With an average of 265 million monthly users, Twitter is, hands-down, the platform to leverage online presence, for both B2B and B2C brands.
Not only is Twitter one of the best social media channels for audience growth, but it’s also a great way to connect with prospects, thought leaders, and casually pen down thoughts in front of the whole world.
Below is a snapshot of a Twitter Users Report by Statista, which clearly shows the increase in Twitter users each year. It also states that Twitter is still one of the leading social media networks worldwide.
Graph courtesy of Statista
Twitter marketing has proven immense growth for a lot of businesses in different niches and has become a must-try marketing stint for every brand to check out.
If your audience hangs out mostly on Twitter, you must have come across situations where you have to jump onto social selling conversations that can lead to a customer or manage negative reviews and frustrated customers.
Do you know the one thing common in such situations leading to positive results? Timing and being on point with the reply. HubSpot’s Guide on Twitter Marketing in 2019 discusses some of the best ways to leverage Twitter marketing for businesses, and one among them is utilizing Twitter Lists to the fullest.
Whether you are active on Twitter for promoting your brand or own freelance business, monitoring your competitors, or just hanging out there to gain knowledge from other industry experts, this post is for you to learn how Twitter Lists can ease your work.
So, let’s get started with the basics of what exactly a Twitter List is and how do you get started to create one.
What is a Twitter List?
A Twitter List is a feature that allows users to add a group of other Twitter accounts into a single list and do more with these lists.
If you have a relatively smaller audience, and you follow only a handpicked selection of users, you probably are up-to-date with the content they post and their activity on Twitter.
But what if you have a huge audience, big competitors, and a bunch of users you follow? It can get tricky to manage, read, and consume all the relevant content coming up on your feed; you probably wouldn’t even know if you miss out on viewing some of the important ones!
Twitter Lists help organize audiences and closely monitor audience activity. These lists can be either private or public, depending on the purpose of the list. Each user can create 1,000 Twitter Lists and add up to 5,000 users in each of them.
How to create a Twitter List
To get started with creating a Twitter list, click on ‘Lists’ from your Twitter homepage.
You can now view all the lists you’ve created, subscribed to, and members of your lists.
Next, click on the ‘Create a List’ icon on the top right to create a list.
Give your list a ‘Name’ and ‘Description.’ Once you’ve done this, you can check the box if you wish to make your list private.
Click on ‘Next.’ From here, you can add members to your list by using the search option.
Click on ‘Done.’
That’s it! You’ve created your own list.
9 Twitter List ideas to implement right away
Now that you know how to create a Twitter List, let’s go through must-have lists, alongside other ideas that you can pick from according to what suits your business the most.
1. Digital influencers
Whatever your domain is, there are certainly some users who influence your audience. They are highly knowledgeable and their content is insightful to you and your audience. These influencer lists can be a resource that your audience can subscribe to.
Having them under one list and following the content they share allows you to keep up with emerging trends, gain insight for your business, and inspires ideas for your own Twitter feed.
Not just that, but if your business has an ongoing influencer marketing plan, it’s a must to have a Twitter List for these influencers. It helps you like, retweet, and keep them engaged. Doing this could help you land a fruitful collaboration with your brand. And if you don’t yet, using influencer marketing software could be the difference between engaging your influencer users and letting an opportunity slip by.
2. Customers
You can easily keep all your customers under one private list to monitor their accounts and send them specific holiday coupons. This allows you to ensure you personalize your content and make your customers feel important.
3. Editors and journalists
Monitoring your favorite and domain-related publications, journalists, and editors is a great way to pitch stories at the right time. You never know, keeping track of and engaging with them can help your brand story get published.
4. Loyal Twitter followers
Do you have loyal and engaged followers who regularly retweet, reply, and share your content? Keeping all of them under a must-have list will help you get the initial traction to all the new content you create.
5. Dream clients
Having a list of dream clients is a must-have for freelancers of any expertise. You get to see if they’re looking out for professionals like you, and you can quickly tap on some awesome opportunities you’ve always been waiting for.
Priscilla Tan, who helps SaaS and tech companies with long-form content, noted:
“One of my Twitter Lists is for ‘Dream Clients,’ the second is my ‘Publications List,’ and the third, I call it ‘Brainy Folks,’ which is a list of people I admire. Like content marketers, customer research and SEO experts, and likewise. I use this list when I’m promoting my blog posts.”
So, if you want to keep a close eye on your dream clients, make a private Twitter list and engage with them to get yourself noticed.
6. Brand advocates and evangelists
Rewarding users who say good things about your business and promoting it on social networks is an act of being thankful. This could be a simple thank you note or offering gift cards to keep them further engaged and motivated to promote your business.
These users can be added to a private list and be the first ones to know if you’re launching new features. Doing so, you’ll have an audience ready to promote you.
7. Spy on competitors
Do you want to be a step ahead of what your competitors are doing and how they’re utilizing Twitter? It’s a no-brainer to go and spy on their Twitter handles by adding them to your private list.
This way, you can have a dedicated feed to look out for what content your competitors are tweeting, who promotes them, and if there are any conversations where your businesses are being compared.
You can quickly jump into such conversations, get a little witty, and put yourself ahead of your competition.
8. Keep in touch with attendees of an event
It’s always good to keep in touch and engage with the network you’ve built at events.
Networking well and drawing value from events will be a hit for you if you don’t forget to engage with them later on. Events promote their hashtags and encourage attendees to tweet with similar hashtags. This way, you can identify the ones who attended a particular event, add them to your list, and make sure to engage with them post-event.
Ashley Luk, marketing at Unbounce, said:
“I currently use Twitter lists for different purposes – one being for our events. For instance, we create lists after an event (webinar, conference, etc.) so we can reach out to attendees afterward for promotions on future events they also might be interested in.”
Events need not be only offline, but you can also apply a similar approach for online events like Twitter Chats. They are a great way to engage with and provide value to the community, while building followers. If you host a Twitter Chat, tapping on your frequent attendees and adding them to a list is a smart way to invite them to further chats.
9. Potential leads
If there’s any particular persona type you’re looking to target on Twitter, a simple search with relevant keywords will help you.
For example, if you’re an email marketing service provider, your most relevant audience would be ‘email marketing specialists’ or ‘marketers.’
Do a quick Twitter search with these keywords, and you’ll see a list of users with these keywords in their bios or frequently used hashtags.
Give a quick glance to who’s relevant and add them to a Twitter List. This list will help you market your product better, so it makes sense to keep it as a private list.
How to find the best Twitter lists in your niche
Don’t just create Twitter Lists for yourself; subscribe to other Twitter Lists to help you get personalized content on your feed and know what’s going on in your interest space.
How do you find the best Twitter lists to join?
It could be either Twitter’s powerful search box or looking at the public lists of popular names in your niche. Twitter search is easy to use to gather information on these lists, allowing you to skim through the data.
While this may or may not end up giving you the best of the lists in terms of relevancy, looking at influencer’s lists can give you ideas.
Influencers in your niche would have curated lists under various categories, and these could be potential lists for you to subscribe. Another easy way is to look at what lists they’ve been a member of. This can give you ideas of what lists you are looking for.
Automatically add users to a Twitter List
Now that you have a bunch of ideas to leverage your Twitter marketing with lists, let’s go a step further and learn how to do it easily and automate the process for you.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if someone was added to a list as and when they mention your brand, write a Twitter review, or follow you? To simplify things, marketing automation software can help with automating these processes.
Takeaways
Now that you now what a Twitter List is, how to create a Twitter List, and how Twitter Lists can help your Twitter marketing, get your hands dirty on Twitter Lists and utilize them to the fullest.
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