The How & Why of Adding to Other People’s Twitter Lists

By Nick Kellet

Until now first person curation has been the name of the game when it comes to Twitter Lists.

Making lists on Twitter has been a solo task.

If anyone wanted to be suggest omissions to your lists it meant asking. Asking always causes friction. The need to ask stops people from acting.

No longer. Enter Listly. Friction free crowdsourced Twitter Lists.

Now you can make a list on Twitter and manage it from Listly.

You get the best of both worlds:

• Curate on Listly
• Subscribe on Twitter

What that means is:

• Anyone can add suggested omissions directly to the list
• You can seed your lists from any number of other lists
• Duplicates will be ignored.
• You can auto accept suggestions or moderate suggestions via the Listly list queue
• Items accepted to the list are added to your Twitter list (and the person added is notified via Twitter as normal)
• Items removed from list or sent to the queue will be removed from your Twitter list.

People can get discovered for being on your list as you can embed the list on your blog (as can anyone).

If your blog is on WordPress (self-hosted), you can use the Listly plugin.

If not you can use the Javascript version, which works on just about every blogging platform except WordPress.com.

Here’e an example of a list of Doctors on Twitter – 600+ and growing fat – it’s been viewed 6k+ time and embedded on multiple blogs.

150+ people have helped to create this list.

You can choose the layout you’d like to use to embed the list on your blog. Here’s a preview of this list in “Gallery” mode.

Your Twitter lists become embeddable content that helps everyone on the list get found and in so doing, drives traffic to your blog.

As people can suggest omissions to your list over time your blog post will keep changing. People can also vote to change the ranking and order of the list. This keeps your content fresh in the eyes of search engines.

As your content evolves over time, new people will discover your lists and potentially share, vote and contribute. It’s a process that extends the lifecycle and value of your content.

With Listly, lists get better over time.

Here’s the workflow.

Are you using Twitter Lists today?

Lists let you be more focused in the way you listen and engage. Lists are a segmentation tool. Smart marketing folk stay focused and segment their markets into targeted niches.

Segmenting on Twitter on your own is hard. It’s also a never ending task if you need to do all the work.

The Internet & The 1% Rule

Today we expect to be able to create, contribute or consume.

Regular Twitter Lists don’t follow this rule (no contribution) and that’s the issue Listly’s Twitter integration addresses.

Modern internet users expect to be able to participate.

Now, because anyone any can contribute Twitter Lists can follow the 1% rule

• Create (1%)
• Contribute (9%)
• Consume (90%)

This means List become valuable resource where many people can help and consume what others have created. These lists get more valuable over time. People gravitate to trusted resources. Better lists get more subscribers.

These could be your lists.

You could be providing utility to your audience.

The real magic happens when you choose to collaborate and work with others.

Will you create resource for your local community?

Will you serve a global niche and help surface everyone in that niche?

This is how real communities form.

People connect around a passion.

Where will you begin?