn’t know that you have listed all the others.
I’m using the keyword method for following new users. I keep them on the radar and decide later if I’m going to follow them or list them. I’m not a huge fan of the follow and unfollow game 😉
Thanks for your comment Frederic!
Cheers
Nick