Twitter Lists for Small Businesses? Not Sufficient.
Posted by dan ronken
The new Twitter 'lists' feature is now available to all users. In case you missed it, just take quick peek on the right sidebar of your Twitter home page.
So what's the deal with Twitter lists? If you're a small business owner, do you now have a green light to uninstall Tweetdeck or Seeismic, and never log into the web based Hootsuite or CoTweet again? The answer is no.
I'll explain why. But first, you may want to see a brief video demo of this new Twitter lists feature from the wonderful demo girl.
Public vs. Private
Lists create more transparency with regard to your perceived influence in the Twittersphere. When someone adds you to one of their lists, it's basically means they are vouching for you in the particular category they create, e.g., technology, marketing, blogging, etc. If you're a small business owner, you'll defintely want to be on these public lists for your industry.
On a personal level, there will most likely be some psychological ego structures either reinforced (by making it on a desired list), or crushed due to a lack of inclusion. I would suggest that if someone is affected by either of these situations, there is a perfect opportunity for some introspection.
Keeping it Simple for Newcomers -- and Those Returning
Although there are plentiful tools to find new followers, it's much easier to glance your friend's lists to see who they think are thought leaders in a particular field.
It's true that web communities have been around for a long time, but armed with real time information, and a user friendly interface, this may bring less customer churn to Twitter. Time will be the judge.
Brand Management
So as a business owner, it's definitely a good idea to make it on the lists of the influential twitterati in your industry. However, you also need to stay on top of your brand mentions, industry keywords, competitors, etc. This task is much easier to accomplish through one of the above mentioned applications.
Most importantly you need to measure which tweets are converting passive readers into leads, and then leads into customers for your business. That way, you'll know where to focus your marketing efforts. Without a closed loop marketing system, you're pretty much dead in the water (or on the net for that matter).
Finding a way to manage Twitter feeds has been quite a journey for me. The pattern has been switching back and forth between the above mentioned desktop clients and onto experimenting with web based products such as Hootsuite which I previously wrote about here.
I'm probably losing some productivity by jumping around like this, but I can't seem to help myself. Blame it on the ADD, or whatever you want to label the condition that drives me to continuously experiment and then test and re-retest.
Have you created your lists yet? Please let us know by sharing in the comments.
Image Credit: rafeejewell