If you’ve started using Twitter or Facebook recently, you may notice your email inbox filling up too. There are a few things you can do to reduce that:
1. Limit the email notifications you receive.
Twitter and Facebook default to sending you an email every time any event occurs in their systems. Examples include new followers, direct messages, comments, posts on your wall, etc. If you’d like, you can turn most of these off. In Twitter, you can do this by going to Settings, Notices. You can uncheck the boxes to receive emails. In Facebook, you can go to the Settings menu, then Notifications and pick from the various options available. If you don’t want to turn these off completely, you can at least filter the emails so that they skip the Inbox and go straight to email folders that you can check later.
2. Use groups.
As your list of friends and followers continues to grow, it can be tough to keep up with these relationships. One way to do this is by grouping your contacts. In Facebook, you can start this under your Friends menu. You’ll see an option to Create a New List. (For example, you could create a list for high school friends and assign all of those type contacts to that list.) For Twitter, you’ll need to use another service to do this. I’ll profile your options in the paragraph below. Once you’ve set these up, you can review the postings from each group separately, taking advantage of having them sorted by relevance.
3. Use software tools for Twitter.
There are literally hundreds of tools available to complement Twitter, and we’ve tested many of them. For day-to-day interaction on Twitter, we use HootSuite when a web-based interface is preferred. It allows you to set up multiple accounts, shorten urls, and set up groups – all without installing any software on your computer. If you prefer to use installed software, Tweetdeck and Seesmic are the favorites. Both of these are also adding Facebook interaction as well, and are well worth a look if you use the same computer most of the time. You can also use applications for your mobile phone. One favorite is Twittelator, and other enjoy Tweetie and Twitterberry. These allow you to see @replies and direct messages easily, search, and reply or retweet with fewer keystrokes.