5 Ways to Use Twitter Lists for B2B Businesses

Twitter Lists

There’s no argument that Twitter has become an essential component of a B2B inbound marketing strategy. There are a number of reasons for why Twitter is a great social media tool for businesses. These include, discovering fresh content, making new connections, and cultivating industry communities. However, the amount of information that is pumped out on Twitter can be overwhelming. This is where Twitter lists can help.

Twitter lists are a collelction of Twitter users that are placed in a specific category (called a list) based on one common idea. When you click into a specific list, you only see tweets from those who have been added to that list. Twitter lists can then help you organize your feed to make the most out of your Twitter experience. Another big advantage of Twitter lists is that you can specify if you want them to be private (only accessible to you) or public (others can see and subscribe). That being said, you can choose to create your own lists, or your can search for and subscribe to other lists. You can also choose to add yourself to Twitter lists if your content relates to the the list type. This can be especially beneficial for public lists because others could subscribe to you, improving your social amplification.

For VA Partners, Twitter lists have been very useful to cultivate great engagement with our audience by curating relevant content and monitoring our Twitter followers activities.

Here are some of the ways you can use Twitter lists:

  1. Organize by Topic

    To make your Twitter feed more manageable and to find relevant content, create lists on specific topics. These lists could include industry thought leaders, local bloggers, and larger publications that provide content on the topic. Then instead of having to scan though a ton of information on you Twitter feed, you can click into your lists to gather topic specific information more efficiently.

  2. Recognize Customers

    There are great benefits that come out of creating a customer list. First you’ll need to create a list that includes all your clients Twitter feed. This makes it a lot easier to interact with your customers and recognize their efforts on social media, with a favorite, re-tweet, or by starting a conversation with your clients. A little ping on social media to a customer can go a long way.

  3. Monitor Prospects

    Like mentioned earlier, a positive interaction on social can go a long way. This not only goes for existing customers, but also for potential customers. Use the private list function to create a prospects lists. Check into this list, to see if you can provide solutions or answer questions for your prospects. An small interaction on Twitter can lead to a future conversation.

  4. See Your Competitor’s Actions

    A private Twitter list is also handy when it comes to monitoring competitors’ actions. This will help you get a more through competitive analysis by keeping track of other businesses in your industry using their social media strategy.

  5. Create a Company Directory

    One of the best ways to amplify your businesses’ content is to share it on social media. Who better to share and engage with content than your own employees. Create a company or department directory and include all your employees who have Twitter. Then you can more readily encourage you business’s biggest advocates to participate in social conversations. Determine if you think it would be beneficial to have this type of list be public or private.

*Bonus

If you’re using an external application to manage your Twitter account, such as Hootsuite, you can not only input lists you’ve created on Twitter, but you can also create streams which are similar to lists. In the Hootsuite set-up, you can save Twitter searches and add it to your dashboard. Here are a couple of streams you should consider including:

  1. Events search

    Many events have hashtags that you can follow. If you are attending an event, use this stream to find connections and participate in the online conversation. If you aren’t attending the event, this stream will be helpful to see what you’ve missed. Twitter is becoming rich with media content, so you can check out not only insights from the event, but images and videos.

  2. Company search

    Twitter gives you notifications for when your company is mentioned using your Twitter handle. However, this doesn’t necessarily cover every time your company brand is mentioned on Twitter. For example, your brand could be mentioned without the @symbol. In this situation, you will not receive a notification. This stream is helpful to capture all possible social opportunities and see how your brand is discussed on Twitter.

By taking the time to organize your Twitter lists, you’ll get a lot more value from your Twitter account. This will ensure that you gain the best opportunities out of your Twitter interactions to help support your overall inbound marketing strategy.

If you want to see how Twitter and social media works together with a marketing strategy download our white paper, Introduction to Inbound Marketing or reach out to us on Twitter @vapartners.

5 Ways to Use Twitter Lists for B2B Businesses