Twitter Tools to Help You Manage Your Following

AIR apps are great for Twitter management. I have heard complaints that some of these don't work with Vista OS. As for AIR apps that work in Vista, I prefer TweetDeck. Once you learn all that it can do, it's awesome. You can sort people according to groups that you create yourself. You can search by keywords, filter by keywords and even filter out words, set your API and more.

There are also useful webtools such as those that put conversations in a forum-thread type format for you and archives them for longer periods of time. (Ever had someone Tweet you "I know, right? That was so funny!" and you have no clue what they're talking about so you search your timeline but it's been so long now that you can't find it? This resolves that problem.)

Twittangle lets you rate and tag your friends and filter them on a timeline. Untweeps lets you unfollow people who have not tweeted in a certain number of days. You can choose what you want to set it to.

TwtrFrnd lets you compare common followers. For example, I can see that Leanne and I both share Kathy as a follower. This can help you find new people who share your interests.

It's also important to know that not everyone I follow Tweets every day but this doesn't make them a useless follow. I have at least 20 clients on Twitter that message me when projects come up. They'll @ or DM and say "Lisa, are you available this week?" or "Have time for a rush article today? I'll pay extra."

I like to follow quotes and tips Tweeters as well and when I am looking for inspiration or a quote for an article, I go to "HealthQuotesTweeter", "ParentingQuotesTweeter" or whichever account applies and look through all their feeds for something useful to my need. Removing them would make it more difficult to find them later but I don't necessarily read and reply to every Tweet they put out daily.

You have to make a personal decision about which follows you want to keep, which are important to you, how many are too many and how you will manage them. It's a personal decision for each and every Twitter user. Hopefully these tips will make it a bit easier for you, however.

Lisa Mason is a freelance writer with a specialty in Internet content and SEO articles and the author of How to Earn a Living Writing for the Internet as well as two poetry anthologies and a how-to poetry book. She has written thousands of articles, hundreds of ebooks and thousands of website pages and related content.