You know you need Twitter for your business. You’re following people who seem important and helpful. You’re following locals who might shop at your business. You’re following your cousin/ex-boyfriend/neighbor.
And then allofasudden your Twitter stream is full to over-flowing and you’re wasting time digging through tweets that are really just photos of lattes.
Enough. Let’s use Twitter lists to make your Twitter life a million times easier.
(P.S. You can follow me on Twitter here)
1. Figure out what your goals are and follow accordingly
I’d like to teach a class about internet awesome-ry at a local liberal arts university. So, I researched the instructors and department heads of every single marketing, communication, and PR class in the Twin Cities, found their Twitter accounts, and followed them.
You can do the same! Want to write for magazines? Follow all the writers and editors of the magazines you’d like to pitch. Want to collaborate with fashion bloggers who wear a lot of thrifted clothing? Find ’em and follow ’em.
2. Make a Twitter list for each goal
Magazine editors go in one list. Travel writers another list. Fashion bloggers another list. Potential clients? Yup, separate list. If you don’t want people to know that you’re stalking for a specific purpose, make your lists private.
3. Each day, spend 10-20 minutes networking with a different list
Maybe on Monday you respond to and retweet fashion bloggers. Tuesday = editors. Wednesday = travel writers. Make sure that your tweets are genuine, helpful, and (preferably) funny.
4. Pitch them!
After you’ve been doing this for a month or two, go ahead and pitch them! By now they’ll hopefully recognize your name and URL because you’re Twitter buddies. So when you show up in their inbox offering a guest post or a press release, they’ll be all “Oh, hello! It’s my old friend So-and-so! I surely want to help her because she’s a good friend with whom I have an established relationship! Huzzah!”
See? Easy peasy. Do you have any awesome Twitter tricks to share?
photo by Garrett Heath // cc
Great suggestion! I feel like Twitter lists are one of those things that everybody forgets about but are insanely useful and powerful tool to make sure you’re not missing the tweets of the people that you care about making connections with the most.
Brill-iant.
Awesome idea! I stopped halfway through the article to go categorize my twitter feed.. because I had stopped looking at it lately - it was such a mess. Now I know who I follow & can actually do something with my Twitter account again. Great tip!
Love this idea. I have an “Uplifting people” list for when I get sick of all the negativity on my feed, but I love the idea of having a list of people for easier networking.
This tip is golden! I made lists after our last conversation, and it’s provided more structure and efficiency to my time on Twitter.
I think you have saved Twitter for me, and I’m going to give this an honest try. Thanks for this bit of wisdom. x
Thanks, guys! I’m so glad you’ve found it useful!
Awesome! Thank you! Twitter overwhelms me, so it’s good to get some tips. 😉
My jaw dropped while reading this article. Twitter lists are so simple and something I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT. I had previously used Twitter lists all the time! Thank you so much for this. What a huge help!
A super useful tip list I can use for both my day job and building my freelancing network. Thank you!!
Can you use lists in Hootsuite? I’m managing so many accounts that Hootsuite is a MUST.
I’m fairly sure you can, but I’m not positive. Does anybody weigh in on this one?
YES! I’ve just figured out how to do this and it’s SO HELPFUL. I can just scroll down the list, see who just posted what on their own site, go check it out, and leave some comments. Helps me to remember both to read a few other blogs every day and to connect with the people that are doing what I want to be doing. And how inspirational is that?! Anyway, go to “add a stream”, and from the menu there, just click on “lists” and add the ones you think are important! Good stuff!
Rae, you are my hero!
Also! You can tweet your lists to promote them. Wittily inquire among your followers if they’re on it. If not, they may ask to be added.
Ohhhh! Clever!
Do you ever feel weird that you’re interacting with people in such a deliberate way? Twitter seems so real time for me that I always feel awkward responding to people hours/days after they said something or planning it out in any way (like scheduled tweets).
Valid question, Kat!
I don’t really respond to tweets that are more than 2 hours old, but I’ll follow their links and leave comments on the post.
I understand what you mean about interacting with people in a deliberate way, but doing it this way has made my social media life waaaaay more manageable. I just don’t have the time to be on Twitter all day doing things in ‘real time’
Thanks for sharing this Sarah! What a great idea, twitter can be so overwhelming.
As I was googling around to simplify making Twitter lists, I came upon http://twitlistmanager.com/ which allows you batch assign everyone you follow onto lists (much faster). Just wanted to share!
Gah! So helpful!
Great advice as always Sarah. Twitter lists are super useful! My only question is around what you name them because people can see (and often get notified) when you’ve added them to a list. So if you have a list called Potential Clients, doesn’t that make them feel weird? Like you’re prospecting them? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
If it’s a private list they don’t get notified! (At least, I’m 99% sure they don’t.)
Ahhh….thank you! Very helpful.
Wow, Sarah. This is awesome. I confess former ignorance to the “List” feature. This is possibly quite a revolution.
You. Rock.
1. this is amazing and i will be employing Twitter lists RIGHT NOW
2. You should totally teach a Skillshare class, Sarah! I would take it in a heartbeat!
Yay! So glad you found it helpful!
And you’re the second person to suggest that - I’d never considered it. Maybe it’s time 😉
I have lists now, i have lists!!!
Just had to say, I love this post and will use it! I am about to start a podcast, and I think this will help a lot in terms of approaching people to be on my show. Here’s hoping everyone is friendly…
Thanks again!
[…] The idea of using Twitter for “networking” (scary word) sometimes makes my stomach turn, but the lovely Sarah von Bargen makes it seem less gross and scary in her fascinating post, Using Twitter Lists for Fame & Fortune. […]
This is awesome! I only have one list- I am totally missing out. You inspired me to clean out my twitter and it’s now much more manageable. Now onto making more lists!