Twitter lists are a great way to help organize your tweeps into categories, or lists, that you define. Getting started with Twitter lists is easy, but how you use them every day is another story. There are probably as many ways to use them as there are people who use Twitter, but today I’m going to focus on showing you how I use lists.
I’ve broken down how I use Twitter lists into 4 sections, and I’ll go into detail with each of them below.
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Filtering people into lists:
When Twitter lists made their first appearance, I decided to use mine like an email filter. I took a look at the people I was following at the time and started setting up categories based on a few general topics or interests and grouped together everyone who was an easy fit into one or more of my new lists.
These lists allow me to view tweets based on what different people tweet about, generally speaking. For local tweeps talking about local events I check out my NW Tweeps 01 list. If I’m looking to join a conversation regarding development, design, or blogging I go to my Dev Design Blog list. You get the idea.
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Finding new & interesting people to follow:
I used to follow a bunch of other people’s Twitter lists, but in the end it didn’t work out for me. I found it difficult to sort through all of the different tweets on all of the different lists and make any sense of things as they were. There were too many of one kind of tweet and not enough of others and that made it a big time-killer. My solution? Use other people’s lists as a starting point to find new people to follow instead of following their entire set of lists.
Now when I’m looking at someone else’s list I look for who the most active tweeters are, see if they look like someone I might be interested in following based on my very exacting criteria (/sarcasm), and then follow them if they do. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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Creating secret societies known only by me:
I’m a nice guy. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But if I’m being honest… I have a favorites list. There are people whose tweets have a higher priority than others do for me, personally, and it’s the one list that goes beyond topics or interests like the other lists because it’s filled with personal friends, influential tweeters, and the like.
Creating a private Twitter list allows you to keep your cards close to your chest and still be in the game. Whether you’re looking to keep your close friends behind the door like I use it, peruse Santa’s list of naughty girls (or boys if you prefer) without your co-workers seeing it, or even if you just want to follow the whole “… and keep your enemies closer…” maxim, private lists are the way to go.
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Read but don’t necessarily follow:
Sometimes I find that I don’t want to follow someone anymore, for various reasons; but I also don’t want to unfollow and forget about them either. Or maybe I’ve never followed a particular tweeter at all, but I want to keep tabs on what they’re tweeting because they look like they might be interesting but I’m not 100% sure. Either way, their addition to one of my Twitter lists is essentially a reminder service for me. One list where I do this a lot is my Movies Comedy Music Etc. list.
There are a lot of celebrity accounts on that list, as well as improv groups, theaters, etc., and for the most part I don’t need (or want) to catch up with all of them every day. In that case I can use the list to drop by whenever it’s convenient for me and see what the latest news is for each of them.
And there we go, my personal Twitter list usage guide. If you’ve found any of this interesting or you have any questions regarding something specific, feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you ASAP.
