Use lists to unclutter your Twitter stream

When each day brings hundreds of e-mails and sometimes thousands of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and RSS updates, keeping up-to-date with it all can seem overwhelming. But you can’t really unplug from any of it without missing something important… or can you?

My resolution for summer is to unclutter my digital life so I can focus on the people and things that are most important to me, and I’m turning to lists to help manage the time I spend on Twitter.

Lists are an under-used Twitter feature that let you organize the users you follow and focus on their tweets. The easiest way to create a list is to click New List on your Twitter home page. After that, you can add users to your list from most places profiles are listed. When you click on a list name on your Twitter home page, you’ll only see tweets from the people on the list. No noise. No spam. Just the people whose tweets you want to read.

Here are a few simple list ideas:

• Focus on your favorite people. Add all your favorite people to a list so you can read their tweets without being distracted by all the rest of the noise in your Twitter stream. PRSA Colorado has several great lists to follow: members, Colorado agencies and Colorado media.
• Show off your work. Make a list of all your clients or employees and tell the world about it. You can follow another user’s list, and you can make your lists public so they can be followed by others. Listorious is a great way to promote your Twitter lists, or you can make
• Keep tabs on your competitors without letting them know it. You don’t have to follow someone to add them to a list, so you can keep an eye on what they tweet without letting them know you follow them.

It’s never too late to get rid of digital clutter and focus on the updates that matter most.