09 Feb Social Media: Twitter Lists

Twitter gained over 70 million new users between April and October last year and I hear it a lot these days and tend to agree; there is a lot of noise on Twitter these days.

Whilst you don’t have to follow everyone who follows you, it all depends on your strategy and whether you are using a quantity or quality approach. You never know when your connections might be able to help you and when, who they are connected to, might be able to help you, and vice versa. Twitter is an information network and there is an abundance juicy facts and trivia out there; just a few too many clutterers too!

There has always been a quality versus quantity argument within the sales and marketing sphere. Either way, strong quality relationships will usually bring better conversions. Whilst the leverage of quantity will suit some business models, the relationships involved will be much weaker and our society today is relationship and market centred.

One way to gain the leverage of quantity and focus on the relationships of quality is to think strategically about using the ‘lists’ tool on Twitter. Lists are simply there to categorize your followers into simply lists but how many people use them effectively?

Can you group your followers geographically, by demographics or their social graph? Maybe you could divide your followers by area, business sector or your own key influencers. If you create your lists effectively you can still benefit from quantity in your main timeline but focus on your specific list timeline for building quality engagement.

Effective marketing is all about segmentation, targeting and positioning of your customers and the marketplace you operate in. Sit down with a pen and paper and think about the different types of customer you have and the traits they have in common. This will make an easy task of filtering your followers accordingly. View Listorious for some inspiration, you may even find some useful lists and users you want to connect with.

It will also be easier when you are trying to communicate with them and you’ll find the information you put out there will be more relevant to your chosen segments. You may even see some useful trends forming amongst the groups.

Plus, you can use your findings to feed back into your supporting marketing activities and…

…you’ll be cutting out a lot of that unnecessary noise!