Among the new features being rolled out this week from Facebook are the enhanced friends lists options which many feel was a response to Google Plus Circles, and the introduction of a Subscribe button with multiple implications and applications.

The subscribe button is, by far, the most radical of the changes and for the first time, allows people who are not your friends to see your personal profile updates if you enable the subscribe button.  So, Guy Kawasaki or Pete Cashmore haven’t accepted your friend request.  Bill Gates is ignoring your pokes and messages.  You can now subscribe to their personal profile posts if they decide to enable Facebook’s new Subscribe button.  Why should you or your brand care?  You should care because Facebook has just opened up an interesting option for celebrities, authors, entrepreneurs, speakers and other high profile public figures to create great reach for their posts, beyond their friendship circle.  However, this comes with some challenges, privacy concerns and the need for those users to understand exactly how this works and what they’ll be sharing.

What does this mean for brands, small businesses and entrepreneurs?

For business people who use their Facebook profile as yet another entry point to their brand, albeit a more casual one, you can now place a subscribe button on your profile.  This allows people who aren’t your friends access to those posts you mark as public. This will be useful to celebrities, speakers, authors or other very public Facebook users who have reached their 5,000 friend cut-off, but still want to allow new friends to see their posts.  If you use your profile strictly for personal communications with family and friends, you’ll want to skip implementing the subscribe button and continue to decline or ignore requests for friend connections with business contacts.

What does this mean for you, the user?

As a user, you can subscribe to the posts of industry leaders, celebrities or political figures who set their personal profiles to allow subscriptions and you can decide what types of posts you want to see.  For example, you can hide all posts related to games so that you’ll never know when Lady Gaga hits a new high score on Bejeweled, but you’ll always be notified when she posts a new photo.

Facebook provides more details and the link to add the Subscribe button to your Facebook profile here. The profile owner can choose to be notified when someone subscribes, too. This is one to watch as it evolves in use.

Will you enable the Subscribe button?  Why or why not?

When used strategically and in synergy with a well-rounded marketing campaign, Twitter is the social whipped cream.

Here are five nifty Twitter tools to add to your entrepreneurial arsenal. Each one brings something special to the table and could add just the sparkle you need for your next campaign.

TWEETDOC

Create a document bringing together all the tweets from a particular event or search term. A tweetdoc allows you to keep a record of what happens on Twitter. You can set parameters such as date and time ranges, number of tweets to capture, hashtags and search terms and capture the Twitter conversation. Great for brand monitoring reports, competitor analysis, real time news stories such as the recent Hurricane Irene reports on Twitter, conference chatter to find and follow influencer’s and other attendees or simply to keep your finger on the pulse of an industry or technology.

TWYLAH

Twylah aggregates your tweets and highlights your brand areas of expertise, based on what you tweet about. It serves them back to you in a beautiful SEO optimized webpage that gives readers a clear visual impression of who you are and what you talk about. When you send a “power tweet” from your Twylah page, your Tweets are captured, organized visually and by keywords and your Twitter followers are directed back to you optimized landing page, which is populated with relevant tweets on the same topic. Twylah gives you yet another piece of high style social real estate to reinforce your brand identity. Seeing all your Tweets in one spot, visually and topically aggregated is an eye-opener too and can serve as a brand audit to help you quickly see if you’re hitting your target messaging or going off topic too often.

TWEETGURU

A quirky series of Twitter tools, auto tweeting bots and services that allows you to, among other things, direct message multiple Twitter accounts at once. You might want to use this feature if you’re reaching out to your personal list of press people on Twitter about a launch party or a big brand announcement. The free version has a limit of 12 accounts at one time for your direct message but this can save you time and that’s the point.

HOOTSUITE

Hootsuite’s free tweet scheduling feature is easy to use and with a modestly priced pro account agencies can manage multiple accounts at once, assign individual tweet action items to team members and keep track of which team member answered the Twitter query and their new analytic tools generate custom reports for clients and play nicely with Google analytics. Hootsuite is a timesaving tool, a team tool, a monitoring tool and a scheduling tool all in one.

