Twitter lists – What are they? How do you use them in the correct way?

When you click onto your Twitter profile, you’ll notice that there is a button labelled ‘Lists’- not knowing what it means or what it does – you, like me, may have always ignored it. However it is a really useful way of tidying up your feed and grouping together your favourite tweeters, if used effectively.

Lists are just what they say they are. They are a list of Twitter accounts, which you can communicate with. They can be used to focus on just one topic  - for example talking to a group of your old college friends or following a group of journalists in your industry. By having just those relevant people in your list, irrelevant tweets from other people you follow become invisible. You can choose to have your list as either open or private. By it being open, the public can see your list and the tweets that have been sent within it. However if you choose for it to be private only the people within that list can see the tweets, which makes it more personal.

Another great thing about a Twitter list is that they help you find new contacts and new people who you can interact with. In order to create a Twitter list you:

• Login to Twitter
• Click on ‘create a new list’
• Choose a name for your list
• Decide whether you want it open or private
• Click ‘create list’
• And now you can add users and search for new people to add to your list.

The only rules to having a list is that you can’t have any more than 500 people in one list at one time, and each account can have a maximum of 20 lists assigned to them.

To finish with, Twitter can be very chaotic at times, and so by having a list it allows you to interact with only the people you choose to interact with. By being on someone’s list you are far more likely to be found by the right tweeter.

Thanks for listening and stay tuned to our blog for more helpful Twitter advice.

Written by Eliza Bennett – Eliza is a 16 year old student at Furze Platt Sixth Form, she is currently on work experience with Taylor Alden PR Company and Carvill Creative.