If you invest a little time each day on Twitter, you’ll soon find yourself with over 1000 followers. This can happen in a matter of weeks, not years. You’ll also be following over 1000 people. Tweets will come to your feed faster than you can read them. You’ll miss people trying to engage with you unless they specifically tag you.
Fortunately, Twitter has a feature that can help make this all manageable. It’s called Lists. Lists allow you to put people on Twitter into logical groups. It allows you to filter your feed to Tweets from just those people. You can even allow people to subscribe to your Lists which helps them find great content on Twitter as well.
I have a list for people I met at the Realm Makers conference, another list for Agents and Editors, and yet another for NFL news and notes. When I’m looking for NFL information, I go to my NFL List and see only those tweets. When I want to see what the Agents I’m following are saying, I switch to that group.
How to make a Twitter List
- Identify the people who belong in the List
- Create a List
- Add the people to the List
- Continue to add new people to the List as you find them on Twitter
Make the List
On the left side of your Twitter screen, you’ll see several options. One of them is Lists.
Click on Lists.
Owned is a List you manage. Subscribed is a list managed by someone else. When they add or remove someone, you’ll get the update as well. Member are lists which include your account as a Member.
Click on Create a List.
Enter a name and description. Once you do the “Next” button will light up, and you can click Next.
Add people to the List
Twitter will ask you to add a person to the list.
If you know the Twitter handle of one of the people you want to add, you can enter it where it says Search people.
Like most search bars on the Internet, it will try to autofill as you type with close matches. When you see the person you want on the List, click on them.
You can search again and continue adding people in this window. Once you’ve got everyone you want, click the “Done” button. Twitter will show you your new creation.
If you scroll down, you’ll see only Tweets from people in your List. Even though you are following thousands of people, you’ve focused your view to Tweets from only these few people.
Now let’s add some more people to the List.
Add more members
To add someone to an existing List, you’ll need to go to their Twitter profile. You can do this a couple of different ways:
- when you first follow them
- using Twitter’s built in Search feature
- by scrolling your default Following List
Finding people with Twitter’s built in Search
Twitter has a handy dandy Search bar.
If you know the Twitter handle, you can type it in the search bar. Like most search bars on the Internet, it will try to auto fill with close matches.
If you see the person you’re looking for, you can click on their profile.
Finding people in your Following list
If you can’t remember someone’s Twitter handle, you could go through the list of people you’re following. To get to your followers or following, click on your profile.
Now click on Following. This will show you a list of people you are following. Scroll down the list until you find the person you are interested in. Once you see them, click on their profile.
Adding someone to the List
Now that I have the Twitter profile of the person I want, I can add them to a list.
Notice the ellipse (three dots) in the circle. If you click on those three dots, you’ll get a new menu.
The third option down is “Add/remove from Lists”. Let’s click on that.
If you’ve only got one List, you’ll see only one option here, but as you make more Lists, you’ll see them all. Click on the appropriate List.
You can add someone to mutliple Lists. Simply click on each one and a check mark will appear. Once you’ve selected all the Lists for that person, click Save.
Viewing Lists
From your Twitter profile, select Lists.
This will present you with a list of Lists. Click the one you want to see.
Twitter is a great platform, especially for writers. Use it to engage with your audience and fellow writers. Learn from each other and most of all, have fun.