HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Offline Networking Events

by Mollie Vandor
Reposted from Mashable

If you work on the Web, chances are a good chunk of your day is devoted to developing relationships online. You talk to people on Twitter, follow them on Foursquare, share photos with them on Facebook, swap music on MySpace and let them know what you’re working on via LinkedIn. Of course, contrary to the stereotype, that doesn’t mean we techies spend every day in keyboard-covered caves.

In fact, from conferences to networking events, there are plenty of opportunities to turn those online connections into real world relationships. The web can actually make maintaining all those real world relationships even easier, especially if you know how to optimize your networking – both online and offline. Luckily for the would-be social media social butterfly, there are a few simple tips that can help you do just that.

Make The Most Of Meet & Greets

First of all, you have to find the right events. Join Meetup groups around your interests, do a targeted ticket search on Eventbrite, use the Mashable events calendar to find conferences and panels in your part of the world, or join a niche networking group like Social Media Club, Girls in Tech, Women in Technology International or 140 Character Conference.

Once you’re actually at an event, focus on putting a face to your name – your username, that is. Since a lot of people will probably know you solely by your avatar and handle, they may not immediately put two and two together when they meet you in real life. The simple solution to this is to make sure you keep your business cards up to date with your most recent usernames. Make sure you also include those usernames on the nametags you wear at networking events.

It’s also good to make plans with the people you want to meet before the event actually arrives. Doing so will avoid you standing in line while the person you want to talk to is mobbed by other would-be networkers. If you approach them in advance, and make plans to meet, you’ll feel much better about cutting through the crowds to find them. Plus, you’ll save yourself precious minutes of intro-time and be able to jump straight into conversation.

If you want people to come to you, then don’t be shy. Tell your followers, friends and fans where you’re going to be and what you’re going to be wearing. When you get to an event, scope out a particular corner or table and send your location out as a status update. Don’t just check-in on your favorite location-based sharing service, use it to find other people that are at a particular event, and to contact them while you’re there. That way, the people that follow you on the web will be able to find you out in the world, which can be valuable when you want to be found.

Follow Up

Whether you leave every event buried under buckets of business cards, or you have one great conversation and make a single, solid connection, there’s no reason not to follow up afterwards. How do you follow up without coming across as a social media stalker?

I like to start on Twitter – it’s a completely open forum, so people tend to be more welcoming when it comes to making connections with folks they might not know so well. Use services like Twiangulate to find connections you have in common, or to see if your new contact might have other connections you’d like to communicate with. Similarly, you can use a person’s Twitter lists to see what their interests are, and who else is in their network. By the same token, try making some Twitter lists yourself. It could come in handy when someone new is researching you.

LinkedIn, and other professional networking sites like Xing and Jigsaw, are also a natural fit for following up with a new friend you met while networking. Unlike social networks like MySpace and Facebook, where everyone has different policies about the balance of personal and professional contacts they want to maintain, these sites are purely professional. Use services like LinkedIn’s Shared Connections to see who you may have in common with the new person you’ve just met networking, or who that person might know that you’d also like to connect with.

Of course, there is nothing better than a good, old-fashioned thank you email. Just make sure you keep it short and sweet, and remember to include where you met and a quick tidbit of what you talked about.

Stay Organized

Speaking of entering your contacts, if you’re out and about in the offline world, you’re bound to collect boatloads of contact information.

You could always bypass the business card entirely by using a service like Bump on your Android() or iPhone, which allows you to literally send your contact info to another mobile device by touching them together. You can also set up a more traditional vCard that you can exchange via email. And, there are plenty of apps you can use to manage these virtual business cards from your mobile device, so you’ll never have to actually exchange paper cards again – which is better for the environment, and probably better for your organizational sanity too.

If you’re set on standard paper cards, you can also invest in a card scanner – either a traditional external machine or a mobile app, depending on which one will better fit into your lifestyle. Or you could use a card scanning service like CloudContacts.

