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. So, this is what it’s all about. I used to neglect my Twitter account, and when I finally logged in a couple weeks back, I found out that I’ve been added to a list. I felt really clueless.

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  6. I found this advice very helpful, this sure is a clever way to handle twitter. I will try surely implement this

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  9. Great idea – I do this too but you have to be diligent and keep up the lists, and make sure each time you follow someone you put them in a list category! Just one question – Do you make your lists private??

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  11. I don’t have a twitter account but your post makes it look quite interesting. I thought Facebook is enough for me but now…. I will definitely consider opening one and you will be the first person I will follow. Thanks for the enlightenment.

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  14. Thanks Elizabeth, I’m going to list your post on a recent post of mine, “Do You Tweet?”
    I find, social media very time consuming and have been avoiding all of it. Claudia
    Side note; How did you get your comment box showing before previous comments?

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  17. Yeah, a fantastic idea. I’ve only been on Twitter for a couple of weeks, and I can’t even imagine how you could have thousands of followers and get any substance from it without lists.

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  19. This is a wonderful piece of information. I’m already thinking of expanding your lists concept to productivity and blogging centric tweets. Maybe filter a list that will capture possible blog topics.

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  23. I was actually heading in this direction. I’ve been saying I was going to organize my followers into lists for months. I’ll hopefully get around to it this weekend.

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