In the beginning when you just followed a couple of hundred people on Twitter, it was just easy to see their content. It was also easy to see your followers reacting to your tweet through comments, shares or retweets. The problem comes when you have several followers following you and yourself following almost the same number.

You will find that it is hard to keep up with them through interaction and engagements.This is where you need to start thinking about Twitter lists. Simply put, a Twitter list assists you to save time on Twitter and grow your followers based on your niche.

Before we go in-depth of how to create the best Twitter lists, it is imperative to provide some slight explanation on what a Twitter lists is.

 

What is a Twitter list?

Twitter list can be described as a curated list of Twitter users. To be in Twitter list you can either create your own, subscribe to a list created by other Twitter users or be added to one. When you view a list timeline, it will show you tweets from tweeps on that list. This helps to keep up with what is going on in your industry.

A Twitter lists helps you organize your conversations into sets so as to follow each activity and reduce the noise effect in your timeline. It helps you to keep track on what is going on within your niche through the conversation.

For instance, you may be a political analyst and you want to create a list of political analysts who are always ahead with the current political news. You can search for their Twitter account handles and add them to a list of ‘Political Analysts experts’.

The advantage of creating your own list is that you have a full control over whom you want in the lists; who to add. You can add as many Twitter users you want up to 5000.

 

Three Top Ways To Find The Right Lists

There are several ways of finding the right list for your Twitter account. Some of the common and top three ways include:

 

1. Twitter’s own search box

Twitter’s’ own search box is similar to Google’s advanced search. Twitter’s own advanced search tool assists you to search for tweets from a particular location, tweets from and to a particular person or tweets with positive and negative statements. You can simplify and filter your search using specific keywords, hashtags or phrases to find what you want.

For example if you want to search for comedy, the results will be shown in your timeline. Look at the above screen shot. The screenshot shows you where the search box is (1), timeline (2) and the results found (3) when using your desktop.

Twitter’s newbies can use the search box to get more details on public lists. It will be a huge task since you will be examining a lot of lists in order to find the right one in your niche.

 

2. Searching on a third party website

A third party website works the same as Twitter’s search box. It will just give you the same results. This type of search is only useful to those who want to see what is happening in their industry but will not give the real quality list you want.

 

3. Using the public lists of popular people in your industry

This is considered one of the easiest way to find a list that fits your niche. All you have to do is to find Twitter accounts of popular people in your niche, these people have curated lists that took time to build; these lists will help you find what you need; they act as a good source of information.

Whatever the niche, these popular people can be influencers or experts of a particular field you are interested in and have massive followers. They always have good content and the best advice for those who are newbies in Twitter. These type of people already have reputation and normally drive traffic to their website, sales pages, leadpages or facebook pages.

Begin doing this by looking into their Twitter accounts and see who interests you mostly. Then take a look at their lists, if they have good content and information follow them. You can also go further and see the lists created by those in the original lists. This type of search will help you find people that you might never find when using a search box or third party search.

 

How Do You Get To Know When A User Has Created A List Or Subscribed To A List?

It is easy to get to know if a user has created a list or not by checking their profile page. If they have a created one it will be seen in the right upper side below the cover picture. Click ‘List’ and you will be able to observe all the lists the user has. You might observe that the lists have different topics and interest. Therefore, before joining, explore and find those that match your interests.

For example the content factory has subscribed to Social Media and Content Marketing through Simply Compelling Media by Jorge de Hoyos and Marketing by Renee Stollery as shown in the image below.

List subscribers isn’t your tea or bread in tweetsphere. Perhaps you might feel good when everyone takes tea and bread including you. This means that because many people are subscribing to a certain list you will feel good too because you feel like you belong to something with a cause.

The more subscribers a list has, the better the opportunity to find a list well-intentioned of subscribing to yourself. Nonetheless, some lists are really small intentionally. Nonetheless, such type of lists may contains a lot of useful information and content.

Twitter List keep on changing with time. It may be useful today and tomorrow it will be worthless. Even so new useful lists emerge now and then, which you will want to be part of.

Therefore, always search from time to time to land on the perfect lists in your industry. Check your current lists frequently, to make sure you come across new trends, rising stars in the industry and to give an edge to your competitors. Checking your current lists time and again also assist you to know which list are fading, which lists are super active and which ones are inactive.

 

How To Create A Twitter Lists

If you are using your phone, follow these steps.

1. click the ‘gear’ icon which is at the top of your profile
2. Then click ‘list’
3. Then click the ‘plus’ sign, in the upper right corner

If you are using your desktop computer:

1. Just click ‘create new list’ which is found at the button right.

After you have created your list, name it- that describes your objective, give it a description if clarification is needed and let it be a private or public lists depending with your choice.

