I love new things, especially new technologies. So I jumped full force into this newfangled gizmo called Twitter Lists. What started out as a really interesting tool, became a LOT of work.

Because I am a writer, and a Romance writer, I have used twitter lists to that advantage, and this blog post will as such be related to writing, writers, and Romance Writers. Please, feel free to pass this along to anyone on Twitter that you know. The amount of time I’ve spent (perhaps even wasted) should be able to benefit others, especially if it’s shared.

What are Twitter Lists? You can’t do anything with them until you understand the basic principle of what they are.

Twitter Lists are a new Beta feature that let you create… well, there’s no simpler way to put this, but they let you create lists. Because its Beta, that means that the list feature is still in development, so all of the kinks are definitely not worked out. It also means that as users, we can tell the developers what we think should be changed, what we like, what we hate.

So why would you want to make a list? And what sort of list would you make? More importantly, do you even need to make a list? Guess what, you don’t have to make a list to use Twitter lists. You can simply follow someone else’s list. How?

Let’s get down to it.

Groups:  For a long while Twitter users have been wanting a way to group people they follow, who follow them, who have the same interests, etc. Twitter lists is a way to do that. If I create a group and it has 5 people in the group, I will just see the twitter feed of those five people. (This is similar to what other programs like Tweetdeck do, only it’s directly on Twitter) and not only that, but other people can access those lists, and find authors, agents, etc. that they’ve not previously known about.  The lists option is a fantastic organizational tool. Some use it as a way to recommend other twitter users, and some even use it as a popularity tool.

My first thought about the lists was that it was such a great way to remember who/what people are, what they do, and especially my writing friends – what they write, if they’re published, etc. Then I realized it’s a great way for others to find certain groups. What if you’re interested in Writing? You could take a look at my list of Writers, and find all sorts of writers you had never realized were on Twitter.

So I had to figure out how to use this tool. The first thing I saw was this big white box:

So I clicked the “Create a new list” button. A new window pops up:

Then I gave my list a name “Test List 1” (You will see it say @RachelJLists. This is an account I set up to be able to do the early screenshots.) To the side of my twitter page, along the bar that has your stats, the search box, the latest trending topics, etc, was a new section. Lists. And there was my very first list!

Now, I don’t know how long that white box will be there, so let me tell you how to do lists without using it. If you login, and then scroll down your side bar, you will see this:

As you can see, it has “New List”. If you click on it, you will get

and then you can name your new list. After you’ve made a few lists, it will look like this:

Ok, so you’ve made your lists, now what?! Well what I did is I went to the list of people I was following, and by each person is a new button . If you click on this, it will let show you a box like this:

As you can see, it has boxes next to each of the lists. (I’ve switched back to my main account so that you can see fully formed lists.) So what I did, is I went through all 800 + people that I follow, and assigned them to the proper lists.

Here’s @SabrinaDarby, and you can see what I’ve assigned her to. As you can see, each person can be assigned to multiple lists. This helps me to remember that she is a Romance Diva, she’s a Romance Writer, published, and she’s not only a Historical Romance Writer, but her writing also deals with Regency.

Now, there IS one other way to make a list, rather than the white box at the top, or the “New List” feature in the side bar. You can go through your followees and followers, and click on the box next to their name, and at the bottom of the pop-up window, will be “New List”.

This will not only let you make a new list (by bringing up the “Create a new list” box), it will automatically assign that person to that new list.

So now Sabrina is assigned to the list “Test”. I can just as easily UN-Assign her to that list by clicking the box.

Now, I can tell you from experience, that this entire process is a pain! 800 + followees, and it took a couple of days. Unless you really want to make your own list, or you only follow 20-100 people, I would say don’t make a list. However, still use them, by following other people’s lists.

