Social Selling: Using Twitter Lists Part II

Ways to Gain the Advantage with Twitter Lists

STOP! Read our part one post Social Selling with Twitter Lists before continuing for the best reading experience.

Twitter is all the rage in the news today, and Elon has brought a new level of amazing chaos to the platform. But for us sales people, it’s mostly business as usual, and the platform is a goldmine of information. In part I of this series, we covered how to create a list within your mobile app. But how do we really leverage this cool feature to curate focused information to help us stay informed and sell more? Here are some suggestions:

1. Keep an eye on your competitors. Twitter is an excellent tool for keeping tabs on the competition. However, you don’t want to follow competitors or let them know that you’re watching their tweets. It is not necessary to follow people in order to add them to a list. As a result, private lists are an excellent way to keep track of user groups you don’t necessarily want to follow. Just make sure that your competitors’ list is set to private before you begin adding accounts to it. If you make it public, each competitor will be notified when you add them. Lists, in addition to monitoring tweets, provide another way to keep track of the competition. You can see which lists each competitor is subscribed to and which lists they are included on by visiting their profile page. This can provide you with valuable information about who your competitors are watching and interacting with, allowing you to do the same.

2. Highlight employees or brand advocates. When you make a public list of employees or brand advocates, any Twitter user can easily see what your best brand cheerleaders are saying on the network. It’s also a simple way to acknowledge your biggest supporters. If you host a Twitter chat, you could make a list of regular attendees or guest co-hosts. A list like this can also help you get more exposure for your brand’s content. Mashable, for example, has nearly 10,000 subscribers to its staff list. That’s 10,000 people seeing everything Mashable staffers share, which will almost certainly include a lot of Mashable content.

3. Emphasize your various offerings or brand accounts. When your brand grows in size, you may have multiple Twitter accounts for different products or product lines. A Twitter list is an excellent way to collect all of these offerings in one place. Netflix, for example, has a Twitter list that features tweets from its various show accounts as well as actors from those shows. Major League Baseball maintains a Twitter list of all MLB club accounts. You could also have separate Twitter accounts for each region. Or for various functions, such as marketing versus social customer service. A list is an excellent tool for connecting and sharing these accounts. Hootsuite, for example, has a list of official Twitter accounts, including regional accounts, customer service, partners, and careers.

4. Keep track of relevant conversations. Because a Twitter list is essentially a curated mini-Twitter feed, creating Twitter lists based on topics relevant to your industry is a great way to stay on top of the most important conversations in your niche. Smartly crafted feeds can be an excellent resource for social listening. Of course, you aren’t the only one who makes Twitter lists. There are probably already a plethora of Twitter lists full of great content relevant to your niche. Why not take advantage of your industry peers’ hard work by subscribing to their mailing lists? Go to the Twitter profiles of relevant people or accounts in your niche to find relevant lists to subscribe to. Look through the Lists tab to see what lists they’ve created, subscribed to, and been added to. Google Analytics, for example, keeps a list of women in the analytics field.When you find a list that you want to subscribe to, click on the list’s name. This subscribes you to the list’s content without requiring you to follow the list’s members.

5. Make contact with influential people and accounts in your industry. When you add someone new to a public list, they will receive an email informing them that you have done so. This is a simple way to attract the attention of accounts that haven’t yet noticed you on Twitter. However, a Twitter list of influencers or other important people in your industry provides you with a great collection of accounts to monitor for engagement opportunities. When you have time for active Twitter participation, open this list and jump in with some responses, retweets, and likes.

6. Connect prior to or following an event. Meeting people in person at an event is great, but it can be difficult to keep track of all the business cards you collect and remember who is who. A Twitter list can help you meet some of your fellow attendees prior to the event, allowing you to prioritize who you want to meet during your limited in-person time. Following the event, a Twitter list of attendees provides an easy way to continue networking online. Check the event’s host or sponsor’s Twitter profile to see if they have already created a Twitter list of attendees. It’s becoming more common, but if the event isn’t related to technology or social media, the organizers may not have considered a Twitter list as an added benefit for attendees. You could contact them and suggest that they create one. You could make your own Twitter list if the hosts don’t make one. It’s unlikely to be complete, but you could get a good start with anyone you meet at the event and the speakers list. You could also include people who use the event’s hashtag in their tweets.

7. Keep track of which lists you appear on. You’ll receive an email notification whenever you’re added to a public list. When someone adds you to a list, it indicates that they are interested in what you are doing. Examine their profile to see if it is appropriate to follow them or add them to one of your own lists in exchange. You should also think about making a private Twitter list of people who have added you to lists. Consider it a method of gathering leads. It’s a good idea to check which lists you appear on on a regular basis to ensure there aren’t any that cause you concern. To see which lists you’re a part of, go to your Twitter profile and click Lists, then Member of. Because this information is public, take a quick look to ensure there’s nothing to be concerned about. The only way to get off a list is to block the creator of the list. You could try contacting the list creator and asking them to remove you before taking this step, but there is no other way to simply remove yourself from a list. You can unblock the Twitter user right away if you want, but they will no longer follow you.
8. Watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it. The Twitter algorithm can muddle your Top Tweets feed with a confusing jumble of tweets. A Twitter list allows you to curate your own list of accounts whose tweets you want to see first. You can also make multiple Twitter lists to prioritize different accounts at different times. During your morning commute, for example, you might want to prioritize accounts that are likely to share breaking news. During working hours, you’ll most likely want to concentrate on accounts related to your job. You might want to focus on humor during lunch. Also, on your way home, you might want to see what your friends and family have been up to. You can make a separate list for each of these account groups. Keep your commute and humor lists private, but make a public list of the people you follow in your niche. You could also go completely covert and keep your niche list private. Remember that a public list is completely open to the public, and anyone can view it and subscribe to it.

Just a quick guide to help you win the info wars. Happy Tweeting.