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! 

Often times I learn great tips and uses of Formulists from star users themselves.  The past month has been no exception with some really brilliant posts about Formulists and ways to make the most of the service. Below I have summarized and taken quotes from some of these hot tips and provided links to the posts and their authors so that you can get in touch with them and learn more!

Tip: Acknowledge and Get to Know New Followers

One of many awesome tips from @momcommblog’s post

Why? “Marketing.. [is] about GENUINE interactions and building connections”. By taking the time to observe and greet new followers, you help establish a connection that can be strengthened over time.

How? Create a “Track and Greet New Followers” Formulist.  Then “peek at your new list. Reply to someone. Retweet a post. Be helpful in some way. Respond when they ask their followers a question. You don’t have to spend hours doing this. Just a few minutes a day makes a big difference in showing that you’re interested in what people have to say, not just broadcasting your own message.”

Click here to make your own list of recent followers

Tip: Pay Back Generosity

One of several hot tips from @mmangen’s post on @shellykramer’s blog 

Why? “People who regularly RT the content that we share on Twitter…are doing us a huge favor- and paying us a wonderful compliment”. By reciprocating the favor, those RTers will feel acknowledged and special too and be more likely to keep up their supportive efforts.

How? “We use Formulists to automatically create lists of those friends who frequently RT our “stuff” and use those lists to return the favor”

Click here to make your own list of loyal retweeters

Do you find these tips helpful?  Or do you have other really great tips for us?  Please let us know by either commenting here, tweeting us or sending us an email contact@formulists.com. Would love to hear from you!

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Knowing the people that have been your or your brand’s most loyal retweeters can be helpful since it will allow you to evaluate what kinds of people are most loyal to you as well as how many of them there are.  Another valuable reason to try and figure out who these people are is so that you can make sure you are maintaining and strengthening your relationships with them.

Using lists from Formulists’ “Strengthen Social Ties” category, you can quickly figure out who these people are and also become much more efficient at maintaining and building your relationship with them.

How to Figure Out Who Your Most Loyal RTers Have Been

The more you get RTed, the more valuable it will be to figure out who these people are, since they are the creme of your retweeters crop. To figure out who these people are and how loyal they’ve been, select the “Track Your Most Loyal Retweeters” list from the “Strengthen Social Ties” 

By default, this list will find out who your most recent retweeters have been, so tweak the default settings to see who has been retweeting you most in the last year or your entire Twitter life :).  You can also add a cut-off to ensure that you only have people that have retweeted you a certain number of times. If you’re an average Twitter user you might want to set this number to 3, if you’re Lady Gaga, you might want to set it to 50.  

Create the list when you’re done!

How to Use This List of Loyal Retweeters

1. Analyze who they are and how many of them there are

Your list will be accessible from your Twitter homepage or client, but you can also learn more about its members by clicking on it from the Formulists home page.  If you do so, you will be able to see who the members of the list are in the order of how how many times that have retweeted you:

2. Strenghten Your relationships with these people!

Here’s where the Twitter list part of it becomes really valuable: you can pay extra close attention to these people, so that you can easily engage them or return the favor by retweeting their tweets!  Since these are people that consistently find it worthwhile to share the kinds of things you like tweet, it is likely that the other stuff they are tweeting out is also stuff you would find valuable to share as well.  This process also quickly acquaints you with the type of people you’re reaching and what they like to tweet about.

Whether you want to network and make friends in your current city or perhaps to get to know the community in another, Twitter is a great way to do it. It’s also a very easy way to do it since as it stands there at tons of public lists of locals floating around Twitter.  Here are four different ways you can find locals in your or another area:

1.       Check to see if you yourself are in a locals list

This is a good place to start looking for quality locals lists since you will be mutually friends with the other people on this list through at least the one person that made the list.

2.       Check directories

Using directories like listorious you can find at least a handful of good locals and sometimes good lists of locals.

3.       Combine a bunch of existing lists to form a “Super Locals List”

This can be a good idea either if you can only find small locals lists or if your goal is to network or get to know as many people as possible.  Using Formulists, you can make a “custom” list and add or intersect together as many as 10 existing lists.

4.       Find one socially active local

If you know someone great in either your city or anther and want to find more locals like them, simply enter them in as the “someone” in your Formulists “People-Like-Someone” list and then enter your city into the “location” filter.  You can make this list as large or small as you want 

One of the most awesome things about Twitter is how at any given time, there are public conversations going on around just about any topic you can think of.  Whether you’re interested in Nascar, jazz, or gluten-free recipes, you can find your niche on Twitter.  The question then is how. Here are some strategies:

1.        Go through existing directories

There are a handful of good Twitter directories on the web featuring a number of hot tamale Twitter accounts categorized in different ways. These can be helpful especially when the category you are looking for is a popular one like “Social Media” or “News”. Here are three:

·         Twellow

·         WeFollow

·         Listorious

2.       Google

A not-so-oft mentioned strategy but one that is simple, easy and turns up decent starting results is to use Google.  Basically, Google search: “site:Twitter.com [word of interest to you]”

More often than not, top results on Google turn out to be quite top-notch.

3.       Generate a “People-Like-Someone” list

If you have even one good example person in mind, then just plug them in as the “someone” in the “People-Like-Someone” list and hit “create list”. 

The default settings will give you a list of 40 more people you are not yet following that are similar to that person. You can change the default to as many as 500 people and can also choose to filter the people that make it onto the list by bio keywords (ex: “Gluten”) or by follower characteristics.

Above: Example bio filter use. Use “and” if you want all keywords included and “or” if you want at least one of the keywords included.