Formulists

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things..”   Or specifically, one very important news update. Like all start-ups, we have been working within a very tight budget for a while now, and are sad to announce today that due to cash constraints we will have to shut down the Formulists website.  The team has learned a lot through our experience and have had a lot of fun working with and serving all our users.  We deeply appreciate all the kind support and feedback we have received over the last year, so thank you all for that. If you still wish to make lists with us we encourage you to do this as soon as possible since the site will be unavailable very soon. Those who have already made lists with us will get to keep them, although they will no longer update on their own.  Also, all users who have paid for either pro or supreme level accounts will be reimbursed for the unused time within a month. To help ease any potential Formulists withdrawal symptoms, I have compiled a list of a few very awesome apps to help you achieve some of the same goals Formulists assisted with.  If you know others you think should be on the list, please just let me know and I will add them.   General Twitter list management Twitilist.com “Adding more than five users through the Twitter web interface is tedious, but doing it through Twitilist is a breeze.” Managing Followers/Unfollowers Tweepi “...the Twitter management tool with stats!” Tracking Fans Commun_it “Focus on Your Highest-Value Relationships: Influencers that drive awareness, supporters that spread your message, potential new leads..”

Discover and Share Lists of Awesome People List.ly "Lists made social! Make collaborate, shareable lists"

Track Unfollowers http://who.unfollowed.me/

Name says it all :)

The type of Twitter list that would work best for you depends on your goals on Twitter. If you are using Twitter to keep in touch with or meet new locals, a "locals" list would be useful.  Alternatively, if you want to stay on top of health news, a list of health experts would be useful. You can make a Twitter list for just about any group of people you are interested in and Formulists can help you put together most of them.  

What is a Twitter list and why should I make one?

What is Formulists and Formulytics?

How can I find new customers on Twitter? 

New followers are potential future friends and customers, as well as an indication of the type of audience you're attracting. 

Who are your new followers? People you just met in real life? New potential friends? Future customers?

It helps to keep an eye on who is following or unfollowing you, so that you don't miss opportunities to meet great new people and future friends. Learning who your new followers are and when they follow you will help you begin cultivating relationships with the new folks entering your social sphere.

Keep track of who is entering your network

There are a few ways to keep an eye on the new followers you're getting. One way that you can straight from Twitter or a Twitter client like Hootsuite, is to use an automagically updating list, such as the Formulists "new followers" list, to track new followers. 

Start with "hello", greet by name where possible

Acknowledgment is nice and on Twitter there are countless ways to do it.  If you are getting tons of new followers all the time, the easiest approach is sending one or a few tweets out that mention and say "hello" to all your new followers at once...

It's the little things

...Of course, the more personal you can get, the more acknowledged and special you will make your new follower feel. It takes all of about two seconds to learn a person's name on Twitter, and about five to learn a bit about them.  Just click on their name or display pic on Twitter:

Stay in touch

This is where a list of new followers can help you most. This will help you develop a relationship beyond just an initial greeting and really get to know who your new followers are and what they tweet about.  It will also make it easy for you to notice natural and interesting opportunities for engagement.  Wherever you notice a great idea or link, you can start a dialogue and begin building a relationship.

We are super excited to announce that as of today, Formulists will be available from Hootsuite, a leading social media dashboard.   Hootsuite is the ultimate command center for managing and measuring your social networks because it allows you to efficiently multi-task from one central location via a number of “streams” of information.

These “streams” in Hootsuite allow you to simultaneously track different audiences of interest, as well as real-time information relevant to your business.  The Formulists app for Hootsuite will give Hootsuite users the added ability to monitor their Twitter communities in some new ways.   Discover your top fans   A stream of your “top fans” in Hootsuite will quickly identify your top retweeters on Twitter making it easy to acknowledge them and strengthen your relationship with them.

   Track new followers and unfollowers   A stream of “recent followers” or “recent unfollowers” will allow you to stay up to speed on the new people you’re attracting and also those you are losing.    

