According to Twitter, its users now send more than 200 million tweets per day. This mind-boggling amount of tweets is equivalent to a 10 million-page book per day. Not surprisingly, it can also be a problem.
Let”™s say I follow 1,000 people who each produce 20 tweets per day on average. That”™s 20,000 tweets per day in my stream. I truly don”™t have the time or energy to read 20,000 tweets particularly since most of them are probably automated marketing hype. So, how do I extract the quality feeds from the chaff?
One solution is to use a product like HootSuite or TweetDeck that allow me to view multiple streams simultaneously. I personally prefer HootSuite, which I use every day and has proven to be an excellent time saver for me. (Incidentally, if you wish to learn how to use these programs, there are some excellent short and concise training videos on YouTube.)
Being able to view these streams is only part of the battle, however. Filtering them is crucial and can be accomplished through the use of Twitter lists. Twitter lists are easy to create and populate. Twitter currently allows a maximum of 20 lists.
Your lists should focus on areas of your business, keywords, geographic locations or any other criteria you deem important. For my webinar listing, search and development service, for example, I have several lists ”“ private and public ”“ that follow people whose content I value. I maintain both private and public lists because while I believe in transparency on the Internet, I also maintain a modicum of sensitivity when dealing with competitors. One of my most important lists I simply labeled as “webinars.” It”™s a list of people and companies that regularly produce webinars.
By creating a stream in HootSuite for a list, in this case, my webinars list, I can easily view those people who have recently tweeted. Note that their tweets might not always be related to webinars, but are far more likely to have value or be interesting. Furthermore, when you”™re only dealing with a relatively few messages of 140 characters or less ”“ not 20,000, the amount of required time to review them is minimal.
What really makes lists so powerful is that the people in your list don”™t have to be followers. You can put anyone you want into your list and follow their every tweet (so to speak). If they tweet about a topic you find interesting, you can retweet it and provide added value by making a quality comment or even providing a link to a supporting article or blog. Assuming they monitor their mentions, it”™s a great way of initiating a conversation.
You may also want to reciprocate toward those people who put you on one of their lists by also putting them on one of your lists. It may also lead to engaging them in a future conversation.
One last item about Twitter lists: they have SEO value. Providing search optimized and appropriate Twitter list names can help you be well positioned in a Google search. In some cases it can greatly enhance your visibility ”“ particularly when using a popular keyword.
Twitter has rapidly evolved into a surprisingly important marketing platform. What started out as a simple communication site is now one of the major social media platforms with over 1 billion tweets per week. Being able to effectively utilize its capabilities can greatly aid your visibility and marketing effectiveness.
Bruce Newman is the vice president at The Productivity Institute L.L.C. in Carmel. He is also a social media strategist and the designer of a new service, wwWebevents.com. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. Bruce can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.
