How to Harness the Power of Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists are an awesome way to sort and categorize lots of people that you follow, but did you know that they are also a very powerful tool for growing a targeted base of followers?

Let me explain.

If you follow a lot of people on Twitter, you will quickly start to realize the usefulness of Twitter Lists. After you follow around 50 people or so, your main Twitter feed starts to turn into this huge unmanageable waterfall of random stuff and it becomes nearly impossible to follow all of it.

Don’t worry, nobody expects you to follow every post. At some point, there becomes simply too much information rushing by to read everything getting posted

To remedy this, Twitter created lists, so that you can organize and categorize all these people in to smaller manageable groups of lists to follow, so you don’t miss anything important.

To create a list, simply find the list icon located on the top right of a Tweet. (See image below) When you click it, it gives you a drop down menu that lets you create a list.

You can then access your lists via the Lists area in the right sidebar of your Twitter profile

How I Use Twitter Lists

At the time I am writing this, I follow about 800 people, so I make LOTS of lists. Twitter lets you have 20 currently, and I usually have a few main ones I follow instead of my main twitter feed on my home page.

Most of my lists are private, but I have a few that are public for strategic purposes.

My Private lists are mostly for research and organization:

• I have a list just for close friends
• I have a main list called “Interesting Tweets” which is the list I follow instead of my main feed. Sort of a bulk “good stuff” list.
• I have a News List
• I have research lists to follow certain niches to get product ideas.
• I have a Marketing Guru List
• I have an interesting quotes list
• I have a products list, to follow all the products I purchase or are interested in.
• I have a Whatever List, which I use to classify anyone who follows me first and I follow them back, but are unsure if I think they are interesting enough to get on my “Interesting” list yet. If I am bored, I sometimes go to this list and browse to see if anything interesting pops up that would qualify making it to my interesting list.
• I have a Jobs list for keeping track of upcoming projects or contracts.

Uses for Public Lists

As you can see, creating private lists for following certain users are a great way to keep things organized, but why would anyone want to make their lists public?

There are two main reasons:

Followers – Public lists are a great way to share all the cool people you follow on Twitter. If you make a great list of interesting people based on a certain topic,  people will see it, follow it and better yet, follow you back. It is an excellent way to build a highly targeted follower base, because people of like minded interests have a much better way of following each other.

Reciprocity – Second, adding people to your list it is a way of forcing reciprocity. If you are familiar with Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion(Amazon Affiliate Link) you will understand the power of reciprocation. People love getting listed and are usually compelled to at least follow the list back, if not follow the person who added them, just to be nice. Yep, it’s sneaky but it works.

Here’s a trick:

If you offer a specific type of product or service, create a public list for it and add yourself. Then go out and find other people or businesses related to that topic and add them to the list as well.

They can be complimentary or even competition, either way, it groups you in with the rest for others to discover. The more lists you are on, usually the better it looks because it shows you as having more value and gravity.

Before you know it, those others you added will check out that list and follow it back. It may not happen immediately, but I have found that within about a month, my followers start compounding like crazy.

Note: Please make sure when creating lists to add people to, that these lists are positive in nature.  Nobody wants to be on the “scumbag” list for example…

Promote Your List

Just like you can promote your mailing list, you can also promote your Twitter List. Try building a public list and then post a link to it via your blog or a forum signature and watch it grow! Heck why not just tweet the link to your list and see who follows it?

For example I recently created a public list called marketing minds.  You can follow it here and if I like what you tweet about, maybe i’ll even ad you to it. Give it a try and see what happens!.

Follow my List Here: http://twitter.com/seanearleyrocks/marketing-minds

If you like these tips, be sure to Sign Up to My Mailing List via the sidebar for more great ideas and marketing insight form yours truly. I also love comments, so feel free to leave a comment let me know how this works out for you.

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