5 Ways to Make Twitter Less Noisy

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One of the biggest criticisms about Twitter among all types of users is the noise. And it’s bound to get noisier as Twitter gets more and more popular.

The good news is that there are a number of ways available to help you control the noise, find the information that’s most important to you and ignore the rest. Here are five ideas that can help you turn down the volume on Twitter.

Use a Social Media Management Tool

Once you build up a healthy following, your Twitter stream can get crowded and noisy. It can be difficult to find the information you want, facilitate the conversations that are important to you, and maximize your use of Twitter without some sort of management tool.

There are hundreds of such tools out there, all with varying features and functions. The right social media management tool depends on your individual needs. If you are just starting to explore using a management tool, some of the most popular options include Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and SocialOomph.

Create Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists are very useful for grouping, labeling and focusing on specific accounts you want to keep tabs on in Twitter, without the noise of a regular Twitter stream. They can be very useful if you use the web-based Twitter client or even if you use a social media management tool.

You can set up your Lists right on Twitter, and there are also Twitter List apps that help you maximize your use of the functionality, including Formulists, ListAtlas and the apps listed here.

Unfollow

One easy way to cut through the Twitter noise is by unfollowing anyone you don’t want to communicate with on a regular basis. There are a number of tools to help you do this quickly and relatively easily, including Friend of Follow, Tweet Spinner and SocialToo.   Just a word of caution that mass unfollowing may cause you to lose some followers.

Use a Muting App

This is a handy way to temporarily turn down the Twitter noise from people you typically enjoy following. For example, let’s say a few of the people you follow are at a conference and are live-tweeting the event, and you just aren’t interested. You can “mute” their accounts until the event ends and they have returned to their normal tweeting. Two services that do this are Muuter and Twalala.

Run a Targeted Search

There are a lot of Twitter search apps, in addition to Twitter Search, that can help you wade through the noise and find exactly the information you want. Two targeted search apps are tweetzi, a real-time Twitter search tool, and Twippr, a twitter search engine that looks only into friends’ tweets.

What tools do you use to control the volume of Twitter noise?

Alyssa GregoryAlyssa Gregory
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Alyssa Gregory is a digital and content marketer, small business consultant, and the founder of the Small Business Bonfire — a social, educational and collaborative community for entrepreneurs.

social mediasocial media managementsocial networkingtwitter
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