TWUBS.COM

Twubs are groups built around content aggregated from hashtags. Twubs gives you a live tweet feed of an event, conference or Twitter Chat based on a specific #hashtag and offers tools such as a Tweetup and Events scheduler. You can register your event hashtag at Twubs, embed a Twub widget on your website, and the Twub offers a complete Conference suite of tools like live moderation, conference displays, live event audio and presentation streaming, RSS feeds and more to engage participants who attend in person or those watching remotely. These features could be used by speakers and can even include photos and videos. A moderator can view the stream in a time delay mode and control which tweets are shown to the audience and which should not be.

What other Twitter tools would you add to the list? Let’s share our favorites here.

First, when you share valuable information through social bookmarking, you position yourself as a resource to your online community.  You train your potential customers to follow you to stay up to date and in the know on advances, news and strategies in their fields of interest.

Social sharing creates social influence for you and the original content creator.

When you comment on a blog post, and, this is important–add to the conversation by contributing additional resources, original thoughts or insights–you also position yourself as an individual or brand highly engaged in your field of expertise.  The more interesting your comments are, the more likely people will follow your digital footprint back to your home base and subscribe, follow, friend or bookmark you.

Share to Position Yourself as a Leader

When you read a blog post you like from a writer whose work you value or respect, leave a comment. By doing so, you provide a service. Google and other search engines pay attention to the amount of interaction that takes place on a website and the more interaction, the higher the social authority of that particular blog.

Think about it in this way.

1. You’re at a business conference where you hear a presentation about a new technology coming out of a brand new start-up.
2. You go back to your company and tell your colleagues to check out this new start-up because they have some valuable marketing tools that might help you on an upcoming project.
3. Your firm hires these new innovators for a project which is hugely success because of their new technology.
4. They grow and continue to innovate and help your whole industry.
5. You are a hero at your company and you, in turn, consider that original business conference to be your new “must attend” event.
6. HOWEVER,  if you attend the conference but tell no one about what you’ve learned, their start-up fails to thrive and grow for lack of customers  and eventually they don’t produce any new ideas or products and perhaps even go under.
7. Everyone loses; the start-up, your company, and you.

The same thinking applies to blogs. If you find a blogger is consistently providing you with valuable tips and strategies, then commenting is your way of encouraging Google rank them well and ultimately to help others find this blogger. So being a conscientious blog content consumer by subscribing and leaving comments is a way for you to contribute to the ecosystems you inhabit. And, in return, you garner social equity for yourself as an aggregator of useful information, a leader in connecting your fans and followers needs to resources they can use and as an informed player in the marketplace.

Bookmarking Benefits

Social Bookmarking is another responsible way to help spread valuable or entertaining information. In addition to leaving a comment, go to one of the many social bookmarking sites and recommend the blog post to others. Social bookmarks are a way for you to save links to posts you’ve found helpful, and others can subscribe to your bookmarks.  By bookmarking a blog, story or news article, you create a home for it where you can easily access it and refer to it again later.

This serves as a visibility strategy for you because you found the post or blog, and now, by bookmarking it, you’re telling other that it’s worth reading.  You increase your own social currency as someone who passes on great information and ideas, and you increase the visibility of the original blogger.

It’s Called “Social” Media for a Reason

Social Media is, at it’s heart, people engaging and sharing ideas with one another. So remember to consume information and pass on the tips and strategies that you find most useful. In this way you become a valuable resource to your followers, you become more visible to those you follow and you foster a sharing mentality throughout your network.

Some social bookmarking site you might consider using include:

* Digg
* Delicious
* StumbleUpon
* Reddit

Please let me know if you have a bookmark list so I can consider subscribing. It’s time to create conversations about YOU by creating conversations about others.

The dot com’s, dot net’s and dot co’s will still be the mainstay, however, because the new branding opportunity for companies to use, say .Nike, will come at a steep price.