You can look at my lists,

and click on one you want to follow. Let’s click “Agents-and-editors”. It will bring you to a page that has a twitter feed of all the people on the list. At the top, you will see this:

You can then click Follow this list. You will be able to see the twitter feed of only the people the list is following. You can also click where it says “Following” and get a list of Agents and Editors.

You can then follow those people if you’d like to, so that they’re tweets show up in your general twitter feed, or you can assign them to your own lists, or you can just leave them alone, and check on this list to see their tweets. If you go back to your side bar on your main page, the lists you’ve created and/or the lists you follow will be listed there.

You can click on any one of them to see the twitter feeds of the people on the list, or to see the people on the list, and then follow them. So say you go to my Agents and Editors list. Wow, you’ve found an editor you didn’t know, let’s say Wolfson Literary. You can then go to your action buttons on the right side, and either tell twitter to follow Wolfson, or you can assign Wolfson to your very own twitter list. Say you want to put all agents and editors under your twitter list “Publishing, Etc.”. Well you can, you’ll just click the button, and check the box that applies. If you don’t yet have a “Publishing, Etc.” list, you can always click the  New List option at the bottom, and make the “Publishing, Etc.” list. Again, I have to advise you not to make lists if you follow more than 100 people. It is so much simpler to just follow other people’s lists.

That’s how to Set-Up the Lists. Let’s get to how to Utilize them. Now here’s where I did a lot of the pain-in-the-neck work. I logged in to twitter.com, scrolled down and saw that someone on my profile page would only see

Well I have a lot more lists than that!

People have to push “View All” to see all 18 lists (here’s a shot of most), and people are in general lazy – I know I am. When I first did my lists, do you know what was at the top? Jewelry. Now as interesting as Jewelry makers on twitter are, its not going to help me or others in the writing community if the first thing people see is Jewelry.

This was a nightmare in the making. Because it is a new feature, and because it’s beta, not all those kinks are worked out, especially reorganization.

There is no way, as yet, to move your lists around. So I tried to start over by adding all the new lists, and then going through and checking and unchecking each person’s box. Well… that doesn’t work quite as you think.

First of all, you’re only allowed 20 lists at the moment. Each list can have 500 people on it. Keep that in mind, because if you have a big list of Writers, you’re going to end up needing a second list for when you hit 500 people. Thus, my Writers 2 list. Here comes the biggest PIA. The topmost list will be the newest list. So I wanted Romance Writers at the top of my list. By making it my first list, however, it ended up on the bottom!

So what I did, is I took a piece of paper, and I wrote down all the lists I wanted. Then I looked at it, and decided which order would be most beneficial to me, and to people looking through my lists. Especially because when you first come to my profile page, before you click “View All” you can only see 5-6 of the lists. So after I figured out which order they went in, I started from the bottom.

I made a duplicate list for “Jewelry-bags-Shoes-etc” and called it “Jewelry”. You can edit the names later, so that later I changed the name back to “Jewelry-bags-Shoes-etc”. Here’s where the really fun stuff happened. I went through each list and did this. First I did Jewelry. I checked the new “Jewelry” list, then unchecked the “Jewelry-bags-Shoes-etc” list. For each person I followed on that list. Luckily “Jewelry-bags-Shoes-etc” had 6 people on it. Writers was 500 people… that one took me a long while. After I had reassigned the people on “Jewelry-bags-Shoes-etc”, I then deleted “Jewelry-bags-Shoes-etc”. I was left with “Jewelry” at the top of my list. I then clicked Delete at the top:

If you can’t find this, you’ve probably gone to another page by accident, so go to your homepage, scroll down to your lists, and click on ““Jewelry-bags-Shoes-etc” (or the list you want to get rid of).

You’ll get to this page.

