Are Twitter lists the new #FollowFriday? Are you using Twitter lists to monitor your brand?

Are Twitter lists the new #FollowFriday?

If you have been using Twitter for a while, you have surely seen many tweets posted every Friday by thousands of Twitter users, prefixed with #Followfriday, #followfriday, or #FF.  What is #Followfriday?  #Followfriday is quite simply, a way to recommend to all your followers,  the people you follow whom you feel share valuable content, e.g., industry leaders, writers, bloggers, career experts, authors, and other interesting people.  It tends to "validate" and "highlight" the Twitter users who consistently post high value content, and helps everyone find interesting users on Twitter.

New 'list' feature on Twitter launched - October, 2009

Twitter began rolling out the new list feature in mid-October to a small subset of users.  After doing some limited testing, the list option was added to all accounts.  The lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you've created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then see where they are listed, and view or subscribe to your lists.  The potential exists that lists can become an important new discovery vehicle for great tweets and user accounts.

List vs. #Followfriday

Both the #Followfriday and the Twitter list tend to accomplish a similar goal, e.g., 'validating' and 'recommending' knowledgeable, interesting, or entertaining users.  Some differences exist in the way they are created and level of effort involved to create them.

The #Followfriday consists of sending several tweets every Friday that lists the user IDs after the #Followfriday or #FF tag.  Example:  #FF @chrisaperry @warrenss @danschawbel @SpinStrategy @AlisonDoyle @CincyRecruiter @MegGuiseppi @dl101@GuyKawasaki @mashable

While this gives recognition and visibility to those users you recommend to your followers each week, if you follow hundreds of people and want to share your "favorite" list with others each week, it can be a bit time consuming to research, cut & paste user IDs, and send #Followfriday tweets every Friday. 

The new list feature allows you to create your own lists of categories of people you follow / people who follow you, people who share valuable content, or people you find interesting.  The initial time to view your Twitter following / followers and decide what lists to create, and who to include in them, may take a few minutes, but once the lists are setup, they are easy to maintain and update.  Every time you view a new tweet, new follower, follow someone new, or find someone of interest on another person's list - you can easily use the Lists drop-down menu to add the person or create a new List. 

Is the decline in #Followfriday usage due to an increased awareness and usage for Twitter lists?  While there is no hard evidence to bear this out, as of this writing, there does seem to be a trend, that as more people embrace and use the Twitter list feature, a marked decline in the number of #Followfriday tweets received has been noticed.   As the popularity of the list option increases, this trend is expected to continue. 

The benefits of using Twitter lists

* Save time, validate & filter followers, become a discovery resource for great tweets and accounts

The list provides the same opportunity to 'validate' and 'recommend' someone as the #Followfriday tweet, but you do it ONLY once, not every week, so it gives you a great way to organize content for tweets of favorite people you want to follow and share with others.

A recent blog post by Brent Peterson, aka '@InterviewAngel' on Twitter, offers his perspective on the true value of this new list feature, as well as some tips for getting on more lists.

"Arguably, the greatest benefit derived from the new Twitter List feature is that it serves to validate contributors on Twitter (and in turn, filter out spammers)."

"Twitter's new feature has let the people filter out the noise."

"So if you are using Twitter to promote your professional credibility, how do you get on more Twitter lists?" - Check out 'Hire the Person on the Most Twitter Lists?' for Brent's answer and 7 simple tips for getting on more lists.
   

Are you using Twitter lists to monitor your brand?

What does your online presence say about your 'brand'?  Regardless of how you might think of yourself and the brand you aspire to project, a truer indication of your brand is how others view you - online.  

A really good way to monitor your online presence is to "Google" your name at least once a week to see what composes your online footprint (mentions of your name on the internet).  

To be more pro-active and create a positive image of you that will appear in search engine results, is to create a Google Profile.  See prior article entitled, 'Are you using the power of a Google profile to promote your brand?' for complete details and how to setup a profile.   

Still another way to monitor your brand to see how others perceive you is to check Twitter's new list feature, to see who listed you, and the category names of the lists where your name appears.  You can learn a lot about whether you are projecting the desired image, by observing the title of the list(s) where your name is found.   

In a recent Facebook post by Dan Schawbel, Dan recommends, "Use Twitter Lists to see how people are branding you on Twitter. Are the results what you expect?"  

Dan proposes A simple branding test -

"One of the nice things about personal branding is the ease of verifying your efforts- just ask people in your target audience what comes to mind when they think of you:

* If their answers match up with your personal branding, good job! Keep doing what you’re doing and  look for ways to reach more people.

*If their answers don’t match your personal branding, try to understand why so you can decide what action to take.

Click on  A Quick Way To Measure Your Personal Brand Using Twitter Lists to view Dan's excellent post with his thoughts on brand monitoring using Twitter lists. (@danschawbel)

- Daulton West, Jr. , aka "DWestJr” on Twitter

Other articles that may be of interest:

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Best practices tip: post high value messages to build your brand
The Legal of Social (SMCRVA - Feb 2010 review)
LinkedIn groups – are you building relationships for job networking?
Professional networking with Facebook
Are you using the power of a Google profile to promote your brand?
Using social media to help Haiti earthquake victims - Together we can make a difference!
Are Twitter lists the new #FollowFriday? Are you using Twitter lists to monitor your brand?
New Hootsuite & Tweetdeck features, Facebook - News Feed / Live Feed defined

 More social media news, views, tools, & tips: Richmond Social Media Examiner