According to Mashable.com, these new opportunities will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of the usual $9.99 and the annual renewal could be as high as $25,000. So the majority of businesses and entrepreneurs will still be using the generic URLs.

Will there be a massive “land grab” for .socialmedia, .food, .organic, .Auto? On your mark, get set, go.

Many still fear that Twitter is a time rabbit hole and that building a large following on Twitter will unleash a time commitment they can’t accommodate.

Here are eight timesaving tools to help any sized business or individual entrepreneur find, follow, engage or manage their time on Twitter for productive results.

1. Twellow: This site is the Yellow Pages of Twitter.  This free site allows you to register your Twitter account under three different keywords such as marketing, branding, social media or whatever keywords a potential client might enter to find your business.  Listing your Twitter account here will help others to find you when searching for the service or product you provide. Therefore, leads or followers coming from Twellow are more likely than average to be seeking what you have to offer. It’s fast and easy to register and worth your time.  Additionally, if you use Twellow while logged into your Twitter account and Twellow, you can search, find and follow others directly from the platform.
2. Twitter App for Facebook: The Twitter stream is a fast moving conversation and therefore, your tweets once out of sight are out of mind.  Making any content you create do double duty is a good timesaving strategy.  Using this app to cause Facebook to auto-post from Facebook to your Twitter account makes your daily Facebook post work harder by also speaking to your Twitter followers. And, the added benefit is the way this app creates a truncated link to bring people back to your Facebook page to read a post that is longer.  This is a subtle invitation for Twitter followers interested enough to click the link to continue reading to “like” your Facebook page.  Again, always ask your content to work in multiple ways.
3. SocialToo: Auto follow everyone who follows you. I’m a believer in auto following everyone who follows me on Twitter. It’s an easy way to build your following and allows people who find you to DM or Direct Message you on Twitter. I’ve been interviewed by national newspapers and contacted by future clients this way and had I not employed a policy of auto following, they would not have been able to reach me as easily and quickly.  I upgraded from a free account at SocialToo to a one-time $10 fee to use their set it and forget it auto follow tool. I love this feature and cannot recommend it enough.
4. Hootsuite: In my opinion, Hootsuite is one of the best social media dashboards for managing Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin accounts at a glance and pre-scheduling tweets. I use it regularly manage 10 or more Twitter accounts alone, using Hootsuite and their newly enhanced metrics are terrific for creating client reports and for insight into which marketing messages are working and which are falling on deaf ears and may need tweaking.
5. Tweetbeep: Google for Twitter. Set alerts for your keywords, your business name and your competitors to keep yourself in the loop and to find good information to tweet to your followers.
6. Tweepi: This handy site allows you to weed out the accounts that don’t follow you back, to reciprocate those that follow you first and to clean out inactive accounts from your Twitter tribe.  A free version is suitable for smaller accounts and a paid version adds significantly more functionality for larger accounts or agencies.
7. Tweetchat: Follow hashtag conversations in real time without distractions.  By doing so, you can quickly and easily find people talking about keywords and topics that interest you or your potential customer. Use hashtag conversations to bring yourself and your brand to the attention of others by participating in interesting, on-point twitter conversations.
8. Timely: Analyze your Twitter patterns and get recommendations on times of day when your followers are most likely see, read and respond to your posts.

What other tools are in your Twitter toolkit?  If you have tools and strategies for maximizing your time on Twitter, I’d love to hear about them.  Let’s share with one another.

Using digital marketing tools can help authors and publishers by-pass the network television gatekeeper and take book messages directly to the reader.  Digital tools help authors connect with potential readers wherever they spend time online, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs or search engines. And, it is essential to remember that nearly half of all web users are accessing the web throughout the day via their mobile devices so creating digital content that plays nicely in mobile formats is key.

