Twitter Lists: Value for You and Value for Your Followers

November 10th, 2009 by Elizabeth Beskin | Share Blog

Twitter recently introduced a new feature simply called Twitter Lists. This new feature isn’t available to everyone –yet.  Twitter Lists are such a useful feature that I am finding that I am spending more time on the Twitter site instead of using TweetDeck.

Here’s how Twitter Lists work:

Twitter Lists enable you to segment your community (the people you follow) into categories. Your lists can be whatever you feel defines a group of who you follow.  So, with Twitter Lists, people who visit your profile can see whom you are following in an organized way.

As someone that has a lot of followers, I find the main Twitter feed very hard to navigate.  That’s why I’ve been using TweetDeck for the past year to segment the people I follow into groups.

For example, I follow “event professionals”, “photographers”, “social media folks” and I also have a list of my “top tweeters”.  Now with Twitter Lists. I don’t have to leave Twitter.com to organize my groups in that way.

The best part of this new feature, in my mind, is how Twitter Lists helps you find new followers in subjects that you care about.  If I look at someone’s profile that I admire and see they are mentioned on many lists, I know the list owner has good taste-, and I can choose to follow the same list.  It’s like a Follow Friday referral, but even better.

Here are some of the Twitter Lists titles in my profile:
•    Social Media Folks I Learn From
•    Funniest Tweeters
•    Wedding Bloggers
•    Event Professionals
You can choose to make your Twitter Lists private, but I am one that finds privacy on Twitter to be useless, since the reason you are on Twitter is to do social networking.
Some things to be aware of when starting your own Twitter Lists:

1. Be specific in choosing names for your lists so followers can quickly decide if a list would pertain to them.

2. Be patient: building a list takes time; there is not an easy way to sort your own followers. Don’t worry if your followers are not in your list immediately. And avoid words in your list like best and favorite, so not to offend.

3. Build your lists and your following by checking out the lists where you appear. If someone has included you in a list, see whom else he or she has in his or her lists.

4. Use geography to build lists to help your followers find local info (i.e. NYC Tweeps).

5. Be gracious and thank those that include you on their lists. It means that you have value to them. As with everything on Twitter, it’s nice to engage and build rapport.

6. Hashtags are not as important now. You can use a list instead of a hashtag (#) to follow an ongoing conversation.

7. Twitter Lists may make it easier for vendors, companies and potential consumers to follow and target you. For instance, in my account @AlbumBoutique, I want to reach brides so I am compiling a Twitter List of bridal bloggers. It’s a way of building my credibility as a resource for brides!

8. Twitter Lists help you easily identify what types of people a Twitter user follows. Seeing their lists in the sidebar what is important or useful and this helps with networking. When you see that you have a mutual interest and follow some of the same people it’s easier to start a conversation. Great when you are trying to join a community or connect with a new person.

9. You can see how many lists other Twitter users are on…it’s a popularity gauge. As I write this, I’m on 40 lists but @Mashable is on 8,945!  @Mashable is a great resource for all things Social Media, so it makes sense. But, it’s nice to know that since Thursday, 40 people have included me in their lists!  It is my hope that I can increase that number, because it means that people find value in my tweets.

10. Follow other tweeters’ lists. This feature allows me to look at a stream of conversations and make a decision if it is of interest to me, and moreover, it also gives me a great tool to find new followers. I am actively checking out the Twitter Lists of people who I get value from.