  Analyze streams by location, bio or Twitter activity   The “Filter Stream” will allow you to take any existing Twitter stream you have and analyze it for location, bio or Twitter activity.  This can be very useful for analyzing your home feed or followers, as well as segmenting your audience for targeted monitoring and engagement.

Back in 2008, the Washington post covered a really interesting study in which they had one of the most famous and talented musicians in the world, Joshua Bell, play some of his usual concert pieces incognito in a subway.  Almost no one stopped to listen or recognized how beautifully he was playing.

Within the last few weeks- Jay Baer wrote a great post about how, thanks to new media like Twitter, it is much easier to come by information but along with this new speed of information transfer is a wane in more investigative knowledge mining.  

The way I see it, both these touch on the same theme: as the world moves faster and faster with more and more information and stimulation, are we losing touch with what is truly meaningful? Do we now need contextual cues (ie: big names, high Klout scores, crowds etc) to see the quality of what we read and experience?

But we're busy

In the case of the both the accumulation of knoweldge and the Joshua Bell experiment, the same, and very legitimate, excuse was voiced: "But we're busy", "we have to work", "we don't have time to stop and analyze everything".  That's true, and also why it's becoming increasingly valuable to find ways to scale work and social media efforts.  

However, perhaps this need not be an all or nothing type deal.  We don't need to busily skim over everything or stop in our tracks for hours to analyze something.  As we aim to process information and experiences efficiently, are there any strategies to help us process them meaningfully as well?

Prioritize what is important to you

(comment from Jay Baer's blog post)

With more information there are way more distractions.  So one idea is to take some time each week, or perhaps even each day, to reflect on what is really important both at work and in life.  With a list of goals and priorities in mind, it will be a lot easier to avoid the distractions of the day and take note of what is important.

Stay Mindful in Your Routine

Most of the people in the subway the day Joshua Bell was playing were doing the same thing they had done countless times over: got up and dressed at 8am, took the subway to work, passed by the street performers, etc etc.  And when you do the same thing every day, it's very easy for your mind to follow your actions into auto-pilot mode.  It's a much easier piece of advice to talk about then to actually do, but keeping mentally engaged in what you do will not only help you enjoy it more and learn faster, but also notice the nuances of the experience.  

Two Helpful Tools to Analyze Your Twitter Network:

Top Tweeps Analyzer

This tool on Formulists.com will analyze all your interactions on Twitter to determine who your top fans, mentioners and tweetmates are.  You can preview who these people are and also quickly group them into a list.

Why group "top tweeps" into a list?

By grouping your top fans into a list, you make it really easy to keep an eye on them, stay in touch and return the favor.

Top Tags Analyzer

Perhaps one of my favourite things about Twitter is how easy it is to find and network with awesome people around the world.  At any given moment, you can find a conversation going on about almost any subject of interest.  Of course, some moments are better than others and some types of people are friendlier than others.

On a very regular basis, usually once a week, "Twitter chats" occur on a range of subjects from health issues to education to pets to small business tips. People participate in these chats by using the hashtag of the chat.  And often, the people you will find in such chats are highly active, very friendly and very worthwhile people who will share your interests.

Here's how to find the right chat for you and start networking!

Blog World Expo went on in LA this past weekend where a number of bloggers and social media experts came together to discuss relevant issues and ideas.  You can check out a bunch of these thoughts on the Blogworld.com website here.  

But for those of us who did not make it out to BWELA, or those of us that did and want to keep networking with the awesome group of people that went, we thought it might be fun to run a Formulytics analysis on #BWELA tweeps to see where they hang out on Twitter and other fun facts about them.

Where on Twitter are BWELA tweeps?

Where are some of the top places on Twitter you can find #BWELA tweeps chatting?

1. #brandsconf

2. #PubCon

3. #usguys

4. #blogchat

5. #swconf

Fact # 2- Where in the World Are Most BWELA tweeps?

