Did you notice that Twitter added list functionality to follow this week? I have had a few people ask me what is the purpose? So with that; here is 4 ways to use Twitter lists:
- Niche Follow- Simply put lists allow you to follow groups of people based on their niche focus. As Social Media becomes more prevalent in the business word, the ability to focus your tweets on verticals will become more necessary. That reason necessitates the need for Social Analytics. The lists are another way to organize and focus.
- Topic RSS- In a way the lists are almost an RSS aggregator of niche topics. Much like http://www.search.twitter.com allows you to pull RSS feeds of #keywords, listing allows you to focus on topics.
- Who to Follow? – This is an easy one. If someone is being put into a lot of lists, then they are Tweeting items of value. Being added to lists is almost like getting a high rating! This will keep people honest. I know I have started looking at how many lists folks are on before following them. I have made simple criteria of 3 lists before following them.
- Business Intelligence, Competitive Intelligence & Industry Pulse- What a great opportunity to pull in all of the industry experts, stakeholders and players into one list and monitor what they are up to. A huge BI opportunity that all businesses should jump on!
Here is the SEO List we made: http://twitter.com/authoritydomain/seo
I am not sure if you know this, but Twitter lists have been available prior to this week. Here is a few to check out:
TLists: http://www.tlists.com/ (thx to @TazmanianTayTay)
TweepML: http://tweepml.org/TweepGen/createnew.aspx
Ultimately, the ability to organize your followers by niche is much needed! If you have other ideas, please share them in the comments.
There are hundreds upon hundreds of social networking sites in the web.
Social Media Marketing is All About Choosing the Right Communities for You
You want to be involved with the ones that work best for your company – sites like Facebook, MySpace, MyBlogLog, Squidoo and Twitter are all great general sites for any company, but sites like ActiveRain, Trulia or CafeMom are for target niches that may be even more effective for you in the long run.
Its important to match your company with the niche you’re targeting. You are absolutely wasting time if you’re on a social site you shouldn’t be on, and that’s why you need to know that if you’re a finance company you should a site like Tip’d (think Digg for the finance industry) and bypass Digg itself altogether.
Digg and Newsvine do better with news stories, Propeller and Reddit do better with human and general interest stories, Stumbleupon does well with almost any topic. MySpace isn’t just for teens and Facebook Fan Pages are useful for any company, no matter the industry.
However, social sites are a waste of time if you set them up and never use them. You might as well have never set anything up at all. If you create an account and expect people to just find you and add you, you’re doing it wrong.
Further, you need to have specific strategies for each and every network you’re on. If you create a strategy but fail to execute it, your time was wasted. Mistakes like these are why many Social Media Campaigns don’t get anywhere.
Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising, SMM allows you to go super niche – you could literally target a social community of pink-yarn knitting grandmas if that was your desire.
Thus the social networks you choose are entirely dependent on your company, your goals and your ultimate strategy.