Once you’ve got your contacts scanned and saved, keep them with you at all times with services like Google Sync for iPhone or Always in Sync for Android. Both systems will let you automatically sync your Google contacts with your mobile device, meaning you can manage your contacts in the Google cloud for free and take them with you wherever you go.

Twitter Reveals 11 New Facts on its Traffic and Usage

By Jeff Bullas

reposted from jeffbullas's blog

Twitter has kept its traffic and usage statistics close to its chest for quite a while now much to many peoples frustration.

The fact that it didn’t release many twitter facts, figures and statistics led quite a few commentators to debate that Twitter was in fact starting to stumble and its demise was near.

The figures released at at the “Chirp” conference have in fact revealed an astonishing level of continuing growth that will have many pundits putting away the obituary preparatory notes in the bottom draw.

I use a twitter tool (bit.ly) that enables me to measure what percentage of tweeters are clicking on twitter links from my blog from each country and what I have found happening is that subscribers from countries outside of the USA were starting to really get on board the Twitter train and and this has only happened in the last few months. In February (only 2 months ago) the USA was generating well over 50% of the the clicks, today in mid April the number from the United States has dropped to only 38%. This indicates that the rest of the world is starting to Tweet. So the official figures revealed in the last couple of days have indeed confirmed that this is indeed the case.

The other fact I find elevated beyond expectation is the total number of users at 105 million, 12 months ago that number was 8 million.. that is a growth rate of over 1300% . The other number that stands out is the 180 million unique visitors a month. So here are some numbers for those of you that have a facts and figures fetish.

1.Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users

2.300,000 new users sign up per day

3.Approximately 60% of them are coming from outside the U.S

4.Twitter receives 180 million unique visitors per month

5.75% of Twitter traffic comes from third-party applications

6.60% of all tweets come from third-party apps

7.Since the new Blackberry application was launched, it has accounted for 7 to 8% of new sign

8.There are 600 million search queries on Twitter per day

9.There are over 100,000 Twitter applications

10.Twitter gets 3 billion requests a day through its API

11.37% of active Twitter users use their phone to tweet

The other statistic to watch is the use of Twitter on mobile which comes in at a headline rate of 37%, which is a trend that all marketers should keep in mind as they develop strategies for reaching out to to clients on the Web, don’t dismiss the mobile market .. it is getting serious.

So do these facts and figures surprise you?

How to Create A Killer Company Blog

by Kristin Dziadul
reposted from Social Media Today


Are you blogging but not sure why?  Not seeing business impact from creating blog posts?  Wondering how and why to blog for your company?

With a few quick yet critical fixes, you can turn your not-so-hot blog into a killer blog that will generate tons of traffic.

First, some considerations:
1. Decide on a two-column or a three-column layout. Two-column layouts are the best and most functional since they are clean and easily organized. With three columns, it can easily get cluttered with information overload. However, if organized right, it can be highly effective (Dell does a good job of this.)

2. Decide how many bloggers you will appoint for your company. The more bloggers there are, the less time each has to spend writing, you can have an eclectic set of posts, and the voice of the company can be spelled out from various people, not just a singular blogger.

3. Decide if you are comfortable editing the blog’s template, or if you need to involve the IT department of your company in the blog management.

4. Decide if you want to host the blog on your own website or on a separate site. Either way is fine; this is more of a personal choice of what platform you feel most comfortable using.

5. Ensure that your company has the appropriate amount of time and staff to make an effective blog. Blogging does involve a good amount of time and creativity, so ensure you have those readily available before starting.

6. Consider employing brand evangelists from outside of your company to blog for you. Coach them on your blog’s tools and the style of your blog posts, and have them write from an outsider’s viewpoint to vary the opinions and give more credibility by having evangelists support the brand.

7. Set up comment moderations on your blog and put the commenting policy on the site so readers know how their comments will be managed.

Now onto the blog details:
1. Create captivating, eye-catching titles. Making some of your blog posts ‘guides to doing something’, using numbers (1-10), or even putting an interesting fact in the title will capture attention quickly.

