May 22, 2014 / Advanced

Take Control with Twitter Lists

Overwhelmed by Twitter? Sort it out!

Not long after I first joined Twitter, I followed an author I really like, and she immediately followed me back. I did not assume that because she followed me back, she’d actually be reading my tweets. Still, it made me feel really good — it was nice for her to acknowledge, in this small way, that my appreciation for her work actually mattered to her. I decided that I would pay this good feeling forward by following every (non-spambot) person that followed me.

My Twitter feed

My Twitter feed

Cut to two months later: I was suddenly following hundreds of people and I couldn’t sort through the noise of my Twitter feed to find anything that was actually useful.

This is where Twitter lists come in: they’re a way to filter your Twitter feed into streams that matter to you for different reasons. I have a list for coworkers, one for friends and family, and one for business contacts. I also have a list for funny people (light, standing-in-line reading), and a list for politics and news.

To create a Twitter list:

1. Click the gear icon in your Twitter toolbar, and choose lists.
2. Title your list and choose whether you want it to public or private.
3. Click the gear next to any Twitter user (either from your ‘following’ list or on their user profile) and select “add or remove from lists.”

With lists, I can skim content across all subject matters at any time. I don’t get overwhelmed with three page-loads worth of recent tweets from The New York Times, for example, which might bury any tweets from my friends. And if there’s someone I want to follow for professional or personal reasons, but that person tweets 500 times a day, I can minimize how much I see from them by not including them in any list.

Recently, I attended an interesting conference on support documentation. I wanted to follow all of the speakers and my fellow conference attendees, but I didn’t want to overwhelm my entire Twitter feed with tweets about technical writing. No problem! Into a Tech Writing list they all went.

And of course, I can still glance at my main feed from time-to-time to catch up with those folks I haven’t funneled into any list.

Once I took control of my Twitter feed using lists, I became far more active on Twitter. I missed less, I tweeted more, I replied to more tweets. My engagement went up, and so did my follower count.

Then, things got even better — I recently started using TweetDeck, which is a tool that lets you pull your full Twitter feed into any number of live-updating columns. You can create columns for your lists, for certain hashtags, for your own notifications, and more.

My feed in TweetDeck

My feed in TweetDeck

I don’t mean to sound like an advertisement for TweetDeck, though — there are tons of tools for using Twitter, and I’ve heard good things about PlumeApp, Tweetbot, and Twitterrific, among others. Plus, WordPress.com has a myriad of features to help you integrate your Twitter activity with your site.

My point is that if you’ve given Twitter a try in the past and found it to be too much noise and not enough substance, give it another shot and try organizing your feed in a more useable way! Used thoughtfully, Twitter can be a great way to expand your online network by connecting with people who aren’t already in your existing circles.

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  1. This actually looks super useful! I use twitter all the time, but mostly to have a place to put all the odd thoughts that float around my head. I try to keep my following count to a minimum so that my life doesn’t become revolved around keeping up to date with my timeline but this looks like it could work much better!
    (my twitter, y’know, if you wanted to check it out: https://twitter.com/undumbblonde)

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  2. Thank you so much. I was just thinking about that as I was participating in a chat about pregnancy today. I’m new at blogging and just as you said, I don’t want to overwhelm those on my twitter.

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  3. I have no ideas twitters have so many functions as I have no use for my twitter account due to the same problems you have mention. thanks for this great information so that now I have more confidence to use my twitter account.

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  5. Wow this is really smart! My twitter is packed with posts that aren’t always relevant so it can be hard to see tweets posted by friends or family. Definetly going to check out this feature. Thanks for the info

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    1. I completely agree. Or even an option as to how often certain blogs show up in it. I follow one blogger who posts several times a day. While I don’t want to unfollow him, I also don’t want to have to sift through every single one of his posts to be able to see anyone else’s.

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  15. Oh, finally, a way to handle Twitter. I’m an artist and I want to see the art of the people I follow. I have been SO frustrated. So I just make a list of artists I like and go to that when I check into Twitter? Wow, it was so simple, but so damn hard.

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  16. Hey, Elizabeth. Thank you for this kind piece of information. Like a saying goes: ‘Information is power. Information is Knowledge. Information is time’. Personally, I did find this worthy it. Appreciate it a whole ton. Cheers.

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  20. I’ve been using Twitter Lists for many years, perfect for organizing those I want to see are tweeting, such as friends and those verified followers that are following me. So much easier to use than shifting through a rather loud timeline.

    And yes I do use Tweetdeck as well, it’s a great bit of kit to use, if recommend it to anyone 😉

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  22. Thanks for the recommendation Elizabeth. I’m also using the list function on my Tweetdeck. By the way, does anyone know of a good free ipad/iphone twitter app that allows you to manage to twitter accounts at once? 🙂

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  26. Great post. I learned about Tweetdeck in a seminar on Twitter. I shall go and set up some lists no. Thanks.

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