Benefits of using Twitter Lists

Updated 2012 because Twitter changed things!

So you've gone a bit overboard and you are now following over 300 people, resulting in six tweets per minute - and maybe they're not always interesting all of the time.

The simplest split is to separate 'obligatory' follows from the truly interesting ones. Alternatively, you might want to follow competitors discretely. Everyone will have different ways of using lists.

One of the benefits of using lists is that you can be seen to be following but if you find the majority of tweets boring or irrelevant, just pop the interesting ones into a list and keep those tweets displayed in your browser, ignoring the others most of the time.

Conversely, private lists are useful for following accounts anonymously. You can add to a private list without publicly following.

Here's what to do to set up and populate lists:

• from the cog drop-down menu, click on the Lists then Create List, give it a name, description if you want and choose private or public.
• go to Following in the left menu panel, use the drop-down menu associated with each person to Add or Remove from Lists, click the list(s) and close the panel
• you can do the same for your Followers, even if you are not following them, and this also applies when you browse through other Twitter users, for example with the search or 'who to follow' features.
• remember to place new Follows into lists.

To use, from the cog drop-down menu, click on Lists and select the list you want to see tweets for.

If you are actively listing, say, SME support, small business owners may start following your list (as will small business consultants, of course).

You can also follow other peoples' public lists. This gives you the benefits while other people do all the work! For example, if you want to follow tweets from local restaurants and someone else is actively doing so, just follow their list.

Follow The BPc (UK) on Twitter.