10 Organizational Uses for Twitter Lists

by Maddie Grant on December 26, 2009

I’ve been thinking more about Twitter Lists, since I posted this about my own lists when I first checked out the feature.

Need a primer on what Twitter Lists are and how to set them up? Read this.

Here are some ways membership organizations can use Twitter Lists – ways which will ultimately help you not only provide value but also build community online.

1. To connect individual members. Duh, right? If you can group people you follow whom you know are members of your association, not only does it help you keep track of them, but it helps them connect with each other and find each other on Twitter. You can only group a maximum of 500 people in a list, but if you have more members than that on Twitter it’s worth grouping them in different ways anyway. All community happens in small groups, as we know…

2. To connect components under your umbrella. Are you a national, with state affiliates? Do you have chapters? Do you have SIGs? List those components you know have Twitter accounts. It might encourage those who don’t have accounts yet to start one, and it will connect new accounts to your association community.

3. To list your employees who are on Twitter. No-brainer, this one, too. Help people connect to staff and help staff connect to each other (especially if you have a large org with lots of people on Twitter).

4. To list specific volunteer leaders – this is a subgroup of members, but perhaps very useful for helping push the actual work of the association.

5. To showcase your programs, campaigns or other Twitter accounts. If you have departments tweeting great stuff under a program name or specific campaign, group those together so people can find them. Show off all the good stuff you’re doing.

6. To group industry influencers. Use Twitter lists to group those industry bloggers you follow, or relevant media, or key people who care about your industry or cause. You can help your members find the right people to listen to (often the hardest part to figure out for a newbie), beyond just other members, if you group people in obvious ways.

7. To connect to other orgs in your industry. Twitter is an ecosystem; presumably you already follow other similar organizations to yours. Don’t be afraid to group them in a list – if you are happy to do this, it will help establish you as a thought leader org in your industry by showing that you are paying attention to the industry.

8. As part of your listening dashboard. See how the Alzeimer’s Association (GA chapter) does it. Twitter Lists are a great way to keep track of the people you particularly want to monitor. Any of the above groups work for this, and you can create private lists too for grouping very specific people for specific reasons known only to you .

9. To attract potential members – AUPHA does this by capturing feeds using Lists that could interest potential students and peer faculty. Awesome.

10. To group local interest stuff. If you’re a local organization, there’s no doubt you’ll be following Twitter accounts that are specific to where you operate. Group those so your members can follow them too.

Want another example? Here are Lynn Morton’s lists for AAPA.

What else could you use lists for? Are you doing some of this already? Let us know in the comments!

NOTE: We follow lots of associations with our blog account @SocialFishFood. If you have an association Twitter account and want us to follow, please send an @ reply. We haven’t set up lists for that account yet but it’s on the to-do list; we’re trying to figure out what would be the most useful ways to group you guys. I’m thinking nationals and states, plus certain industries (healthcare, certain trades, etc) – any other suggestions let us know!