#formulists

@MrBerre points me to this blogpost by Pinboard, in regards to the Formulists news:

So stop getting caught off guard when your favorite project sells out! “They were getting so popular, why did they have to shut it down?” Because it's hard to resist a big payday when you are rapidly heading into debt. And because it's culturally acceptable to leave your user base high and dry if you get a good offer, citing self-inflicted financial hardship.

"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 :)

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

What is Formulists and Formulytics?

How can I find new customers on Twitter? 

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.

"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 ;)

This morning we got a great question from one of our star users, Joel Hughes. Specifically, he was wondering how he could make sure that members from one Twitter list would not also appear on another:

This is a great question, because by making sure that each twitter list has unique members, you also make sure you don't read the same tweets twice and thus can more efficiently pay attention to unique tweets.

What are some good use cases where this technique would be handy?

To have a nifty list of people you haven't talked to in a while 

To create different priority level lists to read in order to save time

How Do I Do It?

Step 1: Sign into Formulists with your Twitter account

Step 2: Choose to add a "mash" list from the "Lists or Follower Sets They're Already In" category.

Step 3: In the first line add a list or follower set of interest (ie: people you follow) and in the second add the list whose members you would not want to include in your final list.   Make sure to select "remove people from this list" from the drop down menu on the left like so: