What is a Twitter list and why should I make one?

What is Formulists and Formulytics?

How can I find new customers on Twitter? 

Some of these questions go back to Twitter basics, all are very important to ask.  To help users and others get quick and clear answers to these questions and more, we have prepared a “how to” and explanation guide on our site to address a number of them. Check it out and let us know what you think.  And if you have you have more questions, just ask!

New followers are potential future friends and customers, as well as an indication of the type of audience you’re attracting. 

Now on Hootsuite, you can easily create a self-updating list of your new followers via the Hootsuite app directory.  Just add the Formulists app and then choose to add a “recent followers” stream.

Who are your new followers? People you just met in real life? New potential friends? Future customers?

It helps to keep an eye on who is following or unfollowing you, so that you don’t miss opportunities to meet great new people and future friends. Learning who your new followers are and when they follow you will help you begin cultivating relationships with the new folks entering your social sphere.

Keep track of who is entering your network

There are a few ways to keep an eye on the new followers you’re getting. One way that you can straight from Twitter or a Twitter client like Hootsuite, is to use an automagically updating list, such as the Formulists “new followers” list, to track new followers. 

Start with “hello”, greet by name where possible

Acknowledgment is nice and on Twitter there are countless ways to do it.  If you are getting tons of new followers all the time, the easiest approach is sending one or a few tweets out that mention and say “hello” to all your new followers at once…

It’s the little things

…Of course, the more personal you can get, the more acknowledged and special you will make your new follower feel. It takes all of about two seconds to learn a person’s name on Twitter, and about five to learn a bit about them.  Just click on their name or display pic on Twitter:

Stay in touch

This is where a list of new followers can help you most. This will help you develop a relationship beyond just an initial greeting and really get to know who your new followers are and what they tweet about.  It will also make it easy for you to notice natural and interesting opportunities for engagement.  Wherever you notice a great idea or link, you can start a dialogue and begin building a relationship.

What other tips do you have for getting to know new followers?

Blog World Expo went on in LA this past weekend where a number of bloggers and social media experts came together to discuss relevant issues and ideas.  You can check out a bunch of these thoughts on the Blogworld.com website here.  

But for those of us who did not make it out to BWELA, or those of us that did and want to keep networking with the awesome group of people that went, we thought it might be fun to run a Formulytics analysis on #BWELA tweeps to see where they hang out on Twitter and other fun facts about them.

Where on Twitter are BWELA tweeps?

Where are some of the top places on Twitter you can find #BWELA tweeps chatting?

1. #brandsconf

2. #PubCon

3. #usguys

4. #blogchat

5. #swconf

Fact # 2- Where in the World Are Most BWELA tweeps?

1. California

2. New York

3. Texas

Fact # 3 - Top Retweeted People of the Week

Want to learn more? Check out the full analysis here.

There’s a lot of great chats that come up on Monday (#usguyschat, #socialchat, #rbchat)… or any other day of the week for that matter. The chats are great for learning new tips, meeting new people and just having a good time.  But they also seriously crank up your frequency of tweets per an hour which not all your followers will appreciate.  Thankfully, there are some built in elements of Twitter that you can utilize to your advantage to help keep your followers happy.

Tip 1: Put @ replies directly at the start of tweets

One of the many handy tips you can learn from @tweetsmarter’s blog, is that when a tweet starts with an @ reply, only people that are following both you and the person being @ replied will actually see that tweet in their twitter feed. Thus by starting most of your tweets with @ replies while engaging in a chat, you can seriously cut down the perceived frequency of tweets per an hour and keep your followers a little bit happy. 

@Tweetsmarter has also conveniently created two different twitter accounts @hidechat and @hidetag you can @ reply and the beginning of chat tweets in order to hide them from your followers. 

Tip 2: Quote or paraphrase original tweets within comments

Chats go fast and there’s a real temptation to just hit the RT button when you see a tweet you like (which I find happens a lot!). Sometimes it makes sense to do so, but there can be a tendency to over-share/over-RT and when this is the case a helpful tip is to package the RT within a comment “quoting” or paraphrasing the original tweet within an @ replied comment:

3. Make tweets that go out to all followers look like original tweets

A good tweet is a good tweet is a good tweet. If  there is a super great idea in there you want to share, you should do it! But try to make it look a little prettier. If the tweet was an @ reply you can try rephrasing it as a quoted comment (making sure to give credit to the person being quoted!).  Or if there’s a trail of RTs at the start, maybe put them at the end of the tweet so the tweet looks a bit cleaner.

That’s what I’ve got for now. Do you have any other ideas of how to keep followers happy while engaging in chats?

