The thing many people hate about twitter is the noise.  If you are just there to socialize, it may not be a big deal but twitter can be pretty useful for more serious things too.  If you want to get information about cars or software or politics its there but likely burried in a bunch of useless information.

One way to filter out the “junk” is to use one of the twitter seach tools.  Tweetdeck has one built in.  You can go to search.twitter.com for others. Its useful in the way a search engine is useful but it doesn’t always help for getting the whole conversation in real time.

Another options is to try to follow tags. I was at a conference lately where we used #PLMCONX for our tweets. This helps but I had trouble remembering to use the tag. And then there were gray areas… do I tweet that I’m getting lunch at the confererence or stick to the topic?

The traditional way is to follow the person in twitter. If they don’t talk about what you like, don’t follow them.  I’ve got a good list of CAD, industrial design, car, virtual world, sports, Huntsville, and social media experts that I follow.  You see the problem here, right?  When I reply back to one of the people in these groups, all I do is increase the noise for the rest.

So, for the people that follow me, I’m sorry I’m inserting all that noise into your twitter stream. Now, to go tell everyone I’m getting some coffee.

I’m surrounded by people just getting started or are thinking about twitter. These are people who really aren’t interested in the technology but more the utility or are just afraid of falling behind. Some are asking “Do I Really Have To Join Twitter”   ?  

So what is the minimum you can do to say you are on twitter?  First, get an account.  If you are doing it for work, you might put your company name it. Make it an easy name to remember.

Go find some people to follow, say 50 or so.  Don’t view twitter as instant messaging.  If you miss tweets, its not a big deal so that number of 50 is actually quite small (we’re going for minimal twitter use here).

How do you find people?  Try some of these ideas:

twitter search.  Type in some key words and see who looks interesting. 

search.twitter.com/

Go to WeFollow and pick a tag (I’m there under “CAD”, “VirtualWorlds”, and “SocialMedia”) 

http://wefollow.com/

Go to Twitter Grader Search.  This one will list tweeters by a “grade” and will also look at location. For example, you will find me if you search for “Huntsville”.

http://twitter.grader.com/search

You can run twitter from the web. You need to check it a couple times a day and you want this to be effortless, so you might put it on the toolbar.  Or, download one of the twitter clients or plugins or IM integrations.  We all use the interent differently so take a look at this URL and pick one that fits best into your environment: 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_twitter_clients_definitive_list.php

Now, the first few weeks, you are likely to get a lot of noise.  You need to manage the twitter stream by unfollowing those that don’t tweet things interesting or useful to you.  Some people are more focused on a subject.  Some people are like me, all over the place.  Some people tweet a lot. Some are easy maintenance. BTW, I don’t recommend following me until you get a few followers or if you do, be ready to cut me. If you are an occasional tweeter following few people, I might dominate your stream (and yes, I do tweet when I’m getting coffee).

At the same time, check out the people you don’t follow that are showing up on your stream. This will help improve your quality of tweets.  If following 50 people is not too much, increase to 100 or 500 or 1000 – you are in control.

You don’t have to tweet to use twitter.  If you want to stay off the RADAR, you can make your twitter private – then only people that you allow to follow you can see your tweets.  Note that these people can still retweet your tweets.  Never assume Twitter is private.

Having said that, much of the value of twitter is the conversation and exchange of information. You will get more value from twitter when you engage those you follow.