Twitter Lists As A Networking Tool

One of the most frequent questions I get from (new) users of Twitter is who I should I follow. A great question and I would usually forward them to a directory like Twellow (for categories and/or location) or Twitterholic (for location and number of followers). There are lots of Twitter apps for this but they are for me the easiest to use and describe and they can get immediate results.

But Twitter rolled out Twitter Lists and it has become my new best friend of the moment. Rather than go through the many, many followers of someone I like, respect, follow, or find interesting to see who they follow I can take a bit of a shortcut and see who of their followers they are listing. Sure they have missed some cool folks to add to a list but I will rely on them to point out their favorites.

Here are some examples of Twitter Lists (click photo to enlarge):

Jeremy Mooney (@jeremyjm) has created a Twitter List, MinneBar Attendees, for the upcoming MinneBar event (November 21^st at Best Buy Headquarters). This being an educational and networking event for the Minneapolis technology folks (add in some marketing, PR, venture capital, entrepreneurs) this is a list that is a no brainer for me to look through.

Tim Tyrell-Smith (@SpinStrategy) has a Twitter List, Tim’s Fave Career Experts, which is self explanatory.

Jason DeRusha (@DeRushaJ) has a Twitter List, MSP Reporters, which again explains itself. Here you can see that since I went to the list there are 3 more Tweets so I can hit refresh and see what the latest is.

John Sumser (@JohnSumser) has a Twitter List, Movers and Shakers, which is a list of Recruiter, HR and industry related people.

Lists are being created for all sort of networking groups, skill sets, events, companies, sports teams, non profits and more. So far I have been included on Twitter Lists:

By profession:

• Recruiter
• HR
• Career
• Social Media
• Business

By geography

• Minneapolis
• St Paul
• Twin Cities and MSP
• Minnesota and MN

By interest

• Social Media
• Gopher football
• Blogger

By being “cool”

• Cool
• Smarties
• Must Reads

So if you are networking, a job seeker, recruiting, trying to find new people to follow, trying to figure what this is all about, etc click MNHeadhunter Lists, see the different Twitter List names I have been added to and if a “category” sounds interesting to you start clicking on their profiles or just follow their list.

REMINDER: Following does very little to help with networking. Engage, comment, ask questions, Re Tweet, etc. You are either dancing or a wall flower.

The next few days I am going to start creating lists of my own. (I am always a late, early adopter of things)

Happy Listing....