Twitter have now finished their staged roll-out of the new ‘Lists’ feature across the social media network.  Let’s take a look at where Lists are capable of playing a role in your businesses social media activities.

Monitor Your Market -

With many brands and companies now openly embracing social media as a new business tool, Twitter has made both market and competitor information more readily available as well as easily shared. It’s important to be aware of what’s happening in the marketplace of your business and above all, knowing your competition.  With Twitter lists you simply group a number of your own user directories together that can monitor this activity (you may also like to make this list private). Once you have created these lists, all the tweets are available in one timeline making it much easier to digest. In fact you don’t even need to follow them directly as long as their tweets aren’t protected.

Managing Conversations -

In similar fashion to my last Bluewire Media blog post, Connecting with Customers in the Social Web, monitoring clients and Twitter users commenting about you and your brand can often be invaluable. In fact I recently discovered a tool that will automatically list users that you have had conversations with on Twitter. With only a couple of clicks the Conversationlist will set up and self manage users that you have recently engaged with. I find it is an incredibly useful way for your followers to see who influences you on Twitter. Check out http://conversationlist.com/

Influencers (especially those who Tweet in different timezones) -

If your follower count is more than say, fifty it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to read every tweet that rolls through your Twitter feed. Those with a following count in the thousands should forget it all together.  But by listing your influencers on Twitter you can now read all those really interesting and helpful links and tweets at the moment it suits you.  You probably also follow a few people/brands from overseas which may be in different timezones to your own. By collating those users in a specific list you will be able to peruse the information they shared to their followers whilst you were sleeping over a cup of coffee in the morning. Perfect.

How are you finding the new List feature from Twitter? Is it a help or hindrance?  Tell us in the comments section.

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Charlie Carter co-ordinates Bluewire Media’s sales and marketing activity. Charlie also has an avid interest in social media and you can follow him @dangercharlie on Twitter.

Social Media Brisbane: Bluewire Media is a leading internet strategy, web design, online marketing company in West End, Brisbane, focusing on the property, finance & health sectors.

I recently came across a terrific example of social media usage in business from a Slideshare presentation by Jonathan Crossfield of the Australian web hosting and domain company, NetRegistry.

One case study particularly stood out which involved an interaction @NetRegistry had had with a fellow Twitter user.

How would you rate this example as a first impression for a business engaging a potential client?

Notice how NetRegistry were able to intercept this conversation and direct the user to the relevant product page in a clear and professional manner.

It is now becoming more common for brands to develop social media strategies to monitor and engage discussions about their products in the social web.

Why are they doing this? It’s because these companies see the value in delighting their customers with knowledge about their products who in turn are more than happy to share these positive experiences with their friends and networks!

By using social media tools that are freely available on the web, your business can achieve a higher level of customer interaction at the problem solving level, which for many, is usually their first step.

Check out Jonathan Crossfield’s slides at Slideshare.

How are you interacting with your clients via social media?  Tell us in the comments section.

Social Media Brisbane: Bluewire Media is a leading internet strategy, web design, online marketing company in West End, Brisbane, focusing on the property, finance & health sectors.

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