Click on “View list page” and at the top you will see “You created this list… Edit | Delete” If you click edit, you can change the name, if you click Delete, it will let you delete. So now that I deleted the duplicate list, I then went to the homepage, clicked on “Jewelry” clicked on “View List Page” and hit “Edit”. I then changed the name Jewelry back to “Jewelry-bags-Shoes-etc”. Now Jewelry looked like it was at the top of my list, but thankfully, it would be at the bottom when I was done. So I worked from the bottom up, and did each of the 18 lists exactly like this. It was incredibly time intensive, but from my pov, worth it. Now the first 6 are the most important to not only me, but people looking through my lists. This utilizes my lists to the utmost. Do yours?

There are two more ways to get the most out of your twitter lists. (And to those who read the blog before, my apologies on forgetting to include this!)

Have you heard of WeFollow? It’s a great way to promote yourself on twitter – I’ve put myself under the WeFollow Twitter Directory as  “Author, Writer, Romance, Regency, & Historical.” This way, people going to the directory of “Author” can find me there. So there is a flurry of new applications for Twitter Lists, and one of these is Listorious. While it has a somewhat unfortunate name that makes you think of the bacteria Listeria, it’s a lot like WeFollow in that it puts your lists into a large directory of lists. It really is a great way to promote your lists. You will need to click allow to let Listorious have access to your lists. When I did it, it took them a while to load my lists to their server – so I at first thought you had to add your own lists. No, just wait a bit, and then you can click “Add to Listorious” and you can add each of your lists. People then searching through lists will see yours – and either follow your lists, or follow the members on your lists.

As to the second way – it’s adding yourself. At first I was a bit unsure, it seemed kind of silly. But as I thought about it, I realized that people looking at my lists,  are not going to see me unless I add myself to the ones that apply to me. So I did. I added myself to Writer, Romance Writer, Historical Romance Writer, Regency, and Romance Divas. How did I do this? You can either click on “Profile” at the top, or click on your name at the top of the side bar. It will take you to your profile page, and it will say “That’s You!”. To the right will be a button that says Lists and has some lines. Click that, and you can add yourself to all of your lists, or just the ones that apply. This way, when people comb through the list feeds and/or the list members, you are also on there. Don’t forget, twitter is all about promotion!

We’ve covered what lists are, how to make them, and how to utilize them. Now to quickly address whether or not Twitter is working for you. Always remember that twitter is a fantastic PR and networking tool. From this experience, I can tell you that a good 75-85% of you are NOT having twitter work to your advantage. I got extremely frustrated as I clicked through all 800+ people and assigned them. Why? Because I could NOT tell what they should be assigned to. People’s twitter profiles said barely anything. If it did at least say they were writers, it didn’t say what kind, if they were published, if they belonged to any organizations.

I had to click on an immense amount of sites to try and find this info. I say try and find, because unfortunately a vast amount of the sites were so poorly put together that I spent a lot of time trying to find what genre people wrote, if they had books published, etc. Make twitter work for you! If I cannot figure out what you are, who you are, what you do, then its not helping you promote you, your writing, or your books. It will also keep you off many lists, as most people are not as anal as I, and will not search through your site to figure out which list you should be on.

Please, update your twitter profiles. In mine, I was able to fit quite a lot of info. I have my tagline, that I’m a writer, that I write Regency-set and Georgian-set historical romances, that I belong to certain groups. Someone looking at my twitter profile could then see that I would fit into certain lists – Writer, Romance, Romance Writer, Regency, RWA, Historical Fiction, Romance Divas, etc. Twitter should be working to YOUR advantage. If you want to use it as a party tool – chatting, making friends, etc, and nothing else – then your profile is fine as is. If, however, you want to use it as a tool to promote your writing, your books, get fans, meet other authors, network – then you MUST update your profile and include the pertinent facts about yourself. Once you have updated your profile, you will have a much better chance of being on people’s lists, which will get you followers, which will help you promote your writing.

I hope this has helped answer your questions about Twitter Lists, and if you have any questions at all, please feel free to tweet or DM me on twitter, at @RachelJameson . If you would like to do the very easy thing, you can follow my lists at http://twitter.com/RachelJameson/lists .