Lists are one good way to determine how valuable a twitter profile is to its followers. Twitter Lists were released in 2009 as a way for users to aggregate interesting or useful people into customised news feeds.
For you to be listed on Twitter means that someone has gone to the trouble of creating a list, determining that your profile is suitable, and adding you to that list. This is a very manual process and it shows that your tweets are valuable enough to someone that they want to categorise you and have regular access to your content.
Here are six ways you can get your Twitter profile onto more lists.
1. Tweet in your niche and tweet good quality content. If you are into longboard surfing, find some good sources of high quality articles and share the content with your followers. This will encourage your followers to add you to lists like "longboarding", "surfing", "surf history", etc.
2. Fill in your location info in your profile settings and tweet about your city and your local area. Take pictures and tweet from concerts, markets and festivals in your city. You could also consider sending your location check-ins (like Foursquare) to your Twitter feed, however in my opinion this should be limited. Tweeting about your area will get you onto lists like "Brisbane Tweeps", "Aussies", "Local Tweeters".
3. Reply to people's tweets and ask questions to drive engagement with your profile. It's easy for people to over-automate their twitter profile and sometimes it's hard determining the robots from the real people. As well as being part of the Twitter best practices handbook, replying to people and showing that you're human will get you onto lists like "Real People", "Repliers", "Conversation Tweeps".
4. In a similar vain to the above Tip, ReTweeting people is a great way to increase your Twitter Karma and get yourself onto lists like "People who have RTd", "Sharers".
5. Latch on to popular events, webinars and presentations, like SXSW, TED Talks, SMX, or any popular webinars or bloggers conferences. These events generally have an agreed 'hashtag' (a common tag that people add to their tweets, like #SXSW), which can be used to connect with other Twitterers who are attending the same event. Using hashtags increases your visibility among people who are searching for content from a particular event, and they will often put these profiles into lists so they can follow the event and check back regularly.
6. People like listing people who they've met in person, so consider attending one of the live tweet-ups in your city, like BTUB in Brisbane. In the lead-up to the event, see which of your followers are attending and make a point of meeting them on the night. You could even explicitly tell the person that you'll be listing them on your "Tweeters I've met" list, I'm sure they'd be happy to return the favour.
There are plenty of other ways to encourage followers to add your profile to a Twitter list, including using the List management tool Listorious.
What are your tips? If you are on Twitter, have a look at where you have been listed by clicking on the "Listed" link on your profile.
I'd love it if you could share your thoughts here, just comment down below.
Chris
is a specialist in Social Media and Twitter addict at
Traffika.
Follow him on Twitter
@chrispahor.
