Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The Case for Relevance: Free App Facilitates Twitter Engagement


I stumbled upon an interesting application to get more “oomph” out of Twitter social media management for b-to-b clients.
It’s called “Formulists” and it’s a powerful tool to create and engage with relevant, related and influential Twitter followers (you know, the ones who are related to the business or organization, which is the point of engaging on Twitter, right?)

With Formulists, it is fairly intuitive to create and manage Twitter Lists. This application lets you organize Twitter into smart, auto-updating Twitter lists: filter based on location/bio keywords, Twitter activity and more.

Not sure how long this tool (which seems to be in Beta) has been available, but it is quite powerful to help facilitate engagement. 

What’s the Goal?
Simply posting tweet after tweet on Twitter is not the goal, only to be read by a group of unrelated and random followers.  Instead, the value comes from engaging with relevant followers….the ones who use keywords, topics and hash tags in their tweets and Twitter profile.

This is one of those applications that helps cut through the Twitter universe of unrelated, outside-the-scope type folks, and find and engage with targeted followers who list keywords in bios, or Tweet using key hash tags,

Formalists Defined
 Formulists does the work of grouping your tweeps into twitter list feeds so that you can focus on reading and talking to them more!
The first screen takes you through a key question asking:
What is your goal on Twitter?
             Organize Your Network
             Expand Your Network
             Track Followers
             Strengthen Social Ties
             Track Competitors
             Customize Existing Lists

Just that question alone shows this is a spot-on tool to optimize Twitter management.

Find, Engage Related Followers
For one client’s program, I created a list called “TwitterActive” that shows those “social stars” in a specific keyword or area, folks who are talking to the same people as the client’s account.

These lists help find new, related followers, or followers like someone else, or even Influential hubs in a given network. 

You can even see who is using a hash tag or search term the most in their Tweets, which is pretty cool.


Making the Case
I’ve been making the case for some time that to be of value, a b-to-b Twitter program needs to stay on topic, target key followers, cull those followers who are not in the target, and be strategic in use of keywords and hash-tags. 

Why would a corporate trainer Twitter account be interested in amassing follower profiles, hash tags, keywords and tweets that stress marathon running, for instance?

This new list tool proves the case!   If you have some time, give Formulists a try!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the tip about maintaining lists, Julie.

    I'll definitively try Formulists.

    I haven't been as vigilant as I should be in culling those following me and have seen some questionable ones lately.

    Thanks!

    Patrick

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