Organise and Promote your Profile with Twitter lists
Posted by Frances van den Berg on 06 Nov 2009 | Tagged as: Social Media
Twitter activated their new list feature about two weeks ago, but many people are still in the dark about how Twitter lists can enhance their social media experience and even help them promote themselves online. Sara Evans at Mashable offers you ten possible ways you can use Twitter lists and we’ll give you some of our own suggestions later on, but first let’s run you through the basics.
Getting started
If you go onto your Twitter home page, you’ll see the List option on the right sidebar, near the middle. Click on ‘New list’.
A pop up box appears and you can add your list’s name and opt to make it public or keep it private. Public lists are ideal if you want to promote your own Twitter profile with a cleverly compiled list. Private lists, on the other hand, are great for simply organising your Twitter followers, for example colleagues, family member etc. As Mashable points out, they are also perfect for creating a list of competitors and keeping tabs on them without their knowledge.
Adding people/companies onto your list
The next step is the fun part. You can start adding people onto your list by visiting their profile pages and clicking on the ‘lists’ tab. The dropdown lists all your groups so you can tick the groups you want to add the person to.
Search Engine Reputation Management and privacy on Twitter lists
At any stage, if a list becomes unnecessary or you feel it is negatively impacting on your reputation, you can delete the list. And if you are worried about being on someone else’s negative or ‘hate list’, you can simply view the creators profile and use the block function to remove yourself from the list.
Uses for Twitter lists
Organising your mass following
Instead of following various individuals at a company, why not follow the entire company list which follows all its employees? Alternatively, you can create lists of industry experts or the funniest tweeters you know and then share the list with your friends or fans.
Enhancing enjoyment
Follow celeb lists, food lists, news site lists and charity organisation lists and you can keep abreast of the latest development in your areas of interest on a wider scale. Or perhaps, you can compile your own creative list and see how it takes hold.
Promoting your partners or clients
Many companies don’t like publishing lists of their clients on Twitter but you can find creative ways of including them in a listing of your choice. You could also create lists of your industry partners or charity endeavors you support.
Twitter lists have not been around for very long but as with all things Twitter they’ve already earned mass appeal. They’re easy to use and really do streamline the Twitter process, so there’s no reason not to start adding your own original lists to the network.
For ideas on some great lists, follow @listorious on Twitter or visit their website: http://listorious.com.
