Twitter Lists for Business Explained

I got a lot of feedback on my recent post on twitter lists. Not all people have this feature and its understandable that people may be confused. In this post, I’ll answer some of the common questions I was asked.

What is Twitter Lists?

This is still in beta stage, which means that many readers may not be able to see it. I’ve included two images that show the major changes.

The below image shows my regular sidebar as well as the page that displays when I click the text ‘Listed.’

There are two differences in the sidebar. You can see the lists you are following under your favourites. I’m only following two lists currently, but you can see more when you click View all. When you click that, you are taken to a screen that shows the lists you are following and the lists following you. You can also see the person that created that list and the amount of followers that list has.

The next image shows what you see when you click on a specific list.

This takes you to a page featuring the tweets by the people on the list. You are able to see who the list was created by and have the option to follow it. You can also block the list owner and check out other lists they have created.

How are these features useful?

Before I go into details, I’ll discuss how these basic features are useful:

• You can ascertain how ‘popular’ someone is by the amount of times they are featured in the list. You can see how truly useful they are by checking out the quality of the individual lists. This can prevent gaming of the twitter system
• It can easily allow you to see what is trending, just by reading the updates by a group of people.
• You don’t necessarily have to create all of these lists yourself. If someone has already discovered fabulous people, you can just follow their list. You can then follow and interact with interact with interesting people within that list.

How Do I Find Interesting People To List.

I was actually asked this recently by the lovely girls at Caroline Service Apartments. They loved the idea of lists but weren’t part of the beta and was wondering how could they find interesting people to add to lists. I was specifically asked about useful tools.

I’m often complimented about how I network on twitter but I don’t use any of the search and follow applications. I just find a core group of interesting people and follow more people as I discover them within a community. This is a very simple version of what I do:

• I follow people that seem interesting and that I want to get to know better
• I see who they interact with and, if interested, start connecting with them
• I see what names are frequently mentioned in that community. These are the influencers/sneezers
• I start to know most of the people in the community and usually follow anyone who enters.
• The rest is mostly based on referrals. People recommend that others connect with me, or vice versa, because we can help each other.

Now, I’ve been on twitter for over a year and it takes up time to do this. You can reduce the amount of time needed by using some of the applications on the twitter fan wiki

How The Twitter Fan Wiki Can Help With Your Lists

On the page, they feature a number of applications that can improve your twitter experience. It is also worth noting that they’ll soon release the API for this feature so there may be some tools developed to specifically help.

They have organized the information into groups. These are the groups I thought would be relevant to those creating lists:

• GeoSocial/Local: These can help you find local people that you may want to interact with
• Groups/organizations: How to find many people according to certain selected variables
• Search Engines: A better way of finding people according to your business goals.
• Trends: Allows you to know what information is hot, so you can see if any people in your lists are talking about it

There are also travel applications which may help Caroline Service Apartments.

You can use these tools to cut down the amount of time it takes to find the interesting people, but it can be hard work creating the lists. I recommend that you follow the lists that other people have created for certain niches and locations and then create certain lists (private or public) for people that fit outside of those categories.

What do I do once they are on a list?

You don’t have to do anything – its like following. However it is a waste of time researching this feature if you have no intentions of connecting with people within the lists. Taking action on this is worthless unless you genuinely want to connect and support your community.

Twitter lists can give you a reason to make the initial connection:

• Explain why you added them to a list and offer to help. Ask if they’d recommend anyone to add to your list
• Thank someone for creating a really useful list. You can network additionally by mentioning specific people you found from that list
• Thank people for adding to a particular good list. If you do this via DM, people will know that you are thanking them because you genuinely appreciate it rather than seeking attention.

Over to you

I understand that lists are a bit confusing. Let me know what questions you still have about them and I’ll answer them either on twitter or in future posts. You can also contact Sam and she’ll help you utilize twitter lists as part of your social media strategy.

Tagged as: business, Social Media, twitter lists