6 Tips for Useful Twitter Lists

I love the Twitter lists, but in all honesty, I’m fickle when it comes to using them. When I do use them, I remember why I love them so much. They’re a boost to the daily marketing tasks that make my business thrive. But if I’m not using them, or they’re just getting cluttered with useless information, they aren’t very helpful to me, are they?

The trick to Twitter lists is in using them regularly and having the right information in your lists. Tweet this However, things change fairly quickly on Twitter. Some of the Twitter accounts I have listed have undergone recent makeovers, and they aren’t as useful to me any more. Maybe I don’t need that trend or keyword monitored any longer. Maybe I need to spend some time culling my Twitter lists for more timely information. Maybe my lists get stale, and that’s why I lose interest in them. Regularly adding new people to my lists and keeping them useful is the secret to reinvigorating Twitter lists as well as my own success with them.

So let’s take a look at how you can spruce up your Twitter lists, both in terms of creating them and keeping them from clutter.

Creating Meaningful Twitter Lists

There are many ways to create, and keep, valuable Twitter lists, but here are a few quick ways to get started.

Create a Local List: Using the Advanced Search Twitter feature, locate other Twitter users in your geographic area by entering your city in the Places field. No other data is needed. Enter your city, click Search, and look for “Accounts” at the top of the search results. This list may not be complete, but it’s a good start. Look through the Profiles you see there and when you see accounts you want to add to a list, click on the gear icon near their Follow button and select “Add or remove from lists…” (Note: You can also choose to Follow their account but Following them and adding them to a list are two different actions!)
Create a Keyword List: Another way to use the Advanced Search feature is to create lists in the same way as outlined above but instead of entering a geographic filter to your search, you can use keywords or hashtags to create meaningful lists that matter to trends in your industry. This is a great way to watch what others are talking about, too!
Create a Favorites List: Some Twitter users just “speak your language.” These are the tweets for which you have given a Favorite, now called “Like”. These folks inspire you, motivate you, inform you, and give you food for thought when you take the time on Twitter to just see what’s out there. A quick way to create this Favorites list is to set up an automated process for capturing these Likes into a list. Using a tool like IFTTT (If This Then That) you can generate new members to one of your lists just by giving others a Like. (IFTTT has many automation rules to choose from, called Recipes, or you can create your own!)
Create a Reminder: Whether you set up an appointment on your Google Calendar using the email reminder feature, or have IFTTT send you a text message, one of their many automated rules you can choose, the next step towards valuable Twitter lists is to use them regularly. Going one step further, I recommend that 3-4 times per year you should review each of the members on your Twitter lists to make sure that they’re still bringing value to that list. If you’re using your lists regularly, you will already know if the right people are on your lists, but setting up a review reminder of some sort is a good proactive measure to take. It will also remind you to use your lists if you have gotten a little lazy with them.
Review Member Of List: When others add you to a Twitter list, your profile will display that under Lists > Member of. (You may also want to get email notifications of this which you can add in your Twitter settings.) On a regular basis, go through the “Member of” lists on which you appear and look for other Twitter users to add to your curated lists. You may even want to follow those lists that you find there. This is a great way to see who else is getting some Twitter love, and from there, dive in to see what you can learn from them, too.
Remember This: When you create a Twitter list, remember that there is an option to have your list be Public or Private. Public lists can be seen by others and followed by others. Private lists are for your eyes only. There are definite reasons that my private lists are very valuable to me. They’re actually some of the first lists I check. However, I don’t want all of my lists to be private because I miss out on the two-way street of Twitter marketing. So, use the private function when it seems appropriate for your business, and keep the others public for the interactive nature of Twitter.