Find Followers - Use Twitter Lists
Grow your network and discover people to follow using Twitter Lists...
I manage a number of twitter accounts and have lots of lists and I really believe these lists are a useful tool to increase follower numbers and blog readers. So with New Year in mind perhaps it's time to create a few, or follow a few...
The list I keep for @craftbloguk can be found here - http://twitter.com/CraftBlogUK/uk-craft-bloggers/members (it needs updating and that's the only downside of a list) It just takes a click to add someone to a list and if you do this each time you follow or find a new tweeter it's easily manageable.
Lists are a great way to increase followers and find followers through networking with curated groups of tweeters that share common goals or interests.
Curating twitter lists is simple, no special skills needed whatsoever. To make a list just click on the tab 'lists' on your twitter home page and click 'create a list' - the instructions are easy to follow. Even simpler than creating a list is finding a list and either following the list or clicking through to 'following' and finding individual people to follow.
Following others is a good way of introducing yourself and of course your blog, the idea is they will follow you back. That's not always the case, but sitting back and expecting followers to find you is going to get very boring! There are three tabs when you click on someones list, tweets, following and followers. Clicking on Following or Followers will give you a list of people with the green 'follow' buttons beside each name so when you have the time, look through and follow, follow, follow! Take care not to overdo it or twitter will not be happy and think you are a spammer as well as other people who see your follow/follower ratio. You can use services like Friend or Follow to find out who hasn't followed you back.
It's a great idea to tweet a curator of a list and congratulate them on their list, especially if it's a network that you want to be a part of - the fact they have created a list shows they are passionate about their subject. Include the link and they will probably retweet it, I certainly do (and will continue to do so ;)
How to find twitter lists
I write this blog for UK Craft Bloggers so I search through lists people have made with UK sellers of Craft. I use Listorious to find good lists. My Craft Blog UK list is 4th on their 'Top Craft Lists' list, it's rather nice to see my twitter avatars are sitting up there next to the big E. I also use tweet decks directory of lists.
If you look at the make up of a list - http://twitter.com/CraftBlogUK/uk-craft-bloggers you will see that it's the users twitter address followed by the name of their list. This means you can also use google by doing a site search. Hopefully twitter will actually enable us to search lists soon too, I've had a good look and I can't see how to do it. So using google, if you are interested in jewellery lists paste this search to google - site:twitter.com/*/jewellery - just change jewellery for your chosen keyword.
A list of things to do:
- Create a great twitter list - it doesn't have to be huge, in fact it's better to be selective so people want to get onto it.
- Tweet and facebook about it to get followers of your awesome list
- Blog about it to get followers of your awesome list (your list is fab and needs to be shared)
- Tell people you have added them to your fabulous list
- Search for lists
- Follow, follow, follow and engage with people on like minded lists who will enjoy your blog posts
- Tell more people about your 'useful/inspiring/kick ass (delete as applicable) list...
- Become renowned on twitter as an expert in your field ;)
Thanks for reading - back soon with more help for UK Craft Bloggers - please let me know if you want me to blog about something in particular.
x H
Submit your UK Craft Blog! (I still have a huge backlog so do bear with me - CBuk is a hobby for me and when I'm busy it has to take a back seat - blame http://blog.folksy.com and http://haptreeandme.blogspot.com )