2. Unique, interesting pictures or videos: Once someone clicks on your blog link, a creative picture or video will immediately capture the reader’s attention and invite them to find out the story behind the picture. For example, a past post of mine “A Guide to Getting Seen Online Using SEO” has a picture of a large eye. Readers may wonder what the eye has to do with the post, and read on.

3. Incredible content. If you can create value to customers, write about new information, captivate them with your writing style, and be seen as an expert in your field, you can almost guarantee your blog will become popular and revisited. The only reason a person will share or come back to your site is if they find great value in reading what you have to say, so ensure you are proving readers with relevant and very informative posts.

4. Blog on a consistent basis so readers come to expect your posts. If they subscribe to you on their RSS and hardly see any new posts from you, they will likely unsubscribe. However, if you give them a reason to come back (one being consistent posts) they will be more likely to visit and read.

5. Keep your blog focused on a particular niche industry or topic so users know what to come to your blog for. If you write about random topics not focused around anything in particular, they may not know when or why to go to your blog. However, if you focus on ‘how-to guides’, industry trends, or on particular product markets, people will know exactly why they should read your blog.

6. Don’t just sell your product/service/brand in all your posts. Instead, focus on valuable information that the customers and prospects could use when making a purchase decision (i.e. if selling security software, blog about issues or advancements in the software industry, or top fraud schemes to watch out for).

7. Invite comments and comment back. By leaving your posts open-ended, unfinished, or with a question at the end, readers are encouraged to process your information and comment. If you receive a negative comment, don’t just delete it. In fact, deleting it may be one of the worst things you can do. Instead, take the time to address the issue in the appropriate manner; this will leave a positive impression on others. Also, when commenting back to comments, address the person by their name (if they post with their name), as this adds for personalization.

8. Make it easily accessible to subscribe via an RSS feed.

9. Optimize your SEO.

10. Promote on social media sites in a friendly way. This will allow friends, fans, and followers to read about what you are thinking and doing, and they can converse with you on social sites about it. They may even share your links on social media, which is a huge plus. Keep track of your blog’s analytics to see where the most visits to your site are coming from to determine which areas to focus on.

Takeaways:
Search engines love blogs, so you should not have a problem getting your blog seen. However, even though it may be highly searchable, you still need to create incredible content, blog on a consistent basis, and make it interesting and captivating to keep readers coming back.

How to Promote Your Business on Flickr

by Rohit Bhargava
reposted from Open Forum

Flickr offers one of the largest image archives and communities online and one that is often not targeted because most small businesses aren't yet good at creating the one thing they need to have credibility in Flickr ... high quality non-marketing images.

This is a big deal because Flickr is not just a community of photos, it is a community where high quality photography is appreciated. Sure, people use Flickr to share their point and shoot photos with family, but the power users of Flickr and the communities that you would care about as a marketer are usually looking at very high quality images.

So before you try to use any of the techniques in this insiders guide, you need to make sure your photographs are actually good enough to bother. Assuming they are, here are a few tips for how you might use Flickr for marketing

Share quality photos – As mentioned above, the most important tip when it comes to Flickr is to actually share good photography. This doesn’t mean going out and getting a professional photographer. Those images are great for your website, but Flickr works best when you share more authentic “real life” photos. To take great ones, you may want to upgrade your point and shoot to a real Digital SLR camera with a high quality lens. With photography, the quality of your camera can often be the only change you need to make to dramatically improve your photos.

Go Pro - Getting a Flickr "Pro" account is like the green fees in golf. Of course, you can upload up to 200 images for free and have an account without paying, but you don't get the "pro" icon next to your name and your account doesn't have the same authority for members of the community. If you are going to use Flickr to do any marketing, put up the 25 bucks and get yourself a pro account. (PS - I'm not getting any commission from anyone for telling you that!)

