Stalking people online is an art form.
And I don’t mean that crazy stalking that results in me unfollowing & blocking some creepy dude at one in the morning while I’m in Vegas because he is suggesting he may drive across 4 states to find me. #truestory
I mean keeping up with the most important people in your business.
The most important people in your life. Not missing those most important tweets.
And this is hard to scale. I mean, I obviously can’t read all of the tweets of the 13K people who follow me.
And no, I don’t use Tweetdesk or Semantic or any of the twitter clients or applications to manage my stalking.
I use twitter lists.
No only do I love using twitter lists on twitter.com from my desktop or laptop (I typically have 4-5 tabs open in Chrome to do this), now Tweetie 2.0 on my iPhone can also access my twitter lists, so I can effectively stalk from anywhere.
Here’s how I use twitter lists to maintain my most important relationships and make additional connections with my tribe.
1. Stalking in real life.
When I went to South by Southwest in March, I dreaded being in downtown Austin overflowing with 11K people at SXSW interactive (plus thousands more at the film & music festivals). How could I possibly find the people most important to me?
So, I created a SXSW twitter list of my twitter connections going to SXSW. Now I could easily use Tweetie on my iPhone to find out who was doing what at any particular time. I could find out who was having coffee where, what bar they were going to, who was at what session, who was missing because they were still in their hotel room. And hunt them down.
I have also used location based twitter lists to develop a network of connections before I visit & have a tweetup (like Chicago, SF, San Diego, Canada), have a list of awesome people who I’m stalking and want to connect with in real life, and a list of people who I’ve tweeted up with so I can remember to connect with them again online.
2. Stalking online.
There are some people for whom I don’t want to miss anything they say on twitter. And there are others for whom I want to catch most of what they say.
For business, I use lists like my private “rock star” list (179 people, changes weekly), and my lists of members of Live Your Truth and #lytchat.
For fun, I keep a list of people who are inappropriate (yes, as you know, always need a bit more snark in my life).
For me, I want to keep track of all my best friends. So I’ve created a private twitter list just of those 7 BFFs. And I pretty much read all of their tweets. #powerstalkingFTW
Why do I keep my “rock star” and “bff” lists private? Because those are just for me. It’s not an objective standard I’m using for those lists. It’s pretty much just who I feel like reading today.
3. To enable others to stalk each other.
I’ve created lists to facilitate different parts of my community to connect with each other. Lists for INFJs, #lytchat and for members of Live Your Truth.
Here’s the secret tip – if you care about building relationships & creating a tribe – the most effective thing you can do is to empower your tribe to build relationships with each other.
Relationships that don’t necessarily involve you, but you were the thing that brought them together. Not only does this strengthen your tribe, but it cements you in their minds as the connector. The nexus.
Have you seen other effective uses of twitter lists?
Are you using twitter lists?
I love to hear your experiences, feedback, and questions below!
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