A classic ISTJ, I’m a sucker for making lists. To-do lists, chore lists, action items – writing things down helps me organize a plan of attack. Which is why it may surprise you that I’ve done very little with Twitter lists in the few months since the feature was launched. However, I’ve found lists helpful in a few ways and am hoping to experiment with them more in the coming weeks. Here’s where I am:

Geographic Sorting

Twitter use among individuals and small businesses in my area has exploded in the last year. Initially, I followed nearly everyone locally I could find. That included every small restuarant, dry cleaner, college kid, gamer or media outlet. Creating an “Albany” Twitter list has allowed me to corral all of those people in one place without actually having to follow them. I now can focus on only following the local Twitter accounts that really provide me value. They show up in my stream, while I can casually keep tabs on the rest (who I don’t follow directly but follow via my Albany list) by just checking the list every now and then. It’s easy and risk-free for me to add someone to my Albany list; I don’t have to contemplate whether or not I think that person/business adds enough value to follow them.

Reporter and Blogger Pitching

I’ve created a “Pitching” Twitter list that’s comprised of the reporters and bloggers I’m currently pitching on behalf of my clients. The list is private, so only I can see it. It allows me to keep tabs on what’s on the mind of these writers, which can be helpful in generating story angles or even just finding and “in” or a commonality to get a conversation going with them. I also look to see what lists those reporters/bloggers have either created and been added to, and it’s led me to several new outlets that I might have otherwise not known about or considered pitching.

Gauging “Value” of Twitter Accounts

I’m squarely in the camp that number of Twitter followers is in no way correlated with how interesting, useful or worth my time a particular person is. But like most people, I’m still conditioned to look at a big follower count and wonder if someone is a “big deal” or not. With spammy following schemes, it can sometimes be difficult to tell right off the bat if a Twitter user has organically and legitimately grown their following or not. But lists have made that a bit easier (and some believe, even made follower counts irrelevant). If someone has 8,000 followers and is only on 12 lists, then to me that’s an indication that not many people value what that person has to say (auto-follow bots aren’t generally in the habit of putting people on lists, yet). I’m not saying that “value” can be reduced to a simple ratio of followers to lists, but as a “first glance” metric, I’ve found it useful in helping me red flag accounts that I may want to pass on following for the time being.

Twitter lists will continue to evolve and develop, especially since they have already been integrated into third party apps like TweetDeck and Seesmic. I can see lists being extremely useful for events and conferences, for example. Personally, I’m planning to experiment more with private lists to help me sort and keep track of my own Twitter ecosystem, and then also eventually start to follow other people’s lists (why reinvent the wheel?) of useful people in my field. (One of the issues I see with lists right now is that they’re highly personal and not definitive – how many lists of “PR professionals” or “Dawgs fans” are out there right now? Few are likely to be comprehensive and as of right now it’s not possible to merge multiple lists from different Twitter users. But I digress.)

What innovative ways have you been using Twitter lists? Share away in the comments.

Photo via Flickr user numstead