How to Create a Twitter List and Get Your Life Back

By nsndm001 | July 21, 2013

If you’ve been on Twitter for a while, you may be following a LOT of people, so much so that it seems like you can’t keep up with the constant influx of tweets filling up your feed. You may feel that you’re not finding the right tweets at the right time. Your tweet feed has become white noise… too much, all at once, and now Twitter, once the beautifully concise haiku poet of all social media, has lost all meaning, like that insufferable blathering moron you always end up siting next to at dinner parties who won’t shut the heck up.

Is it time to start un-following people? Maybe. It doesn’t hurt to do a little spring cleaning every now and then. But also consider using Twitter’s very handy Lists feature.

Lists enable you to categorize the Twitter accounts you’re following, so that you can scan the tweets you want, when you want, and filter out the rest.

For instance, you might want to create a list for businesses in your neighbourhood, for when you want to check out what’s happening locally. I have a list called Junction Toronto that does just that. When I want to switch gears and see what the social media industry is up to, I pull up my custom-made Social Media Smart People list, and my Twitter feed is filled with social media news and nothing else. When I’m chillin’, I pull up my Fan Girl list and geek out over movies, TV and fandoms. Can you imagine how unproductive and time consuming it would be for someone like me to have Junction Toronto, Social Media Smart People and Fan Girl tweets all mixed together in one stream? This is why Lists are amazing!

And here’s how to create your own Twitter List:

Login to your Twitter account and click on the Me tab in the upper left corner
Under Me you will now see Tweets, Following, Followers, and right at the bottom, Lists. Click on Lists.
At the top right of your tweet feed, you will see a button called Create List. Click it and follow the prompt to give your new list a name and description. Mark your list public (so other people can see it and subscribe to it) or private (because you’re up to no good… just kidding… maybe it’s something you want to keep to yourself at least until after you’ve refined it a bit). Click Save List.
Congratulations! You’ve created a List, but now you have to add people to it. Find someone you want to add to your list (you can find them in your Twitter feed or just search for them… you don’t necessarily need to be following them in order to add them to a List). Click on their logo so you end up on their Profile Summary. Next to the Follow/Unfollow button, you’ll see an icon that looks like a human head. Click on the human head and from the drop-down menu, select Add/Remove From Lists. Checkbox the List you want to add them to. You’re done!