Week 8: Making a List and Checking it... a Whole Bunch!

My father was big on to-do lists. He taught me to organize tasks on a list and check them off one at a time, but a list on Twitter is not a to-do list. This kind of list actually save you a lot of time, energy and frustration. It is a filtered newsfeed with content that you really like.

Let's face it, you will follow a lot of people on Twitter if you want your business to grow. Your general Twitter newsfeed might include random kitten pictures, quotes, sexy photos or funny videos. A few of the people will have amazing, relevant content. They are the cream of the crop, top of the line, the best of the best. Making a list in Twitter is a great way to sift through the huge amount of content in your general newsfeed and provide a way to quickly the best.

Who decides what is best? You decide!

Sifting through a huge newsfeed is not going to work well, so we can pick our favorite accounts and ad them to a list. Using lists will help us reach the goal of providing great content by filtering out the, um, kitten pictures and such.

Setting up a list is easy. Look for the icon that looks like a gear. Then click on "Add or remove from lists..." Then there will be a button that says, "Create a list". Once you have a list created in Twitter, you can easily access it to find the best content, then click the retweet symbol to send good content on to your followers.

Never forget, by retweeting you are recommending the content to your followers.

If there is a link leading somewhere else, it is a really good idea to click on the link yourself and check it out before retweeting it. I know this takes a minute or two, but it is important to protect your reputation online by retweeting responsibly.

To get started, go to the search window in Twitter and enter keywords that are related to your business.

My keywords were:

Content
Marketing Tips
Email Marketing
Blogging Tips

I played around and tried a couple more, but these were the successful ones.


Here's who I found:

@CMIContent
@247MarketingTip
@StartGrowthHack
@pureresiduals
@bloggingtipscom
@bloggingdotorg



I created three lists:

Blogging Tips
Self-Publishing
Marketing Tips

People who follow my page, @diy4biz, may be trying to start a new business and/or make a living on the Internet, while working from home. They will be interested in different ways of making money online by blogging, self-publishing or marketing a product they sell. I will be adding more lists featuring other proven ways to make money online. These lists will be useful for anyone looking to start a do-it-yourself business.

The other thing to consider is the timing of posts. I plan to attract followers from all over the world, but mostly from the USA and Canada. These people may currently have a 9 to 5 job, they may be struggling with their new business, or they could be completely unemployed and searching for ideas all day. It's hard to guess when this diverse group of entrepreneurs or future business owners may be online. Then we need to consider the different time zones. I live on the California coast, but some of my followers may be in Eastern Time, 3 hours earlier. For me, it will probably be a trial and error kind of thing.

But if you are targeting customers in say, San Diego county who are planning a wedding, you could set your timing to match their west coast schedule. What time do you think your customers would be online?

Maxine