Twitter Lists – Local Marketing just got easier!

Twitter listened – and Twitter Lists are now in Beta.  It is currently a limited release but will become open to everyone very soon.  It became active in my profile tonight and I must say I am impressed.  This is going to be a huge marketing tool.

Let’s look at this from a Small Business point of view.  Some of the complaints that local small business owners have mentioned to me are:

• There is no easy way to follow people on Twitter
• Twitter is overwhelming
• Twitter is a waste of time
• I don’t sell to the world
• I need local customers

Twitter Lists will address all of these concerns in one fell swoop.  This is how it works – Twitter allows you to create any list or way to sort your connections.  You can have as many lists as you want to create.  Let’s think about this for a minute.  I went into my account tonight and created 3 lists -

• Vancouver Wa (Where I live)
• Portland OR (Very close to where I live)
• Renegade ( Online Marketing Teachers)

I will be going back and creating lists for potential clients, potential power partners, current clients, and new ideas or gadgets in the Internet world.

After creating these lists I went through my people I am following and sorted them into respective lists.  They will get notified in their accounts that they have been put into a list.  They then have the option to follow the entire list of people if it is a list that interests them.  For people marketing locally this is HUGE!  For a new person or business in the Vancouver area coming into Twitter they now have a way to find and follow many of the Vancouver Twitter users instantly.

This also lets me read and follow just the people locally, or just my potential clients, just my clients, just my power partners – you get the idea.  It will make using Twitter way easier and way more focused.  I see this as a huge advancement for businesses that market locally on the Internet.

Dotty