A private list is only seen by you while a public list can be seen by everyone and anyone can follow it. A private list comes in handy when you are secretly spying or following certain accounts without them knowing such as competitors list.

You can then start adding people, start small and when you get used to Twitter lists branch out bigger.

 

Example of Twitter lists that you can create

1. Client lists

 

This basically means creating a list containing your clients. It is popular among sales agent and people who own businesses or in business. You can easily locate your clients through the client list rather than looking for them in your newsfeed.

This type of lists comes in handy when you want to keep your clients close for a long time relationship. You can get to their good side by quoting, replying, Retweeting and favorite their tweet. Make your client list private.

 

2. Competitor lists

This type of list is all about competitors; what are they doing, when are the new products released, what type of product is being released, the type of content they share, their milestone…mainly it is about keeping track of what they are doing. Make your competitor list private. It not a must you follow them but you can add their Twitter handles to your list and you will get to see their tweets.

Adding your competitors to a competitors list helps you to build and grow your business. You will learn the pros and cons of your business and their business. You will have the opportunity to look at their announcements and news feed that will assist you in your research.

This list can be your ticket to winning potential customers who might be interested in your products and following you. Look who is following them and start following their followers who are worth your time and effort.

 

3. Family and friends lists

As the name suggests, this type of list includes your family and friends. You will want to know how they are doing and what they are up to.

 

4. Fans lists

There are these types of people who love your work and what you tweet about. They usually retweet, share or comment on your tweets. You can create a list of them and from time to time you can reward them for their support in the Twittersphere. Through this list you can keep up with their content, share, retweet and comment on their tweets thus building a community around you.

 

5. Local lists

This type of lists helps you to know what is going on in your local area; city, school, church, neighborhood or state.

 

6. Niche Thought Leaders lists

This is a type of list that you must have. It contains Twitter users specifically in your niche. You will be able to learn and get motivated through their Twitter updates and other shared content. If your niche is social media management, then you should have a list of social media management experts. If your niche is marketing, then you might consider having a list of the best marketing experts. If you have created such a list many people will want to be part of it too and thus ending up subscribing to it.

 

7. Resource lists

This type of list adds value to your customer or clients. If you want to learn about potential products in the market, the members in your lists tweeting about potential products in the market, resource lists will be a useful list for your customers.

 

8. Industry cohorts lists

As the name suggests, it helps you to keep track of what is happening in the industry in your niche.

 

9. Team Directory lists

It can be a list of team members who are helping you to promote your products or company or you want to keep track of the surroundings like events, promotion or conferences.

 

10. Event/ conference lists.

It may be a short term or long term list this is because you are attending a conference that happens once in a while but there are some key leads or persons you want to watch while you are at the event that is following the live Twitter stream to keep track with the latest happenings.

If you are an event organizer, you will find it helpful to create a Twitter list that comprises of the speakers, exhibitors, vendors, attendees to build relationships, increase attendance and keep the conversations going online before, during and after the event. This type of lists will assist the speakers and exhibitors to know whom they will share the platform with and the attendees will get to know whom to expect.

 

Tools That Can Help You Organize And Use Twitter Lists

Outlined below are some of the essential tools that can help you organize and use twitter lists.

 

1. Twitilist– this is a free tool. It assists you to add a lot of users to a list instead of adding one by one manually.

 

2. SocialBro– this tool has many lists functions. You can follow and unfollow, filter your list or change lists with ease thus saving you time.

 

3. Tweepi- it gives you information on members on that list to help you decide whether to follow them or not. It assists you to unfollow those who are not following you, filter out inactive or overwhelming tweeps from your list, follow those who are following you and giving you new avenues to realize Twitter users to follow.

 

4. Twitlistmanager– it is a free tool that helps you to add people to your different Twitter lists.

 

5. HootSuite and TweetDeck – they are two different tools with the same function. It is a quick easier way to watch all the activities from several lists from your desktop and engage when it makes sense.

 

Conclusion

Twitter lists are a must have as they help you keep all of your interests separate so you can focus on the main interests. They assist you in keeping your feed organized. Finding a perfect list that meets your interest can be quite daunting. However, this challenging task is worthwhile, as there are much more accrued benefits of joining or developing one.

 

You should know that;

• It is easy to follow everyone on a certain list
• A private list helps you to track anyone without them knowing you are following them on Twitter
• A Twitter list is a great way to find people in your niche without them knowing
• You can subscribe to a list, added to a list or create a list
• A public list is a list that everyone can see and anyone can follow.