“A hashtag is really just a way of categorizing your tweets so that they are part of a narrowed conversation and they’re easier to find in Twitter search.”  - Lauren Dugan, “Twitter 101: Why Use Hashtags” 

Hashtags are great because they help you target both topics and audiences while giving context to your conversations in social media.  And as a result of using them you can enrich your engagement and extend your reach helping you get more engagement, retweets  and followers.  In other words, when used correctly, hashtags can get you a lot more bang for your buck- or tweet.  

Of course, the key to getting the most value from hashtags involves using them correctly. For example, don’t write a tweet like this:

“Don’t use hashtags excessively #for every #other word or extraneously #cheetos! hoping for traffic from them” - example from The Digital Marketer, “How to Use Hashtags Properly”  

The key is to make sure your hashtags are relevant to the topic of the tweet, understandable to the audience you’re targeting, and not over-used. If you want to read up more on the “Do’s and Don’t of Hashtags” check out a great post on the topic by Sherilynn from The Next Web.

So the question remains, how can you find the hashtags that are most relevant to the topic you’re tweeting about and that will be recognized/searched for most by your target audience?

To help you with this, we have developed a tool in Formulytics that allows you to discover the top trending hashtags for your target audience on Twitter.  Either use an existing list or make one with us (of your followers, experts in your industry, fans, etc) and we will find their top tweeted hashtags from the last two days. For instance, here are the top trending hashtags for the group of tweeps that have been tweeting about #bcwine most:

What’s great about this is that I find out exactly what’s trending with my audience (#BCwine tweeps) and the hashtags they use, will recognize and search for most.  I also learn about festivals going on (#fallwinefest), chats I should get involved in (#winechat) and other interests of my target audience (#Vancouver, #travel, #canucks- no surprise ;)

Give it a try if you’re interested and let us know what you think! You can tweet us any time @formulists or send an email our way to contact [at] formulists [dot] com. Would love to hear from you!

Lists are awesome.  They are awesome for finding people, for recognizing people and following topics and interests. But probably the most awesome thing about lists is that they allow you to engage and grow your Twitter network in targeted ways. After all, that is a key reason to be on social media: to find and network with people who have shared interests and to create conversation around your business on topics that are relevant to it.  

And so to help users realize the full potential of lists to help you with this goal, we are now introducing free engagement analytics to all users - analytics to show you how many people from a list follow you, RTed you that week or mentioned you.

These analytics will be viewable under the new “formulytics” tab when you click on a Twitter list from your Formulists home page.  Don’t have Formulists yet? You can check out some of these demo lists and see what you think! Definitely keep me posted if you need any help or have any questions. Cheers!

Today, we are formally introducing Formulytics, smart analytics that can help users more effectively reach and engage with their target audience on Twitter.  It works by running an analysis on the members of a Twitter list you want to target (ie: conference attendees, local foodies, moms, etc) and providing insight into who they are and what they’re interested in, including trending links, chats and tweets.  The analysis is all actionable with recommendations on how to best use the information.  

You can check out example cases of Formulytics here: http://formulists.com/demo. The full Formulytics package is available to “Supreme” level users ($14.99/month or $99.99/year) but all users can do a free 15 day trial to test it out for themselves.  
If you have any questions, feedback or requests we would love to hear from you! As always you can get in touch with us via Twitter, this blog or our email (contact[at] Formulists[dot]com. 

Both Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are awesome Twitter clients that can help you get a lot more out of your social media experience.  Specifically, both these dashboards allow you to monitor multiple “columns” or “streams” at the same time which means you can simultaneously monitor mentions, home feed, searches and list streams which can seriously boost your efficiency and save you time.

But how to add new columns of lists to your Tweetdeck?  It’s actually super simple. Here are the steps:

Step One: Sign into Tweetdeck!

Step Two: Click on the Tweetdeck logo in the top left corner of your dashboard

Step Three: Scroll down to your Twitter avatar and click on it to see all the different types of columns you can add.

Step Four: Click on the list you want to add as a new column and press the big blue button that says “Add Column”

Easy! If you have any questions or tips on how to best use lists with these clients or others just let me know by shooting me a tweet or writing a comment.  Cheers! 

Top mentioners/participants of “#tweetnight” chat

Hashtags on Twitter can be used as a great and effective way to both discover and draw in new people.  The same is true of certain keywords once you know how to use them. They can be especially useful to both businesses and individuals looking to expand their network and find relevant people to follow and engage with.  And by using Formulists, there is a way to find who is mentioning particular keywords or hasthags most. These top mentioners of a keyword or hashtag are likely to be people interested in them and great people to network too first. Additionally, if you are specifically looking for people in your area, you can find the top mentioners of a hashtag/keyword in any city as well.

First just sign into Formulists with your Twitter account.

Then, choose to add a “See Who Uses a Hashtag or Search Term Most” list from under the “Experts or Social Hubs Worth Meeting” category

Type in the word or hashtag you are interested in…

Filter for location if you are specifically looking for locals…

Create the list!

You should now have a list of a number of people from your city who mention a hasthag or search term most.