Going green is a huge trend right now as people try to reduce their environmental footprint.  There are plenty of books and websites out there offering advice on how to green up your life. But how to weed through all the tips?  Try Twitter.

It can be a little overwhelming at first, trying to sort through the many Twitter feeds to find a feed just about green tips. But with a few tricks you can easily find suggestions for greening just about every aspect of your life. The tweets will help you connect with reliable websites and the most popular tips on the web.

The key to finding tips is knowing the right search terms to use.  Surprisingly “#greentips” produces only a limited amount of results. “#greentips” might provide a limited amount of leads, but it can provide some interesting ones, such as this one:

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   EcoseedMP 11 unusual things you can compost http://bit.ly/cCfUcw #recycle #compost #greentips #greenhome 21 May 2010 from API

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Searching for “tips going green” on the other hand, produces pages of results. Tips on everything from green vacations and green building suggestions to daily behavior or product changes.

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   TWEET_GO_GREEN Going Green in Your Kitchen: Five Useful Tips | Oh My Apartment: Going green around the home is a great way to get… http://bit.ly/9Ye6Gp 21 May 2010 from twitterfeed
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   realestatetips8 Tax Tips: Save Some Green by Going Green http://url4.eu/3dCuK 21 May 2010 from RSS2Twitter
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   PlusTrees Our Daily Green Tip: Avoid Overnight Shipping http://bit.ly/dw2S0t 25 May 2010 from twitterfeed
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   ionicgreen Take a Great Green Vacation! – Traveling can have a big impact, but it’s easy to leave lighter footsteps. http://ow.ly/17vuxu 26 May 2010 from HootSuite

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So far all the search terms used have provided general search results. This is fine if you are just looking for general ideas that you might not have thought of before, but what if you are looking for something specific?  Say you are looking for a better way to clean your home, something without all the toxic chemicals.  As with any search you want to make your search as specific as possible. Type in “green cleaning tips” gets you pages of results on general cleaning suggestions while “eco-friendly cleaning tips” provides only two pages worth of very specific results.

While it may be frustrating to search through pages of results on Twitter, often times that is the best way to find new information. Scrolling through the search results you may find information you didn’t even know you were looking for, such as eco-friendly ways to keep mosquitoes away.

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   pluslily @GazillionBubble How to get rid of Mosquitoes using a bubble machine! http://ow.ly/1PFym #greenliving #ecofriendly #green 25 May 2010 from HootSuite

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Even better is finding a Twitter feed you can follow.  You will notice when searching Twitter that the same Twitter handles come up frequently, either their post is being retweeted or they are posting frequently.   If you like what they have to say, click through to their profile, read their bio and check out their tweets. Many of the feeds are from websites such as @the_daily_green, which is connected to thedailygreen.com or @ionicgreen, which tweets links to their blog Going Green…for everyday living!

Often times though, the best tweets come from individuals who are not associated with websites, especially if you are looking for overall trends in going green or the environment. One such feed is from Clifton Weatherbee who tweets @green_living_tips.

As with any search engine, the results you find won’t be perfectly tailored to what you are looking for, at least not right away. But spend some time scrolling through the various results and you are sure to find some interesting, helpful facts and useful tips.

Tonight I had the chance to meet Rick Murray, president of Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman that specializes in digital communication and social media outreach. He says there’s a new 24-hour news cycle and media companies must adapt.

“Today news is broken on Twitter, guaranteed. Then it goes to the Web site, and then the newspaper,” he said. “You have to know this because this is where things are going.”

He stressed that companies of all kinds, especially media companies, need to be on Twitter and frequently use Twitter Search to see what people are saying about them. Some companies may have hundreds of mentions every day and it’s important they monitor their brand and interact with users. Only a human can do this job, he says, but it might just be one human to start.

He also said media companies should have a Facebook presence and they need to “master Google because Google is the world’s operating system.”

Murray said that anyone on Twitter can learn from Scott Monty (@ScottMonty), head of social media at Ford, who has helped launch Ford as the No. 1 most respected brand in social media today. Monty takes the time to interact with users, answer questions, talk about what he’s doing, and not just talk about Ford all the time. It’s been a mix that’s been quite well received.

Follow Murray on Twitter: @rickmurray.