Recently, a colleague posted the following tweet:
I couldn’t agree more. Quite frankly, I think Twitter lists are one of the most underutilized aspects of Twitter.
All too often, I see and hear of Twitter users that simply don’t use lists or rarely check their own listings to see how others are categorizing them. In my perspective, lists serve four core purposes that deserve your attention if you’re actively tweeting.
1. Organize Your Peeps – It’s essential and really the only way that Twitter allows you to categorize all your followers into buckets…unless you truly prefer a hodge podge of #winning nonsense mixed in with actual valuable links from respected colleagues.
2. Assess a Follower – Spammers or sales folks are pretty easy to spot in the Twitterverse but a quick glance at how an individual is listed can provide simple insight into credibility.
3. Research Competition – Extending on the assessment point above, a Twitter profile bio says one thing but third party credibility speaks even louder. Sure a company may claim to be an active player in a certain space but are they truly living up to their word? Lists are great insight into public perception.
4. Monitor Your Personal Brand – Lists do matter when it comes to impacting who finds you and how you are positioned online. Do an ego check and glance at your lists from time to time to monitor how others perceive your brand. Not how you expected? Take another gander at your Twitter profile and an even deeper assessment of the type of content you are tweeting.
What do you find most useful about Twitter lists?
Image courtesy of Laughing Squid.
Scott Meis is the Digital Strategy Director for Weber Shandwick Seattle. He leads digital strategy development and execution for a variety of corporate, government and non-profit clients. To learn more, you can follow him on Twitter @ScottMeis or visit his blog at www.ScottMeis.com. 
I use them as my curated content. With time I have found them really simple and easy to use.
Do you know if I can send a reply to all the list’s members??
I don’t use lists at all. This has to be the most useless feature on Twitter. Just follow people that you’re interested in … what’s the point of categorizing them into groups?
@Tommaso – No, not possible to reply to all followers on a list.
@DJ – I would actually argue the opposite and view it as one of the MOST useful. Categorizing into groups makes your Twitter experience manageable. For example, from a PR perspective, I want to group together various categories of followers by practice area or specialty (e.g. technology, nonprofit, healthcare, digital, etc.) to make it easy to monitor and engage in Tweetdeck.
I love to use lists to find like minded professionals that I can collaborate with, and find my target audience that might enjoy what I have to Tweet.
These are great tips for assesing myself.
I agree, twitter lists make twitter much more useful and can help protect a user from content overload. It’s hard to listen to 200 peoples conversations at once, but breaking them down into 20 or 30 person groups makes listening and interacting much more manageable.
agree, Scott – I spend the vast amount of my Twitter time on lists…