Twitter is a valuable tool for businesses to gain market insight, find new customers, connect with the media, keep track of competitors, and MUCH more. However, once you start following a lot of different Twitter users, it becomes challenging to filter through the noise and connect with the people who can impact your business. There are a few easy things you can do to make the most of your time on Twitter:

1) Choose a Twitter application to organize your followers and the industry terms you want to monitor: Some of these clients include Tweetdeck, Seesmic and HootSuite. I'm partial to Hootsuite, which is what I use to monitor and maintain Sync's account and my personal account - it's a web-based client, with built-in analytics. Tweetdeck and Seesmic are desktop applications, which a lot of folks prefer. Take your pick!

2) Create groups, or lists: Twitter allows you to create public or private groups of people, or "lists." Here are a few lists you might want to consider creating; Private lists: industry media, industry bloggers + online influencers, customers, leads, competitors. Public lists: your company's employees, past/current customers who would speak positively on your behalf.

3) Set up smart searches: Naturally, your brand name and that of your competitors should be the first searches you set up. Also think about what terms people who use, or need, your services or product would use online. If your company is specific to a certain location, be sure to narrow your results by zip code radius. Twitter gives you a lot of options for narrowing searches, so browse and take advantage of them.

Now with public mentions, direct messages, a few lists and a few searches, and the stream of everyone you follow, you probably have at least eight columns created, which likely seems much more overwhelming than the simple Twitter.com homepage you started with, right? Once you adjust to this new, multiple-view skimming and prioritizing of your followers, you'll find it actually saves you time by cutting through the clutter to help you find the right people.

How does your company make the most of Twitter?