I’m a big fan of Twitter for business. It’s helped me get clients, lets me stay in touch with people I’ve met while networking and enabled me to connect with people I’d like to do business with. And there’s always someone around for a chat while I’m having a coffee break. It’s like a water cooler for small business – and we all know that in big companies, the important stuff often gets done round the drinks machine!
But as you grow your Twitter following it’s likely that you’re also growing the number of people you follow. Which means your Twitter feed is constantly updating and the visibility of any single tweet is seconds.
So how do you make sure you see the tweets that really matter to you? One option is to only follow a select few people. But while that may work for celebrities, it can get you branded as a “Twitter Snob” and, more importantly, you may miss out on discovering some really interesting people.
Luckily Twitter has a great feature called Lists which lets you segment your followers and ensure you don’t miss tweets from those you really want to hear from.
Here’s a short video on how to set up and use lists:
You can make your lists private (only you can see who is on the list) or public (anyone can see who is on it). You can make use of other people’s public lists. These can be a great way to find new people to follow and you can also subscribe to lists without following everyone. Just go into the person’s profile and click on lists.
The key to successful lists is remembering to keep them up to date – when you follow someone new, add them to the relevant list immediately.
Here’s just a few suggestions for lists for your wedding business:
- journalists – look for requests for features
- bloggers – build relationships by sharing their tweets
- other suppliers local to you
- competitors (a good way of checking what they are up to!)