I’m a bit late to the Twitter Lists party, but starting to catch on

Having started to uncover the mysteries of Twitter lists, I thought a post or two might help a few people understand this still fairly new way of managing your Twitter presence and the various conversations within the great Twitterville (thank you Shel Israel) conversation. This is almost certainly a “move along, nothing to see here” post for anyone already using lists, but may help some others.

In spite of some prompting, I had been slow in addressing what these lists are about. A friend had been saying “You don’t have Twitter lists? You must have lists.” While I thought that was good advice – this friend is always up on the latest in the fast-moving world of Twitter – it was something on my list of things to get around to.

And the other day I did get around to it. In my way, which was first to search for a guide on the subject. I immediately found Twitter’s own guide to lists, which after checking a few other links I found to be actually quite straightforward.

That was when I noticed the little link on my Twitter page – “Listed” with a number which was as I recall 91 (it’s now 98 as you can see from the screenshot here). I clicked on that and found I was on all these people’s lists! OK, I’m a slow learner sometimes, but that amazed me.

Time to get with the program.

So, with the help of the guide I’d found plus some experimentation, I figured out how to create a list and add people to it. In line with my main professional interests I started with two lists, one for social media leaders and the other for coaches. Then I added one for more local connections – “Queensland”. I started adding people to the lists.

That was not an immediately intuitive process, but I found by opening someone’s profile page and then mousing over a gray box in the top menu bar of the page, I was shown options for managing my lists. Then by just clicking on the box for the appropriate list I was able to add the person to that list.

I have to say I was amazed – and pleased – to see this morning tweets from two people for whom I have great respect, expressing appreciation for being on one of the lists.

I can see already that it’s a good way to follow a more focused area of conversation.

I discovered also a way to see at a glance how I am perceived by others on Twitter, by way of what lists I’m on. This could be a valuable aid for helping market yourself or others. More of that tomorrow.