Get Listed: Some How’s and Why’s for Twitter Lists

By Clemens Rettich, on March 31st, 2011

Want to get even more value out of Twitter? Use lists.

Twitter, and the various desktop clients like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, give you the ability to organize the people you follow into groups, or lists.

The ‘how’ is simple.

Click the ‘List’ button next to the ‘Follow’ or ‘Following’ button.

Click ‘Create a New List’ at the bottom of the drop-down list that appears if you don’t have any lists yet, or click one or more of the check-boxes beside lists you have already created to add the person to one (or more) of those lists.

To see your lists, click on the ‘Lists’ link just under the What’s happening? box.

Here you can see lists by you, lists you follow, and lists following you.

Two things you should know about lists: they can be made public or private, and you don’t have to be following someone to add them to a list.

So that’s the how, now how about the why?

Here are 5 reasons to use lists on Twitter.

Save time. This is the most important reason for me. Twitter has big numbers. Even an average user can have over a 1000 followers. If you only have 10 minutes to check on people that really matter in your network, how will you do that? Create lists of those people! I live on Vancouver Island and while I have clients and connections across Canada and around the world, it is those local to me that matter the most as a group. So I have a list of Vancouver Island Twitter users that I always check first.
Promote yourself. Lists get followed. So one way of promoting yourself is to put yourself on your own lists. When they get followed, you do too!
The SM law of return. Getting followed on Twitter can increase your positive engagement with someone. You think well of people who think well of you. Putting people of lists amps that up further. Adding others to lists, and getting added to them yourself, indicates a higher degree of credibility and value than regular Twitter relationships.
Share your influence. From time to time post your lists as @<username>/<listname>. Sharing lists increases your engagement with other users. They see that you are a ‘player’ because you are about more than tweeting what you had for breakfast, and because people can’t resist checking to see if their names are on your list! And if they are, reason #3 above kicks in!
Get found. That’s right, Twitter lists are searchable by search engines. Try this search in Google to see what I mean: site:twitter.com/*/yvr (or the airport code of any city).