I recently spoke on the topic of digital tool kits at BookExpo America 2011 on the Digital Marketing Panel with Sally Dedecker, Fauzia Burke and Kathleen Schmidt. The panel consensus was that authors and publishers need to consider utilizing a wide variety of digital strategies to reach new readers. You can view my powerpoint presentation here. But many digital tools are expensive to create and not every author or publisher has the budget to develop and implement the more complicated and costly digital strategies used by major brands.

Here’s a list of my favorite low-cost digital tools authors and publishers can their book campaigns.

Blogsite or Website with a blog

This is the author’s home base.  Readers should be able to read more about the author, find  links to the current and previous works of the author, view a personal appearance schedule and read the author’s blog.  Readers should also be able to sign up for a continued relationship with the author, perhaps through a newsletter or to receive a sample chapter of a new book.  Whatever the offer, the author needs to capture the e-mail addresses of people who express an interest in hearing from them. Authors can create a free blog using WordPress or Blogger and an e-mail management system like MailChimp is free until the author has attracted 2,000 fans.  MailChimp automatically generates the HTML code needed for an Opt-in box, which the author can place on his or her blog.  By working with the publisher to offer a sample chapter as a digital download, authors can offer a sneak peek for new books for fans who sign up for the mailing list.

Social Media

Social media amplifies the authors website and blog messages and creates a connection to help readers feel as though they’re involved in the author’s world.  Authors can share tour information, preview books, give fans special content such as original stories on their website or blog and spread the word via social media. It’s easier and faster to amass a large following on Twitter and Facebook than to acquire a large subscription base on a website because millions of people are already gathered on social media sites.  Go to where the readers are already gathered.  Bring the author’s message to those readers instead of waiting for them to stumble upon that message on a website.  It’s free to sign up for accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.  There is no cost to use them.  However, investing a few hundred dollars in design and custom tabs will allow authors to sell books directly from their Facebook Fan page, offer that sneak peek free chapter through an opt in box right from Facebook, create the look and feel of their own television channel on YouTube and give readers a sense of their personality on Twitter.  For under $500, each of the author’s social media sites can be design to promote the others and ultimately to drive fans back to the author’s blog or home base.

Opt in

The theme for an author’s digital tool kit is “make it easy for the reader to find, follow, friend and like you.”  By developing an e-mail database of readers who have expressed an interest in what an author writes, authors and publishers will be able to easily and efficiently push updates and marketing messages to potential book buyers who have already identified themselves as being interested.  This permission based digital marketing is cost effective and can have a higher ROI than nearly any other book marketing.  Adding an Opt in box and an enticing sign up offer on both the author website and their Facebook Fan page is an easy, inexpensive digital marketing strategy.

Video

We’re living in a social world where Facebook is the Wal-Mart of digital platforms.  With nearly 700 million users now conditioned to expect to see a face attached to every brand, authors who use video effectively will have a competitive advantage in reaching readers.  Readers like seeing and hearing from the artists they admire.  In the past, meeting a favorite author or even a new author, was relegated to book signings and perhaps major events.  Now authors can create short home videos and talk directly to their potential readers, sharing their tour experiences, their creative process and even concepts from their books.  Readers enjoy authors who share a bit of their personality and their time by creating short video messages.  This, too, is an easy and inexpensive digital marketing concept.

Digital Assets

Authors can now  create digital badges, original digital content like blogs or articles, downloadable author photos and bios, digital press releases, quizzes, games and contests.  All of these digital assets can be used to create visibility for the author and his or her books online.  The more interesting and compelling the digital assets are, the more likely they will be referenced, shared and valued by potential readers.  Creating 5-10 original essays or blog posts that can be used as guest blogs on sites visited by an author’s ideal reader is a free way to use these digital assets to promote an author’s books.  The topic of the posts could be related to the topic of the new book and the author by-line can reference his or her latest work.  By providing desirable content to other websites, the author extends his or her own visibility and attracts new readers.  Sharing charts, graphs, photos, videos, quizzes or other interesting and relevant content on these high traffic websites is another strategic use of an author’s digital assets. Think about what digital assets you can create to support the launch of your books and prepare those assets so they’re ready and available at launch time.

