http://tinyurl.com/6pkucx

I’m amazed at how folks like Gary are able to respond to upwards of 1000 emails a day. I mean, even if I assumed a waking day of 18 hours (say, 6 a.m. to midnight = 64,800 seconds) and trying to stay at least 70% productive on other non-email related tasks, that’d mean he’s READING *and* REPLYING to each of the 1000 daily e-mails at the rate of about 19 seconds each. He’s got my admiration. I can’t imagine doing that kind of volume without some kind of assistant.

For my part, I think my efforts to manage the data flow will forever be a work in progress. Even with my small following, it’s becoming a challenge and I know I don’t have the science down yet.

Certainly technology helps. Feed readers, Tweetdeck, iPhone apps, and such have definitely been a plus. But, even with that, I’ve found myself recently having to limit my ‘follows’ in various ways. For example, I’ve recently begun UNfollowing Tweeps who take a lot of the public stream tweeting one-on-one with other Tweeps. (Sorta makes me feel less connected with that person when that happens inordinately much.) Another approach is to scrutinize the bios and tweet history of new followers a little more closely before I follow back.

The jury’s still out on whether or not these are good practices. Because, on another level, as Gary says, “it’s all important.”

So, for now, I’ll continue to tweet and tweak.

@melaclaro

Periodically I check out specific followers to see what they’re saying and what others are saying about them. It’s not the same as seeing every conversation, but it’s manageable.

One downside is that sometimes I forget about folks until they pop into my updates, replies or DM’s.

What am I missing? I often wonder how people like Liz Strauss and Chris Brogan (and others with huge numbers of followers) manage to do this so well? Clearly, they’re masters. And I’ve got a lot to learn.