Using LISTS to manage Twitter

Twitter can be a great tool for banter, relationship building, marketing and more. However it can also be a big time sink if your activity is not actively managed and focused, and return on time can be poor.

For example, your Tweet-stream can become very busy, taking up more of your time with distractions and you risk missing an important message.

You can be more focused, use your time better and see important messages if you use LISTS wisely.

Being on a list helps online reputation too. You will help  people you Follow by adding them to lists as it boosts their online reputation. And if you put out messages that others want to read as a priority then they will add you to their lists and give your reputation a lift.

You can also Follow a List someone else has created, saving you the effort of Finding and following individuals, so you can get results far quicker. See below for more on this!

With a bit of set-up and regular maintenance as part of your routine you should see more benefits and time savings from Twitter.

Here are some tips to get you started.

1. Create one or several LISTS for your Twitter account, either on  or in your desktop/dashboard application such as Hootsuite. If they’re public then think twice before creating a ‘customer’ or ‘prospect’ list.

2. Add key people you follow to a relevant list. Go through your ‘Following’ list, and as you follow new people also add then to a list where appropriate.

3. Add the LIST as a column in Hootsuite, or check it regularly in Twitter. Having created a list make use of it! Make it the first column on Hootsuite, rather than the Home Feed with everyone you’re following on it.

4. To be really smart, set-up an automatic publishing service. Try the Paper.li application to automatically create and publish a daily or weekly ‘paper’ by pulling together the top tweets from people in a list, ie. around a theme. A Tweet can be generated automatically to alert you and your followers. It’s a simple way to do Social Media Monitoring.

5. Every Friday, when you’re doing #FF (Friends Friday) and highlighting people worth following, why not add those people to your own ‘Friends’ list.

6. Save time and effort by following an existing list. Visit Listorious or other list site to see what lists are available. Choose to Follow a suitable list. Then add that list to your desktop ie. Hootsuite as a stream. This is an amazingly quick way to tap into Twitter for a topic.

7. Then for real benefits, in Listorious you can add lists you created or are listed in into their directory, or even approach curators of relevant lists and ask them to consider adding you to their list.

For more information visit the official Twitter Support page for Lists here.

Let me know how you get on via Comments below.

Mark.



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