Twitter lists are one of the lesser known, yet invaluable, tools provided by Twitter to help you manage the information you’re viewing in your newsfeed. Managed properly, Twitter lists can help you find the content you’re looking for faster, interact with your ideal clients easier and monitor your competition in less time!

How to Set Up a Twitter List

If you haven’t used this feature before setting up a list is easy-peasy! Simply visit the profile of someone you’d like to add to a list, let’s say Anita Kirkbride.

Once on the profile, click on the gear to reveal the drop down menu, and choose Add or remove from list.

In here you’ll either be given the option to create a new list, or to add them to an already existing list.

When you set up a Twitter list for the first time, you can choose whether it is public or private. It’s really up to you whether your lists are public or private.

Ways to Use Twitter Lists

1. Create private lists for clients, competitors and prospects to easily keep tabs on what’s happening!
2. Curate a list for industry news to keep you up to date in developments in your industry.
3. Curate a list for your own content sharing (which may be very different from the industry news list).
4. Create lists for hobbies or non-business related lists. You can actually put accounts in a list without even following them, so you can have “hobby lists” housed in your business account privately if you want.
5. Create lists as a resource for others. My own Halifax Businesses List is a good resource if you’re trying to find other active tweeters from Halifax, Nova Scotia.
6. Create a “Main List” of the most important, top priority accounts from which you want to see as many tweets as possible. My list includes family, friends, some industry accounts, my mentors in the field, some local businesses. This is the first list I look at when I open my computer every morning. I keep this list private so people don’t get offended they’re NOT listed in it 😉
7. Subscribe to lists by others. Subscribing to a list that someone else has curated is like creating a bookmark in your own Twitter so you can always find that list when you want to. In your own Lists, you’ll see the option of “Subscribed to” and you can quickly go check out someone’s list of conference attendees, award winners, or best tweeters.
8. Look at List Members to find other like-minded people to follow. When you find a list that works for you, you can quickly and easily follow the members by looking at the members tab (it will automatically open on the tweets tab). Be careful how many you follow, however, as Twitter may suspend you as a spammer if you try to follow too many accounts to quickly. Subscribe to large lists and come back over a few days to follow more people.
9. Use to promote sponsors or speakers of an event. You can easily tweet out the link to any list, so this can be an added bonus to recognizing your event sponsors and speakers. It also makes it very easy for you to find and share content from these accounts in the run up to your event! Besides, everyone likes to be added to a list!
10. Follow accounts without them knowing, or so the account isn’t associated with yours. This must be a private list to be completely unnoticed. As mentioned above, you do not have to first follow an account to add it to a list. This is one way to follow competitors without them knowing if your industry is secretive like that.

BONUS Twitter List MAGICAL Idea

If you are attending a conference or event and want to connect with as many participants as possible, create a list for that event and add everyone who tweets with the event’s official hashtag to your list. You can set this up to happen automagically through IFTTT.com. When the event is over, or you have a bit of downtime in the evenings, you can quickly scan the list for tweets and conversations to engage with, or the members list for people to follow.

For people who find the Twitter overwhelming, Twitter Lists can help you make the information being flung at you much more manageable. Want to take it to the next level? Read this article on using Hootsuite to view your Twitter lists and make it even easier!