Recently I was listening to a podcast (Thought Row Podcast), which featured Terri Nakamura talking about harnessing the power of social media. She mentioned filtering Twitter by creating conversations with people, responding to those who reach out to her personally. It’s very similar to the way that I use Twitter. I think we all need to filter our social media accounts. If we listened or read every single message that came across our screens we’d surely go insane. So here are some of the ways that I filter what I read, not just from Twitter, but from Facebook and Instagram, too.
Twitter lists, lists, and lists
On Twitter, lists are my saviour. I’ve noticed lately that people aren’t as excited about them any more. I wonder why?! To me, they’re one of the best things about Twitter! In fact, I’ve written about this feature: Twitter Lists for the Power User. It was written and updated a few times, by the way. Of course, responding to those who mention you is another great way to filter. There are people on Twitter with whom I’ve had conversations spanning years and maybe over a decade now. So if you do nothing else, respond to your notifications and you should be in pretty good shape.
Facebook groups
On Facebook, groups are a terrific way to filter. I use just a few of them and ignore the rest. Those that my friends run, or groups where I can discuss my interests are my favorites. History, social media, and knitting are some of my interests. There are also some nifty ways to filter out what you see in your news feed. Why not check out this post from Facebook, err Meta, itself? You can also filter by type of post. For instance, I like to watch videos on Facebook, so I’ll often only watch those. Or you could filter on status updates.
Filter Instagram using hashtags or close friends
On Instagram, I usually look at what my closest friends are doing first. However, I’ve noticed that this feature doesn’t always work. So I might be filtering social media by hashtag, which also works. In my area, the hashtag I like is #SantaCruzMountains. When I’m posting for clients in San Francisco, I use #SFBay, #SF, and #SanFrancisco. There are many others, since you can have up to 30 hashtags. I’ve written about hashtags before: How to Discover a Wealth of Friends with Social Media Hashtags.
How do you filter?
If you have some other way of filtering your social media, I’d love to hear it. Probably everyone would love to hear it. It’s so exhausting to always be hit by so much stuff, isn’t it? Short of leaving the online world, there has to be a better way to make sense of it.
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