Online Advertising

Facebook advertising campaigns can fit any budget.  Authors and publishers can set a daily or a lifetime cap to the dollar amount of the campaign. If an author already has several thousand fans, Facebook’s sponsored stories ads display an image of the author’s fan page to friends of that author’s fans with a subtle visual that implies “Your friends like this page.  You should too.”  Authors and publishers can try different types of ads, different images and different creative messages until they find one that drives new fans to press “like.”  Facebook ads can also be created to redirect Facebook users to the author’s blog or website.  Again, even a budget of $100 to $200 can have an impact, not just in new fans or readers, but in author and book visibility.  Hundreds of thousands of impressions can be achieved for a very modest budget.  This is a digital marketing strategy that is often overlooked because publishers and authors think advertising is expensive or that it’s difficult to measure the ROI.  With Facebook advertising, daily metrics will tell the tale of these ad campaign affects.

These are just a few of the digital marketing strategies authors and publishers can implement for little or no monetary outlay.  Are you using digital marketing strategies effectively?  We’d love to hear your ideas and success stories.

The virtuous marketing circle engages multiple learning styles to reach more potential clients and customers.

Although Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are free, the valuable resource of one’s time is required to actively engage, update and promote a brand message.  And, time is expensive. Making the content business create work harder and across multiple platforms is a good way to produce a virtuous marketing circle and increase the ROI of content creation. This tactic can help users create a wider circle of influence by spreading their brand message to an exponentially larger audience; reaching consumers wherever they spend the majority of their time online.

Below is an example of a virtuous marketing circle. The small business owner creates the circle in the follow way.

1. A blog post on his or her blogsite or website.

2. Using a Facebook application such as Notes or Networked Blogs, our business owner automatically pulls that blog post onto his Facebook Fan page, which represents his business. Having set his application controls once, he never thinks about this again. His page is automatically updated with his new blog post each and every time he posts.

3. The title and a link back to our business owner’s Facebook Page is automatically posted to her Twitter account, moments after it hits her Facebook page because she has set up an application called the Facebook Twitter App.  So now that single blog post has now been seen on three different platforms and potentially by three different audiences with some minor overlap.

4. Once or twice a month, our business owner chooses a particularly informative blog post and posts it to an e-zine articles site that accepts and syndicates articles with valuable information. Articles on e-zine sites can be picked up by other publications or blogs and helps our business owner reach a new audience with content he or she has already created. Additionally, Google and other search engines will index the articles which helps bring our business owner and brand higher up the search engine rankings.

5. Occasionally our business owner chooses one of his or her blog posts and records it as a podcast, saves it as an MP3, posts it to a Podcast site, itunes and perhaps to a special Podcast tab on the original website.  Producing the same messages in multiple formats helps engage different learning styles in potential customers.

6.  Just as our business owner was able to rework the original blog into a podcast, so she does so again, in a short how-to video about a particularly post.  This video is posted to YouTube, then brought into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and again, back to the original blog.

With the virtuous marketing circle, one blog post reaches six or seven unique readerships and our business owner has created mutiple touchpoints from which to engage with clients, exponentially increasing the chances of being seen and heard.  The original content he or she created has now been broadcast throughout the virtuous marketing circle.

How do you reuse, rework, re-introduce your ideas and messages to reach a wider crowd.  Let’s share ideas.

Twitter is to a social media campaign what PR is to a book marketing campaign.

Twitter, however, is not a marketing campaign.  Twitter is part of a full strategic campaign and acts as a megaphone to blast your message to millions of people and invites them to your website, Facebook page or other venue for a deeper conversation. A book marketing campaign needs distribution, point of purchase display, publicity, an advertising concept and a highly motivated author. With those things in place, Twitter can:

• Share the author’s excitement with followers in real time.
• Direct people to a link to buy the book.
• Blast out late breaking news such as media appearances & live events.
• Share excerpts from the book either in short snippets or via a link to a longer passage.
• Encourage others to spread the word.

