It has come to my attention that most people either don't use Twitter, or set up accounts, but never log in. Twitter can be overwhelming if you don't know how to manage it, especially if, like me, you follow hundreds of people.
Awhile back, I was complaining about Twitter & how my feed is clogged up with Huffington Post & their gazillion subsidiaries when my friend Colby taught me how to make & use lists within Twitter. It took me an entire afternoon to set it up, but it's definitely changed my Twitter life.
I've tried to explain to a few friends how to set up these lists, but it seems easier to do it here where I can use visuals. Let's get started!
From the Twitter home page, click "View My Profile Page." This will take you to your Twitter profile, obvi. Under your picture, there should be a box that says, "Tweets", "Following", "Followers", "Favorites", "Lists" & "Recent Images". Click on "Lists".
This is what my Lists page looks like. I'm hoping the Lists option shows up even if you don't have any lists set up yet. If it doesn't, let me know.
The first thing you want to do is click "Create List". I recommend creating a list of people that you actually want to read. My list like this is called Read. I have another list called Friends. The difference is, Read includes anything I want to read, food trucks, news, etc, whereas Friends is just that, friends.
So give your list a name. Twitter gives you the option of adding a 100 character description, but I don't do that because all of my lists are private, so no one sees them but me. Speaking of, you definitely want your Read list marked Private. You don't need your various besties knowing that you don't read their tweets. Trust. Once you've given your new list a name & clicked "Private", click "Save List" & you're done! You just made your first list.
Once you click, "Save List", Twitter takes you to this page where you can find people to add to your list. I suggest adding everyone who think you want to read, then you can go back at any time & make adjustments. It's pretty easy to edit your lists once they're set up.
Once you have your first list set up, repeat this process as necessary depending on how many lists you want to create. I have 8 lists: Music, Read, Food, Celebs, News/Companies, Politics, Bloggers & Friends, but you may only want 1 Read/Friends list. Totally your call. Again, I recommend making your lists private. My Twitter account isn't private, but my lists are. I also recommend only adding people to 1 list. It gets tedious to constantly read the same tweets in different lists.
That's it! That wasn't so bad, right? The awesome thing is, if you check your Read list regularly from your iPhone, your phone will remember & automatically go to your Read list every time. Thanks, Apple!
One last general Twitter recommendation, I highly suggest putting a disclaimer on your profile page. You can do this by clicking "Edit Your Profile" & typing your disclaimer statement into the text box titled "Bio". My aforementioned friend Colby has my favorite disclaimer, "All opinions here are my own, but feel free to agree with them." Mine just says, "All views and opinions expressed here are my own and are not reflective of anything other than yours truly." I copied that from my friend Jenn. Regardless of how you say it, say it.
I hope this was helpful & I hope that these lists make Twitter a little more user friendly for some of you. I love Twitter & think it's great resource for information, you just have to know how to manage it.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