Create collection homepages - Flickr photos are arranged into sets and collections. Sets are like photo galleries or albums, and collections group various photo albums together. As you organize your photos, think about how to make each set about a certain them, and then group them together into collections. Once you have a collection homepage, this can be the public URL that you send people to. This way, you could use the same URL even while you add new galleries to the collection each day.

Think thumbnails - Sets, collections and individual images are represented by thumbnails. These are the visual elements that need to engage someone before they are inspired to click and delve further into your account. When you take and crop your photos, paying attention to how the thumbnails look matters. More importantly, whenever you create a new set the thumbnail is set by the first image. Make sure you change it to the one that offers the most compelling reason to click and see the rest of the set.

Tag properly - Tagging sometimes seems like the online equivalent of going to the dentist, you know you should do it but always manage to put it off in place of doing something else first. On Flickr, tags are a big reason that people can find images and tagging yours properly is a necessary step. Use the right descriptive keywords, but also check and see what people are already searching for and see if any of those tags may apply to your images. Aside from direct links, many of your image views on Flickr will likely come from people searching for these tags.

Share real time - One of the most powerful benefits of Flickr is that when you are at an event or something current that people are likely to care about in a particular timeframe, speed of getting photos online matters. If you have a blog, configure it to work with Flickr. If you are using a computer, use the Flickr Uploadr tool to get your images online faster. The closer to your event you can get your photos up, the more likely it is that people will use them to refer to, share with others and drive traffic to.

Join and contribute to groups - No matter what you are taking pictures of, chances are there is a Flickr group with others who are already sharing photos of it. People who are active in Flickr groups tend to also be some of Flickr's most active (and often influential) members. As a result, joining groups not only lets you be part of a greater community and conversation on a certain theme, it can often give you a direct connection to Flickr users who really matter. Remember, what you post into a group must be relevant and on topic or else you risk alienating yourself and your brand.

Actively promote and approve reuse - Lots of services, bloggers and media are now using Flickr images to power their own stories and media. Once you start getting your imagery noticed, you will likely start to receive invitations for permission to reuse your photos. This means your photos are gaining traction. Try to approve the requests quickly and encourage more people to use your images ... and credit you properly for them, of course.

Enable stats - Flickr has a great tool which allows you to get deeper metrics on your photos. With these stats, you can see which ones of your photos proved to be the most popular or shared from person to person, and also what sites are driving people to your photo collections.

Keep going – Once you start using Flickr to promote your business, the toughest thing can be to keep uploading good content. Doing this means that you need to treat almost every event as a chance to create more images for your gallery, from participating in conferences to everyday life. If you start to use Flickr for marketing, your ongoing challenge will be to avoid having one big spike and then no more activity.

What Can Businesses Do On Facebook?

by Barbara Wayman

reposted with permission

“Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.”   --Putt’s Law

It’s here: the new age of social media. By now you probably know that you can use Facebook to reconnect with old friends from high school, post photos and catch up on what your friends are doing, but did you know there are a lot of business goals you can accomplish on Facebook as well?

Here are my top four things businesses can do on Facebook:

1. Prospect for clients – People can be searched and segmented by narrow topic areas on social media, making it efficient to prospect for clients who may already have an interest in your product or service. Because in social media people opt in to join your group or become a fan of your company, you also have the benefit of a more motivated, interested audience than you might have in the offline world.

2. Listen to what people are saying/thinking about your company, industry and brand – You can use that information to develop new products and services that will appeal to your customers or to refine the products and services you currently have.

3. Develop better customer relations – By engaging more frequently with your customers in a way they enjoy and prefer, you strengthen the bonds between you.

4. Build your credibility and expertise – By being visible and active on social media, you increase the likelihood that when people think of your industry they think of you first.

Notice one thing I didn’t say was SELL, SELL, SELL. Social media has the potential to reach a huge potential market, but that doesn’t mean you immediately should sell to everyone in your network. That can be a real turn off and lead to people disconnecting from you online because it is so self-serving.

