what I wish someone had told me a month ago.....

.....if you haven’t made twitter lists you should

When I first started using twitter a month ago I had absolutely no idea where it would lead me.

I started out thinking that it would be great just to link with people who, like me, were blogging about happiness and self development. Trying to spread a bit of happy.

That didn’t last long though because the wonderfully eclectic nature of Twitter just kept popping up new opportunities.

So after a month I’ve found myself following nearly 500 great people and starting to wonder if there might be a better, smarter way to do this.

The very thing that I love about twitter – the randomness and variety of the posts, is a bit disconcerting at times.  To read about global disasters and conflicts, mixed in with funny one liners, pictures of hamsters and inspirational quotes is a bit of a shock to the system at times. 

Yes, I know it reflects life – the good and the bad side by side, but wouldn’t it be great to find all the funny ones when I feel like a giggle, and save the news ones for when I want to catch up on whats happening in this crazy world?  Bring a little bit of focus to it all?

So I’ve now bitten the bullet and spent hours (believe me hours!!) creating lists – and it surprised me just how many I needed, the funny list, the bizarre one, the food one with plenty of chocolate thrown in.  I have geographical lists from the area where I live now as an expat, and a couple of locations in the UK that I have strong links with. 

I’ve included several lists on widely differing leisure interests, one on a medical condition affecting my family and another one for charities that I support.

I have found great people to follow in my field of business and marketing, and others I can learn from about blogging and new technologies.

It was also an interesting process to review everyone I was following – and not all fell naturally into a list, so I'll still be following my timeline to enjoy the randomness and find new people. Especially as I’ve found out now that you can have a maximum of 20 lists with a maximum of 500 in each so still plenty of potential for the future.


And yes I do know there are are auto list creators out there - probably great for professional users - but I still like to do my own thing  

I wasn’t sure whether or not to make my lists public or private so opted to play safe and keep them private – not sure why really – just didn’t want to offend anyone by putting a wrong label on them I guess.


Mind you,  I hope you don’t do that because I am heading out right now to explore other peoples lists and see what I can find.