Twitter lists are here and everyone’s talkin’ about ‘em, and figuring out how to use ‘em. The folks over at twitter are putting the finishing touches on lists and giving access to a lot more people.
You can create two types of lists: Public and Private. I’ll explain both and offer ways to use them.
1. Public Lists
To get started using twitter lists, make sure you have the ability to create lists. You’ll know you can create lists if you see the following screen when you login to twitter’s home page. You’ll also see a New list link on the right side of the page.
Click image for larger view
Click Create a new list and name it whatever you want (25 characters maximum). Start adding people you follow or people who follow you, or anyone else you find on twitter. You don’t have to follow someone on twitter to add them to a list. Likewise, they don’t have to be following you to add them to a list.
People and Categories
One way to start using lists is to place people in categories that are meaningful to you. So, as suggested by the screen shot above, put family members in a family list, co-workers in a co-workers list, etc. Pretty straight forward.
Feel free to be creative with your lists. You don’t have to try and label people how they want to be labeled. If Johnny wants to be known as an SEO expert and Suzy wants to be know as a Social Media expert, you don’t have to create lists just for those categories of people.
So if you want to put a bunch of bloggers who blog about blogging, seo and social media experts into one list called “incredible-people”, go ahead. You can put one person in multiple lists. So if you want to put Johnny in your “incredible-people” list and your “seo” list, go ahead.
Excluding People
List can be exclusionary. Someone might think they should be in that “TopTweeples” list on that “Big Popular Website”. I say, twitter is already exclusinoary. You follow someone you hope will follow you and they don’t. Oh well.
Reputation Management
How would you like to show up on a list called stupid-people, or something worse? Not too cool. What to do? You can block the person who put you on that list and you’ll be removed from the list. Voila!!
Time will tell how reputation management issues play out.
2. Private Lists
Private lists are just like public lists except you’re the only one who can view the list. Not only that, the people you put on private lists won’t even know they’re on them.
If you think someone might block you for whatever reason, don’t follow them, put them on a private list. Because if they block you after the fact, you won’t be able to follow them or put them on a list.
However, if someone has blocked you and you still want to follow their tweets, there is a way. Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send you that tip.
Want another tip on using twitter lists? Again, if you subscribe to my newsletter, I’ll send you one more tip that I’m using to keep up with my favorite lists.
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