How can twitter lists be useful for business? How do you set one up, and how do you follow an existing list? What’s the difference between public and private? All that and more is explained in this sample clip from Your Backstage Pass to Twitter.

So, using lists allows you to segment people who you want to check up on but you just don’t have the bandwidth to follow or maybe you don’t really want to follow all the time but you want to check in on them every so often. So, a really good example are lists that I follow over here. So, here’s kind of your list center, is in this right side bar, and that’s going to show lists that you follow. Here is where things get weird. You know how you can follow and individual person? You can follow someone else’s list as well and when you follow that list it doesn’t mean that the list shows up in the tweet stream, it doesn’t mean that you’re following the people who are on the list. All it means is that it shows up in this right side bar right here.

So, I want to show you the summit series example that I’m following because this is a way that you might want to use lists. So, this a list that I’m following. Again following it does not mean that I’ve added all these people but I can add some of them. For example I follow Marie Forleo, I don’t follow Chris Wise, but they’re both showing up in this list that someone else created. Again for me following just means that it’s in this right side bar. And this list happens to be of all the people that went to this conference called Summit Series. So, perfect example of when you would want to use a list.

So, I went to this conference called Summit Series, I met some really amazing people. There are people that I want to keep up with but it’s ninety new people and some of them do things that honestly I have no interest in, that I don’t want to hear from all the time, but it is nice for me to have a way to kind of pop in and say hi and check in on them. So this list is a perfect way to do that. I don’t have to follow all those people, but maybe once a month or before a summit, the next summit series comes up or whatever it is, I can just kind of take a minute to look through here, see what people are up to, maybe look for some things to respond to. Again, a way to keep up without having to actually follow.

So now let’s talk about how to follow other people’s lists and how to create a list. So, first let’s create a new list. Again all the list stuff happens in your side bar right here when you’re signed on to Twitter. I’m going to click New List and make a list name. So I’ll just call this Test List. The description you want to use so other people can understand what your list is about, if anybody else wants to follow it. So, for this one I’m just going to write, Testing 123 and I’m going to make this public. The difference between public and private, public is public in every way. That means when somebody clicks on my profile they can see that I’ve created this list, who’s on the list is totally public, other people can choose to follow it, it will show up in Google, all that good stuff.

Private is totally private. That means nobody know who’s on the list, nobody knows that the list exists at all. People can’t tell if they’re on the list, no one can subscribe to it, you can only see it when you’re signed on to your own account. So you might want to use a private list for things like maybe you want to keep track of prospective clients or maybe you want to keep track of the competition. That’s a great thing you want to use a private list for because you’re not going to start something called competition, right. You can put it on a private list or maybe it’s just like people that you kind of want to follow but not enough to actually follow so it’s kind of second tier thing and you don’t want to have a public list called second tier.

So, when you have it private no one can see the name, no one can see the description but I would still recommend that you be a little bit secretive in what you call the list because even though it’s private, this is the Internet, you never know what people are going to come across. Oh, okay this even makes my point even further. Sarah just told me that if people are on your private list they can see the title of that list. Okay, so that’s really interesting. So I need to correct myself because one little thing I just told you was not right.

With a private list, people – if LKR is on your private list, I can see that I’m on your list and what it’s called but I can’t subscribe to it, I can’t see anyone else who’s on it which makes it extra important that you do what I was about to say and make kind of a sneaky name for your list. So, let’s say that you want to start a list of competitors. You’re a realtor, like we had a question earlier, she said, “I’m a realtor in L.A.,” and she was asking about competitors. And so you want to start a list of all the other realtors but you want to call it my competitors and you could start a public list called like L.A. Home Industry or something like that. That would be another way to tackle it but let’s say you just want a private list. So, instead of calling it My Competitors, you’re going to call it like MC L.A. and that stands for My Competitors L.A. or just MCA or just MC Twitter or something like that. So, this name is unique to your account.

I think there can be other lists of the same name, I think. Yeah, there can be other lists of the same because they’re under other people’s accounts. So, be a little bit sneaky with your name. Don’t call it like jerk faces or people that were rude to me once. Okay, I’m just kind of having fun here now but instead of People That Were Rude To Me Once, you’re like Rude Once To Me, okay you can call your list R1TM. Let’s be cool with our private list names. So, anyway now we’re going to do a public list called Testing 123 and let’s keep this Rude Once To Me name because it’s such a great name, R1TM, and I will create that list.

Now, I have to find people to add to my list but usually when you’re creating a list you’re not so much finding people to add but you’re coming across people that you want to add on a list. And so let’s go through my followers cause maybe this something that you’ll want to do with your followers. Maybe you want to kind of semi follow them for a while to find out if you really want to follow them. You could add them to again some sort of tier two list that you don’t want to call tier two, maybe just T2 or something. So, here’s somebody that I added to this list that we have of everybody that’s in this course, Your Backstage Pass To Twitter. And so let’s say that Lara Casey was awesome in the course. I’m going to click on her profile and then I’m going to click lists. So for now I can add her to this R1TM. Lara Casey has not actually been rude to me for the record but now she’s on that list. I can add her to the other list as well. I’ll take that one off so not to confuse people.

And say look, she’s – it’s like she’s listened to my advice even though she’s not in this webinar, well as far as I know. I guess she could be on this webinar. Oh, she’s editor in chief of Southern Weddings Magazine. That’s kind of cool. So she has this list called MTH Chicago. She’s using like a little bit of secret code maybe or maybe not because it says MTH 2010 here, but that could be – that could be a secret code. So, to add people to your list, like when you come across people that you want to be on a list, you’re just going to click on their name and then click this little list button right here. You can also see that when I clicked followers, I got that same button right here.

So, that’s how I add people to my lists. You can see I have this private list called peeps. That’s a good neutral name there and then if I want to delete a list, you go to right here at the top corner, Delete. Okay, now let’s talk about how you can follow other people’s lists cause that can be a good way to keep track of what’s going on in your industry. So, I’m following this list from IttyBiz called Publicly Delicious. Let’s just look at how we can see all of her lists. So, if I click on this little button next to IttyBiz’s name I can go to her profile, no, or I can go to this list, but then I can click here and go to her profile and I can see the lists that she’s created on the right side. So I’m going to hit View All and she has publicly delicious, hot dudes with goatees and tweetupable.

So you see some of – people are using this just for fun. There is a million different ways that you can use this. She has Hot Dudes With Goatees, it only has one person on it, right. Maybe I want to see her Tweet-able list cause I would guess these are people in the same city that she’s in and so maybe I’m in that city too and I’m like ooh I want to keep track of these people. So, I could just click right here and now I’m following this list and again what following means is just that is shows up in my little side bar right here.