Here are 5 quick tips and techniques that any author or publisher can use right now to enhance a book marketing campaign.

1. Move content. Use Twitter to move content from your Blog and your Facebook posts to your Twitter fan base by installing the Twitter app on your Facebook fan page. This will auto-tweet everything you post on Facebook, with a link back to your Facebook fan page to read any post longer than 140 characters. If you are auto-importing your blog to your Facebook fan page, it will also be tweeted out to your followers automatically, again with a link to continue reading. This serves a couple of purposes. First, it shares content on three different sites, increasing the number of potential readers for every post. Second, it invites Twitter users back to Facebook to become fans whenever they click on the shorten Twitter link. Third, Facebook will have a live link to the post on your blog through Networked blogs. So one post introduces your Twitter fans to two additional points of interaction with you.

2. Increase SEO. Each Tweet is a unique URL and is viewed by Google as fresh, unique content. This Google juice makes it more likely that potential readers and fans will find you and information about your book. Google now serves up Twitter mentions and references on page one for most searches. Strategically include the name of the book, the name of the author, the genre or topic of the book in your tweets. These are your keywords for search engine optimization. Think about it this way. What would someone enter into a Google search to find you or your book? Those are your keywords. Use them strategically in your tweets to help readers find you.

3. The Big Ask. Bestselling authors such as Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jeffrey Hayzlett and Guy Kawasaki all give their fans an emotional shareholders stake in their book projects. They talk about them for months before publication. They ask followers opinions on titles, book jacket design and topics. They share nuggets of what’s to come. They thank followers for helping them through the process of creating a book. Then, when the book comes out they simply and honestly ask their fans to help them spread the word about the new book, and people do, by the thousands. Creating a community that is emotionally invested in you and your work is a powerful marketing strategy but can’t be faked. Authors must be engaged and genuinely enjoy conversing with their followers about their area of expertise. They must have, and display passion. And, this kind of loyalty and relationship building cannot be done overnight. Authors, especially authors with multiple book projects, should consider Twitter engagement to be a regular, daily practice.

4. Google’s Real Time search: Google now allows you to search something called Real Time. So Google your name or the name of your book and in the left hand navigation bar, choose Real Time. There you’ll see if any Twitter conversations include your name or the name of your book. Next authors and publishers can click on each Twitter account mentioning the book or author, follow them and thank them for their comments. A savvy author will then engage that Twitter account in a deeper conversation, turning the casual chat into a fan building opportunity. All of this is, of course, done on a very public platform. The advantages of this are that other Twitter users see you, the author or publisher, engaged in fun and interesting discussions about your book, your passions, your travels and your life. This becomes an opportunity to attract new fans and new readers. Followers are surprised and delighted when authors notice and thank them for their support. This strategy can create a life long fan who will help you spread the message about your work.

5. Tweet Ups: Whenever an author is speaking, doing media or making a bookstore appearance, there is an opportunity to create a Twitter event or a Tweet Up. Plan ahead, just as you would for any event and use an event organizer like Eventbrite or MeetUp to manage your guest list, RSVP’s and invitations. Create a real call to action for the event such as making a special announcement or having a desirable guest speaker or even a high end sponsor offered door prize. Giving followers an early heads-up about a special event with the author is like a VIP pass. Followers want, and need to feel they have a special relationship with the author.  Now, here’s the most important thing. When you create opportunities for followers to meet authors in person, the author must be willing and able to engage in conversation, thank the followers for their support, and spend some time with them. These are mixers and they are social. Authors who cannot or who are not willing to be social should avoid this strategy.

You’ve no doubt noticed a theme in this post. Twitter is a cocktail party and the author can be the guest of honor. But, it’s better if the author is the host and treats his or her followers as the honored guests.