1. California

2. New York

3. Texas

Fact # 3 - Top Retweeted People of the Week

There's a lot of great chats that come up on Monday (#usguyschat, #socialchat, #rbchat)... or any other day of the week for that matter. The chats are great for learning new tips, meeting new people and just having a good time.  But they also seriously crank up your frequency of tweets per an hour which not all your followers will appreciate.  Thankfully, there are some built in elements of Twitter that you can utilize to your advantage to help keep your followers happy.

Tip 1: Put @ replies directly at the start of tweets

One of the many handy tips you can learn from @tweetsmarter's blog, is that when a tweet starts with an @ reply, only people that are following both you and the person being @ replied will actually see that tweet in their twitter feed. Thus by starting most of your tweets with @ replies while engaging in a chat, you can seriously cut down the perceived frequency of tweets per an hour and keep your followers a little bit happy. 

@Tweetsmarter has also conveniently created two different twitter accounts @hidechat and @hidetag you can @ reply and the beginning of chat tweets in order to hide them from your followers. 

Tip 2: Quote or paraphrase original tweets within comments

Chats go fast and there's a real temptation to just hit the RT button when you see a tweet you like (which I find happens a lot!). Sometimes it makes sense to do so, but there can be a tendency to over-share/over-RT and when this is the case a helpful tip is to package the RT within a comment "quoting" or paraphrasing the original tweet within an @ replied comment:

3. Make tweets that go out to all followers look like original tweets

A good tweet is a good tweet is a good tweet. If  there is a super great idea in there you want to share, you should do it! But try to make it look a little prettier. If the tweet was an @ reply you can try rephrasing it as a quoted comment (making sure to give credit to the person being quoted!).  Or if there's a trail of RTs at the start, maybe put them at the end of the tweet so the tweet looks a bit cleaner.

With 100 million active users from all over the world, you can find just about any group of people, and any topic of conversation, on Twitter.  The question is how. Here's a few tips on places you can start.

Twitter Chats

Probably the most useful way I've yet discovered for finding very sociable and high quality people who are interested in a specific topic.  Twitter chats typically occur either on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and cover a range of topics include social media analytics, small business, pets and education. Check out this chat schedule spreadsheet here to discover different chats you might be interested in and start participating in them.

Bonus Formulists Tip:  Once you discover a chat you really like, make a list of its members in Formulists by adding a "See Who Tweets a Hashtag Most" list from the "Experts or Social Hubs Worth Meeting" category.  That way you can keep engaging with them and getting to know them outside of the chat.  You can also take advantage of Formulytics to discover other chats and topics they have been discussing recently.

Twitter's People Search

Twitter's people search can be a very effective and quick way to discover influential people in different areas.  To find experts on fashion for instance, just type "fashion" as the keyword into Twitter search and observe the "people results" on the right hand side.

Bonus Formulists Tip: Using Formulists you can instantly group results from Twitter's people search into a list so that a stream of tweets from experts on a topic is easily viewable from your homepage.  In addition, can find out trending events, chats and links among these experts via Formulytics.

Twitter Keyword Search

Twitter search is very powerful. Using it you can tap into real-time conversations going on about almost any topic or issue. You can also use it to discover and engage with the people who are having these conversations.  The key is finding the best types of keywords to search for. Chat and event hashtags are great, as are hashtags for high-quality Twitter communities like #usguys or #smgirlfriends.

Bonus Formulists Tip: 

 If you find a search word or hashtag that is being used or monitored by people of interest to you, making a list of the people who use that word most can helpful for learning more about and engaging with them further.  Additionally, using Formulists you can filter a keyword list for location to discover locals who commonly mention a term of interest to you (ie: Vancouverites who talk about coffee).

Extended Network

Similar to the offline world, one great way to meet and discover new people is through existing friends or connections.  Good people to start following or engaging can be found by skimming friend's timelines for people they commonly engage with or looking at who RTs or engages most with a competitor or someone similar to you.