It’s like if you went to a party or networking event and you met some new people. You wouldn’t immediately whip out your product and ask them to buy it, right? Instead you might chat with them to get a better idea of their areas of interest and their needs, and if there seemed to be an overlap with what you were offering, you might give them your card and suggest they visit your company. It’s the same thing online. You need to build the relationships before people want to buy from you.

Facebook is great for building the know, like and trust factor that is so important for long-term success. Because since social media is so new there are people out there pushing their products in a very aggressive way, and it might make you think that’s an appropriate strategy. It’s not.

That doesn’t mean social media won’t help you sell your services, you just need to think of it with a longer timeline and in a more subtle way, compared to, “Okay I’ve set up my Facebook page so now I expect to see a 20% boost in sales this month.”

Facebook can be an important marketing tool for businesses when it is used effectively with reasonable goals.

Barbara Wayman, president of BlueTree Media, LLC, publishes The Stand Out Newsletter, an award-winning ezine for people who want to know how to leverage the power of marketing and public relations. Get your free subscription today at www.bluetreemedia.com /ezine.html

©2009 Barbara Wayman, BlueTree Media, LLC

For more information there was also a great story in The New York Times last week on this same exact topic!

7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn

by Sharlyn Lauby

reposted from Mashable

LinkedIn, which recently reached the 50 million user milestone, has long been considered the social networking site for professionals. If you’re in business, it is basically expected that you have a profile there.


But with the more mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook being used for business purposes, some professionals are neglecting their LinkedIn profiles. While LinkedIn is certainly not as dynamic as other social media sites, it still provides a lot of value — if you use it correctly. So whether you’re new to LinkedIn or a veteran, here are some of the things you should consider incorporating into your LinkedIn strategy.

1. Include a Photo Avatar
Some media reports claim that because organizations can use any criteria they want to make hiring decisions, photo avatars provide companies with information they may not have otherwise known about you based on a resume alone and could actually hurt you more than help. But, not including a photo with a social networking profile flies in the face of conventional wisdom when your goal is to build relationships and community.

Eric B. Meyer, an associate in the labor and employment group of Dilworth Paxson LLP, reminds us that when using a professional networking site such as LinkedIn, “don’t give a potential employer an easy excuse to remove you from consideration. Use a professional headshot and scrap the picture of you doing a keg-stand"

He adds that, “an employer may not discriminate when selecting one job applicant over another. For example, an employer may not base a hiring decision on such things as race, religion, gender, and national origin. Although actually proving an employer made a discriminatory hiring decision may be difficult.” Businesses who engage in hiring discrimination are the exception, not the rule. Just remember, by using an avatar, you will be providing information about yourself a prospective employer may not have otherwise obtained on its own.

2. Build Your Network of Connections
While we might be inclined to say quality is better than quantity, it could be possible that the number of connections you have says something about you. Greg Koutsis, corporate and international channel recruiter for Aplicor LLC, says, “if someone has 20-50+ connections then I know they probably check LinkedIn at least once a week. If someone has 1-19 then I realize they probably either haven’t begun to pop the hood and look inside or gotten past the initial threshold of their friends, family and past colleagues. They might be a great prospect for me to reach out to but this might not be the best use of my time. This combined with the profile they have listed lets me realize quickly if I am wasting my time with someone who has no interest or trust in LinkedIn.”
So you might say to yourself, if small numbers in the connection department signal you’re a novice, do large numbers mean you’ll connect with just about anyone? Koutsis says not necessarily. “I do not believe there’s a maximum number of connections that makes someone look like they will just connect with anyone. LinkedIn only shows 500 then adds the + sign after the 500 so you never really do know how many more than 500 connections someone has until you connect with them.”

3. Use Status Updates to Your Advantage
Once you complete your profile, there aren’t a lot of places to make regular updates in LinkedIn. The one space where you can keep your connections informed is the status updates section.

