Managing Twitter for Business: The Importance of Lists

April 25th, 2011 by Brian Posnanski

Twitter might be the most context-heavy medium in the social game. Memes and trends die faster than extras in a war movie. By the time a keyword is trending, all of the interesting people have moved onto #ZombieRomanticComedies. Compound this with the fact that there are only so many streams you can monitor and familiarize yourself with, and you can feel like you’re always just behind the curve.

Don’t fret, and don’t fight the chaos. Manage it. Strange as it may sound, Twitter is best to experience (and manage) organically. That’s where Lists come in, especially in using Twitter for business. We find Lists invaluable for structuring the flow of information and parsing the most valuable data from the Twitter firehose.

Lists have been around a while, but we find clients not using them to full advantage. Here are the type of Lists we think are most important:

Influencers
Every industry has them. Journalists, bloggers, analysts. Rabid fans and devoted observers. Your lists should cover enough people to capture a healthy round-up of these voices. Capturing and curating them takes time but is well worth the effort. Getting to know what they care about can help make your marketing more informed and intelligent.

Keywords
Keywords are synonymous with SEO, but they can be excellent intelligence-gathering tools on Twitter. Hootsuite, among others, is an excellent tool with which to customize streams around company and industry-specific keywords. For a mobile marketing client, we might follow “QR codes” or “mobile activation.” For an education company, we might follow “tutoring” or “educational aids.” Be sure to brainstorm that List.

Company and Product Names
Seems obvious, but it’s so important we put it here separately. Make sure you are making keyword Lists out of the company’s name (or names) and products, and variations on same.

Hashtags
Closely related to keywords. Find out what, if any, hashtags are popular in your given industry, then give each one its own List. If you’re a gastro pub, you might want to know which #craftbeers are hot. You can find hashtags in the course of monitoring your streams, or a Twitter search engine like Hashtags.org.

Rivals
Focus on a few key competitors. It’s helpful to keep tabs on what they’re saying and what others are saying about them. It can give you ideas for what to comment on, what to avoid and what to riff on. And don’t be afraid to give your rivals credit. Take a hint from what works.

These different kinds of streams will place you in the middle of the conversation, and they can give you fodder to tweet about – that’s a big reason Lists are helpful.

Remember: You’re an expert on something. Put that expertise to use. Give people a reason to put you on their List.

Tags: HootSuite, Managing Twitter Followers, twitter, Twitter for Business, Twitter Lists