May 3: Twitter Tips - Using Lists

My last post was a short list of things I learned in Twitter class last week. I appreciate the wonderful comments I received and thought some of you might like more in depth instruction on how to make and use lists in Twitter.

1. When you sign into your Twitter account you will most likely be on your Home Page. On the left you will see the word Timeline highlighted, showing that you are on the timeline tab. All of the most recent tweets that you follow will be shown under that tab. On the right side of the screen will be a little dashboard showing whether anyone wants to follow you, your last tweet, who you are following, who is following you, etc…



2. Click on the word Following it's located directly under your picture and is followed by the number of people you follow.



3. Next to each name you want to include in a list click on the list icon.
4. From the drop down menu choose Create a list.
   In the screen shot I have two lists created, Chicago News is a public list and Friends is a private list. You can tell because there is a lock next to Friends. I have explorechicago and chicagotribune in the public list Chicago News and jleflar23 in my private Friends list.
   
5. I'm going to create a new list for sreggie. He tweets about the South Loop, my neighborhood in Chicago.
   For list name I chose Chicago South Loop News. Since I am choosing to make this list public I gave it a description, for my private lists I probably won't bother, it's optional.
6. Now that my lists are created I can populate them. I follow the alderman of my neighborhood, so I will add him to my South Loop News list.
   
7. Once finished I can go back to the top of the page and click on the Lists tab. A drop down window will appear so I can quickly choose the list I want to look at.
8. From the right side of that page I can quickly jump to any of my other lists. I can also see who has most recently followed my lists. This has great potential for making new contacts who share the same interests as you.

Troubleshooting

I've come across the same problem a few times while creating lists. Sometimes they don't show up on the drop down where you can assign someone to a list or create a new one. Just refresh the page. You may need to refresh multiple times. I guess there is a little bug. When I was setting up lists for the 184 people we follow in our real estate business I just wrote down the names of the 20 or so people I could not add to a list immediately and came back to them a day later. The second time around worked like a charm!

BONUS SECTION

A little about myself:
If you've been following you will remember a few posts ago when I mentioned that I would soon be a race car driver and that I would explain later. Yesterday my husband and I took an all day class with Hooked on Driving where we learned performance driving and how to take our car to its limits. We are beginners, so we didn't get it to it's limits, but one of the instructors who is a race car driver did. It was an awesome day! We will be going back again and again.