And Then There Were Lists …

The now well recognised Twitter Lists feature is a great way to organise the people you’re following on Twitter, or find new people. In reality these lists are actually Twitter’s version of a ‘groups’ feature, offering an easy way to cluster other users on Twitter into groups allowing you to get an overarching view of what they are up to without having to filter through your vast followers list or visiting each and every profile.

Lists are not just static listings of users, rather compilations of feeds from a specified set of users that you choose. What this means is that you can create a live feeding snapshot of the tweets from your users by viewing a specific list’s page. Lists are a great way of organising the people you are following into topic based groups. Lists also have the great benefit of allowing you to include people who you are not following!

There is a whole swag of reasons for developing your own set of lists and you can make your lists public or private to accommodate your varying needs.

Below are some tips on how to utilise your lists for better Twitter business:

Follow Industry Leader Trends: Lists are a great way to follow leaders in your industry to find out what they are tweeting about, ensuring you stay at the top of your game and up to date for your clients. For example, we have created a list of our industry leading ‘look to’ tweeters on social media http://twitter.com/#/list/ISPMedia/getsocial

Create a Topic Focused Group: Create private or public lists so you can follow topics of interest, for example, ISP Media has created a public list called http://twitter.com/home#/list/ISPMedia/webwisdom which follows our favourite web wisdom providers. A topic can be anything you want, i.e. friends, co-workers, hobbies, family or employees.

Perform the Sneaky Follow: Something we love about lists is that you do not have to be following someone to include their feed in your list, which is great if someone does provide great tweets but they provide too many. By adding them to your list your main feed is not clogged and you can check in on them within your list when you want to or have time to wade through their 400 daily tweets!

Recommend your favourite Tweeps: A major reason for lists was to allow people to recommend other users to follow. By placing your favourite tweeps in a list and making it public, you are basically recommending them to anyone who is interested. People who visit can choose to follow the list or the individual Tweep!

Those of you who know me will be expecting this; become a voyeur first if you are unsure or new to lists!

Take the time to follow a few lists and watch how they work before you leap in. Then shed your baby feathers and start listing like there is no tomorrow! It is a really great way to filter the massive influx of information that you receive through Twitter!

Lists Ahoy!

Contributed by Lauren Neilson . Lauren Neilson owns and manages an Internet Service Provider called ISP Media. For over 9 years, ISP Media has been providing specialist web services including internet marketing, web design and development, as well as domain registration and hosting. Lauren specialises in email marketing, organic search engine optimisation and social media strategy. Email: lauren@ispmedia.com.au Website: http://www.ispmedia.com.au Twitter: http://twitter.com/ispmedia Blog: http://ispmedia.wordpress.com LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenneilson

Lauren Neilson has written 7 article(s) for us.

Visit http://www.ispmedia.com.au

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