So, you’ve probably been using Twitter for a while and are getting used to it’s peculiarities. First things first; your personal timeline. You have your tweet count, who you follow and who follows you right back, and your likes. But wait! What’s that curious option at the end? Enter Twitter’s ‘lists’.

What is a ‘list’?

Put simply, a Twitter list is a collection of accounts you especially want to listen to or engage with, usually grouped around a particular theme or topic. Twitter lists are no different from other kinds of lists. Well…maybe a little different. They have groups of people and accounts that fit the bill of what you are trying to achieve or keep up to date with.

For example, if you want to get more into cooking, you may put people/accounts that post recipes and dishes regularly in one list labelled ‘Cooking up a storm’. Or, if you want to see what your old university friends are getting up to, having them all in one place will mean that you can see their musings and daily tweets about their pet cat named Toby, a lot more easily. Lists mean you can have your ear in a lot of different places, without finding yourself being swallowed by the noise that is your timeline, every second of the day.

How do I set up a list?

It is actually really easy (honest!). Here are our 4 simple steps.

Step 1

You can approach Lists in 2 ways (see the two circles).

Step 2

Secondly, under your banner, on the right hand side, will be this section. Click ‘create a list’.

Step 3

You will then be met with this screen. Type in what you want your list to be called under ‘List Name’ (there is a max. character limit of 25, and it cannot start with a number). Add a description and decide on your privacy settings of the list (a max. character limit of 100, so choose wisely!).

Public: Anyone can see your lists. If a list is public, it is good to write something in the description as people can understand your thought-train for adding them to the list. If you add someone to your list, they will be notified that you have added them. E.g. People/Companies who post recipes and dishes I want to try in the future.

Private: Only you can see your lists. You do not need to necessarily add anything to the description here unless you feel the need to have certain notes to remind yourself of important information. E.g. the dates you were at university, if the list is for your friends from that time period.

Don’t forget to hit save!

Step 4

A list is meaningless with nothing on it so you need to add people to the list for success. The easiest way is to find the person or account you want to add and then click on the little cog that appears by their bio. See our example:

It will give you the option of adding and removing them from your lists. If any of you happen to be creating lists of accounts to follow to cheer you up, I thoroughly recommend Roy here – very witty, very warming, one of my favourite tweeters! He also has a great selection of lists that he’s curated already so if you want to subscribe to a ready formed list, take a look.

You’ve set up your list, now what?

Under your banner, on the left, will be a section that keeps track of your list.

Members are people who you have put in the list. People can then subscribe to your list, to view it as well. This is particularly useful if, for example, you have a list for company employees. Everyone can see what that collective of people are doing, where their passions lie and where the company as a whole is reaching towards.

The middle section of this page will be all the tweets of the members in that list. It is essentially a timeline of those specific people you want to see. It is an organisational tool that engages you at the speed you want. One of our mantras with social media is efficiency – it’s so easy to waste time on it. Using Twitter lists mean you can get to the people and the messages you want to quickly, without messing about. Perfect for meaningful marketing that brings results.

Wondering who or what to create lists about? Here’s 5 great ideas for Twitter lists.