SMC of SLC

by Scott Cowley, SMC of SLC member

A large group of Twitterers who usually tweet from desktop clients like TweetDeck are returning to the Twitter website these days to do some of their tweeting. Credit Twitter Lists for this trend.

If you haven’t heard of Twitter Lists, here’s a quick recap:

You can put anyone on a list you’ve created and named (you get 20 of them, up to 500 names each). You don’t even have to be following the person to place them on a list you’ve created.

Lists can be public (viewable by anyone) or private (for your eyes only). You can see which public lists you’ve been placed in by clicking the “lists” link, located on your Twitter profile near “followers” and “following.” Right now, the only way to manage Twitter Lists is through Twitter.com (although Seesmic Desktop just integrated them and other APIs like TweetDeck and Tweetie are soon to follow).

So what do Twitter lists mean for you?

Already, people are claiming lists as the new status symbol. How many lists are you on? Whose lists? Did you make the “social-media-experts” list, the “people-i-am-married-to” list, or are you just on some guy’s “americans-i-know” list?  What if you’re not on a list? Or worse—what if you’re on someone’s “people-with-ugly-faces” list?

Remember that Twitter lists, just like all social media, can be used as just another online popularity metric or as a legitimate tool to help make social media life easier. Several other bloggers have already written about how you can use Twitter Lists. Here are a handful of the best ways I’ve seen to use Twitter lists so far:

Learn about yourself. You can learn about how others perceive your personal brand and the value you create on Twitter by which lists you’re on. You may think you’re a PR-specific Twitterer, but maybe your tweets don’t reflect that consistently. If you’re on very few lists, it may just mean that you’re unique, for better or worse.

Make a list for vendors/applications you use. You don’t really want them in your normal feed, but you still want to hear about new services, products, updates, or feature improvements from companies you use daily, especially If you’re like me and instinctively unsubscribed from all of their e-mails. Plus, you’ve got their accounts all grouped together in case you ever need to contact one of them. (Plus, if everybody did this, we’d have a great reference list to draw on when evaluating new vendors/products)

Group profiles that always tweet the same kind of content. Most people are following several accounts that are strictly industry news or blog feeds (or contests). Instead of following them, group them together in similar lists like a categorized RSS feed. For blogs that don’t have a corresponding Twitter account, you could create a new Twitter profile and send blog RSS feeds to it using Twitterfeed. In concept, you could ditch RSS completely and not be racked with the guilt of having 1000 unread items. Sounds good, huh?

Create a temporary list of events. This is a great easy promotional tactic. If you’re organizing an event, you can get people talking about it and networking in advance by showing who’s going to attend. This takes the pressure off people having to write down everyone’s Twitter name during the event, and enables people to follow up afterward. For example, I just made one for people attending the upcoming Utah Social Media Awards, which I’ll probably delete a few weeks after the event is done. (Let me know if I missed you)

Have another way you’ve seen to effectively use lists? Let me know on Twitter (@scottcowley) or in the comments below.

About the author: Scott Cowley does SEO and social media for SEO.com and is passionate about helping clients catch the vision of how social media can be put to use. He enjoys making friends through SMCSLC and SMCUV and currently resides in Provo with his wife Kathy.