If you found this post useful, please leave a comment. It’s important to me to know what you think so that I can create articles that are useful to you. For more Twitter tips, techniques and strategies, click here. And, thank you for finding me and reading this. I appreciate the time it takes to follow a link and read a blog.

Facebook makes micro-targeting custom tabs easy.

This is particularly exciting for businesses using a custom landing tab with a video welcoming message or a sweepstakes application or even an e-commerce application.  You have total control over exactly where your ad will lead people, without having to change your landing tab options for anyone finding your page for the first time through other means.

Additionally, you can now directly target friends of people who already like your page.  With repetition, this should reinforce your brand name with people who’s friends are already interacting with your page, a very important metric because people like to interact with pre-qualified or pre-approved pages. In other words, everyone wants to be friends with the popular kids.  The more often people see your ads and their friends interacting with your brand, the more likely they are to “like” the page themselves.

A successful ad campaign needs to be supported with content designed to make fans “stick.” When they give your brand a chance by clicking on your ad, they need to discover a fascinating, fun, engaging or information packed page that makes them whisper, “I like this.”  Running ads during periods in which you are very actively engaged on your page and be sure to offer your best stuff.  Think about this moment as a first date.  Be on your best behavior and show the potential new fan what a catch you are.  You won’t get a second chance.

Another new feature is called “Sponsored Stories.”  Sponsored stories have been around for a while and you’ve probably noticed them on the right hand side of your page when you see something promoted and underneath it says, “John Brown and three other friends like this page.”  But including Sponsored Stories on the ad creation page seems to indicate that you can now dictate which Facebook actions you’d like to promote to friends and followers.  This may have implications for affiliate marketers trying to lend their influence to a particular program.  I don’t have enough information yet on this aspect but will dig deeper and report back.

So, quickly, Facebook is adding some micro-targeting options to the ad platform that could lead to better, more cost efficient use of ad campaigns.  If you liked this story, please leave a comment.  If you have questions about Facebook ads, I’ll be happy to answer them.

Twitter lists are an underused secret weapon in social media marketing.

Use Twitter lists to find people to follow and to group influential people together on Twitter so you can quickly and easily see what they’re tweeting every day. Twitter lists can also be used to demonstrate leadership in your area of expertise and provide something of value to your followers by offering them a convenient way to follow others.  And, for those with locally based businesses, Twitter lists can be a powerful tool for alerting  people to your area of influence, location and specific interest.

Here are 11 ways you can immediately implement the power of Twitter lists in your business.

1. Connect with Industry Leaders. Create your first Twitter list and call it (Your Industry Here) Superstars. Go to your Twitter account and enter the name of one of the most admired leaders in your industry in the search bar at the top of your screen. Click on the “Follow” button under the picture or avatar of @industryleader. Next click on the downward arrow  just to the right of the “Follow” button and a drop down menu will say “Create a List.” Click on “Create a List” and a pop-up box will appear. Here you can name your list “@MyIndustry Superstars.” Underneath you’ll have the option to describe your list. Enter: “People and organizations in My Industry that are helpful, show leadership and really know their business.” Then click “Save List” in the lower right hand corner. Now @industryleader is on your list. Your new list will appear on their Twitter profile page, at the top right hand side of the page under “recently listed in.”  People added to your list will  know that you consider them to be a superstar or whatever attribute you’ve ascribed to your new list, giving you visibility with top industry leaders.  Contintue to add to your new list as you find and follow other inspirational or educational leaders in your field. As you add new followers, put them into lists such as “My Industry Resources.” Keep your most important keywords in mind when creating lists and incorporate them whenever possible. Your lists will each have a unique URL and are, therefore, indexed by search engines.