Bonus Formulists Tip: 

"A hashtag is really just a way of categorizing your tweets so that they are part of a narrowed conversation and they’re easier to find in Twitter search."  - Lauren Dugan, "Twitter 101: Why Use Hashtags" 

Hashtags are great because they help you target both topics and audiences while giving context to your conversations in social media.  And as a result of using them you can enrich your engagement and extend your reach helping you get more engagement, retweets  and followers.  In other words, when used correctly, hashtags can get you a lot more bang for your buck- or tweet.  

Of course, the key to getting the most value from hashtags involves using them correctly. For example, don't write a tweet like this:

"Don't use hashtags excessively #for every #other word or extraneously #cheetos! hoping for traffic from them" - example from The Digital Marketer, "How to Use Hashtags Properly"  

The key is to make sure your hashtags are relevant to the topic of the tweet, understandable to the audience you're targeting, and not over-used. If you want to read up more on the "Do's and Don't of Hashtags" check out a great post on the topic by Sherilynn from The Next Web.

So the question remains, how can you find the hashtags that are most relevant to the topic you're tweeting about and that will be recognized/searched for most by your target audience?

To help you with this, we have developed a tool in Formulytics that allows you to discover the top trending hashtags for your target audience on Twitter.  Either use an existing list or make one with us (of your followers, experts in your industry, fans, etc) and we will find their top tweeted hashtags from the last two days. For instance, here are the top trending hashtags for the group of tweeps that have been tweeting about #bcwine most:

What's great about this is that I find out exactly what's trending with my audience (#BCwine tweeps) and the hashtags they use, will recognize and search for most.  I also learn about festivals going on (#fallwinefest), chats I should get involved in (#winechat) and other interests of my target audience (#Vancouver, #travel, #canucks- no surprise ;)

Lists are awesome.  They are awesome for finding people, for recognizing people and following topics and interests. But probably the most awesome thing about lists is that they allow you to engage and grow your Twitter network in targeted ways. After all, that is a key reason to be on social media: to find and network with people who have shared interests and to create conversation around your business on topics that are relevant to it.  

And so to help users realize the full potential of lists to help you with this goal, we are now introducing free engagement analytics to all users - analytics to show you how many people from a list follow you, RTed you that week or mentioned you.

This was a question that popped up in #usguyschat this week, and one we are trying to work out ourselves as we release and continue to measure online engagement and develop Formulytics.  The amount of data and ways to capture it are growing every day, so learning how to filter and process it effectively is critical for any professional or business.  That's why I thought I'd share some of the smart points and ideas I picked up from different members of the #usguyschat this week.

For Starters, Know What You Want

To figure out which data is going to be meaningful, you need to determine what makes data meaningful to you and your wants.  The data you collect should be helping you achieve objectives you have set for yourself. So first, determine what those end goals are... are you looking to drive traffic to your company's website? Generate sales? Network with people in your city or industry? Knowing what you are ultimately hoping to achieve will make it a lot easier to figure out ways (and useful metrics!) that can help you get there.

Start Broad, Ask Yourself "Why" A Lot 

Once you have a goal in mind, there's still a lot of ways to get there and a lot of data you could potentially get that may or may not help.  A smart recommendation that came up in the chat was to start with a more broad approach and try to determine which general metrics tend to correlate well with end goal objectives. For each piece of data you choose to measure, make sure you can answer why it might be useful. Once you have determined that a metric is helpful with achieving a goal, hone in on it some more.

Review Your Data Periodically 

Industry and information change fast, so what was super useful yesterday may not be as useful as something else next week.  Review data and conclusions to determine both if they are plausible and if they are still tying in to key performance indicators of your business.  Are there any anomalies to look out for?  Any new trends in the industry that might have an effect on data that is useful?  Stay vigilant and critical.

There were a lot more smart questions and ideas posed in #usguyschat this week so I recommend checking it out for yourself or joining it next week (every Monday at noon PST, 3PM EST).