Can someone share a quick Twitter tutorial?

I am resigning myself to the fact that I will need to figure out how to use my Twitter account to keep up on news.
I had been using HootSuite to access it but it always overwhelms me. The number of message flying in and the speed, I always felt like I was at a whack a mole contest or doing a typing test.

How can I get tweets that are relevant to lakeside, not have to use my cell phone but use HootSuite or a similar program online and sort through it all?

Anyone?

Thanks.

PS Explain it as if you are teaching a 4 year old please. Even 6 year olds are better at tweeting I bet.

OK -- first 3 steps

1- go to Twitter.com and register

2- once registered, go to tweetdeck.com and download that program, then you can sign in with your newly registered account

3- on the top left, you will see some Icons, click on the + and in the search box, put in CHapala and Ajicic -- those columns will appear

-- they are what is known are 'trending' topics, and if you want to post there, you put #Chapala or #Ajijic in your post -- max 140 characters

There is more but that's a start ... I'll check for questions and try to answer

OH ... You need to do Chapala and Ajijic in TWO separate steps, not both words in the box at once.

How to follow someone on Twitter

1- Hover your cursor over their Avatar -- 4 boxes will appear, click on FOLLOW

Once you 'follow someone' whatever they post will appear on your 'All Friends' timeline column

Then you can 'Re-Tweet' what they say (hover over their avatar) and that post will appear BOTH on the #column (trending) AND on your own timeline AND in the timeline of people who follow YOU.

Trending Topics:

These are the topics that are popular at any given time. In order to post there, you put a # in front of the trending word.

To add the trending topic column to your 'deck' you go to the + on top left, and put the word in the search box.

When popular though, it's almost impossible to read a Trending topic, goes too fast .. and it will be full of RT (re-tweets) so there is a lot of repeating posts. You can spot a RT because the post has RT in front of it, AND the Avatar box is split between the original poster and the poster who RT it ...


--- Trending topics can be hilarious though .. the more people you follow, the easier it is to see something that is 'trending'

-- In Tweetdeck, you can move your columns left or right with arrows at the bottom of the columns.

--

OK - I am a total amateur when it comes to Twitter and I have zero interest in becoming a member or participating with tweets. However, I do accept that there may be some viable news on this source. With this in mind, I have found that by going to Twitter Search: http://twitter.com/#!/search-home I can plug in Chapala or Ajijic. Once the Tweets window opens, I click on the "all" tab. Since my Spanish is far too basic, I can kind of pick out the informative tweets but cannot determine what they actually say. So it is time to cheat by using a translator window such as Google Translate. A bit tedious but often worth the effort.

Thank you so much MaggieL and CheenaGringo.
I will give it a try later and see how it goes.

MaggieL is tweetdeck a program like HootSuite?