2.  Attract a Local Based Following. Use Twitter Lists to find and follow quality leads in your local area. Go to the search bar on your Twitter Account and type in #yourcityname. Click on one of the Twitter accounts that comes up mentioning your city. First add this person to a new list called “MyCity Resources.” Next, look to see what types of other lists mention this person. Look for lists that fit your “resources” concept. When you find one, click on the list link. You’ll be taken to that list’s page. Across the top of this list, you’ll see the words tweets, following, followers. Click on Following. A screen will pop up with the Twitter names of everyone on this list. Go down the right hand side of this list and click “Follow” for those accounts you want to add to your “resources” list. Once you click follow, you’ll also need to click the downward arrow to the right and check the box that tells Twitter to add this person to your “resources” list.

3. Use Newly Created Lists for Visibility: Go to your homepage on Twitter. You’ll see these words across the top of your screen: Timeline, @Mentions, Retweets, Searches, Lists. Click on “Lists.” Choose one of your newly created lists and click on it. Now, the only tweets showing in your stream will be tweets from people on this particular list.  You can quickly scan their activity and choose someone to retweet, comment on, praise or ask a question. Simply mouse over the bottom of the tweet you’ve chosen and you’ll have the option to retweet or reply. Do this for at least one or two different people on your list every day to increase your visibility, to demonstrate a desired relationship or connection with this Twitter account, and to be seen engaging with resources and leaders in your area.  Make sure your tweets to these accounts add value, and not noise, to the stream.

4. Share Your Lists: Share your growing “Resources” or “City” list several times a week on Twitter to attract people in your local area and people interested in your business. Click on your list. Copy the URL of that list from your browser window. Paste the link into the “What’s happening?” window on your Twitter page and send this message: Check out this great list of fun places to visit in MyCity! If you need to shorten the URL to fit it into the tweet, go to bit.ly, shorten the link, then copy and paste the new shortened link into the tweet.

5. Add Yourself to Your Own Twitter Lists: Increase your visibility by adding yourself to your own Twitter lists. Just as we recommend going to the pages of other Twitter users to find lists to follow, they’ll be coming to you. When they click down the list and follow people, one at a time, we want them to find and follow you. To do this, enter your own @yourtwittername into the search bar at the top of your screen. When your twitter name shows in the stream, click on it. The right hand side of the screen will now show your profile. The words “Edit your profile” will be on the left and our familiar downward arrow on the right. Click on the downward arrow and check off the boxes for any and all lists to which you’d like to add your own Twitter name. It’s that easy.

7. Connect with Others and Make Yourself Known: Request to be added to appropriate lists of other leaders in your industry or city. When you find a list that you’d love to be on, send a @DM or @reply to the person and say “I’d love to be added to your New York City Businesses” list!  You can reciprocate by adding them to your lists to complete the connection.

8. Broadcast Your Lists to the Listed: Let others know when you add them to your lists. Whenever you add a particularly high profile or valuable networking contact to a list, Tweet to them and tell them. “@IndustryLeader, I just added you to my Industry Superstars list.” Then include the URL. You’ve engaged with them, added them to a list, promoted your list and increased your visibility all while building a relationship with them.

9. Follow Whole Lists at Once: At the top of every list, there will be a button that says “Follow This List.” This will copy the entire list and make it available to you on your page so that you can check it regularly. It does not, however, follow each individual user. Use this for very large lists from professional organizations you might want to check in on but don’t necessarily want to see individually in your stream every day. This will create a link from your page directly to the Twitter account that created the original list. A small icon of their avatar will appear next to the list on your page. Strategically, this is another great way to honor the original list builder and is a valuable way for you to connect with very large lists and high profile creators.

10. Increase Your Lists: Invite Twitter followers to be included on your lists. “Hey Philadelphia. Let me know if you want to be on my new “Philadelphia Resources” list.

11. Broadcast Accolades: If you’ve received awards or been praised in the press, let others know via lists.  Create a list that includes everyone who received accolades and name the list appropriately for that award.

I invite you to take a look at examples of these Twitter strategies on my Twitter account, and please let me know if you’d like to be added to one of my lists.  If you use Twitter lists in a unique and powerful way, please share your strategies here so we can all employ them.  If you found this article helpful, please leave a comment.