Lori Burke, director of human resources at Neighborhood America, explains that updates are not only an interesting read, but very valuable. “I’ve found new networking groups I may not have thought about [via status updates]. Additionally, it allows me to learn what others are involved with or in, who they may be connected to, etc. In total, it widens the scope of knowledge for me.”

4. Seek Meaningful Recommendations
A terrific feature of LinkedIn is the ability to provide recommendations. This is a place for your connections to comment about your work. Recommendations can be thought of as beefed up thank you cards. Instead of telling one person how you feel, you’re telling the world that person does good work.
It’s important to get good solid recommendations and Meyer offers some thoughts on how to do that. First, “think about who knows you best. It could be a co-worker or manager. It could also be a client or customer for whom you just did an incredible job on a huge project. If you seek a recommendation from a client or customer, be polite and remember to thank the person who gives you the recommendation.”

Then, “If you are going to seek a recommendation from a co-worker or manager, keep a few things in mind. Many employers have written policies against giving out anything other than neutral job references to current and former employees. These policies generally focus on giving recommendations, as opposed to seeking them. Still, as a courtesy to the person in your company from whom you seek a recommendation, just be sensitive to your company’s neutral reference policy.”

5. Optimize Your Profile
Your LinkedIn profile should not just be an online version of your resume, optimizing for search engines is key. The format of your LinkedIn profile might depend on whether you are currently employed and whether or not you are seeking new opportunities, says Koutsis. “If you are looking for a new position then you might want your profile to look more like a resume, but maybe not so much if I am currently employed.”
Burke doesn’t mind if the full content of the resume is on the profile as it can be helpful when searching for candidates. However, it is a bonus “when I find networkers who have added more content than you might find in a resume, such as a link to their portfolio.”

When filling out your profile, you should think about your goals for the type of networking you hope to get done. Also, since LinkedIn has the ability to search any word in the content, both Burke and Koutsis suggest listing all relevant keywords at the bottom of your profile if you want to be found easier.

6. Use Groups to Expand Your Reach
Groups are a beneficial networking tool and a great way to expand your network. Koutsis says that he doesn’t look at what groups a person belongs to when he’s searching for candidates but he does find potential resources using the groups function.

However, Meyer reminds us it’s possible to be viewed in a negative light based upon group membership. “For some time now, many employers are going beyond simply running a criminal background check in order to vet job applicants. Employers may be Googling candidates, checking out their public postings on Facebook, reviewing tweets on Twitter, and scrutinizing LinkedIn profiles. In a down economy — as in any economy, really — employers want to fill job openings with the best possible candidates.”

Today’s rule of thumb should be that anything you post in an online profile may as well be listed on your resume or bio. If you belong to a LinkedIn group that is inconsistent with the business image you wish to portray, then that could be a challenge for you. Meyer shared with me the example of belonging to a group called “The Deer Hunters” while applying for a position with an animal rights group (let’s just say, good luck with that).

7. Consider Whether to Link Your Profiles
Burke believes that accounts should be kept separate. “I believe that this strategy allows me to keep my professional personae separate from my personal. Case in point was the one time I posted a social media article to both applications. My Facebook family and friends found the information of little value to them and I believe the same may be true in reverse. However, I will post general information about me (i.e., speaking engagements) with both networks. In essence, it depends on the content,” she says.

On the other hand, Lance Haun, vice president of outreach at MeritBuilder, explains that LinkedIn is “a snapshot of your life at the time you updated your profile so including Twitter, Facebook, or a blog helps to add living context to your profile.” With the lines between work and life being blurred, posting something business related at 1:00 PM and a picture of a cat at 1:00 AM helps “bring the picture of a person together completely.”

In the end, Koutsis asks, “if people see no reason after viewing your profile to connect with you, then why did you reach out to them in the first place?” The most important thing we can do is create a complete and compelling profile. Because the bottom line is the value proposition you propose when you try to connect with someone on LinkedIn.

5 Ways To Use Twitter's New List Feature For Marketers

By Rohit Bhargava
reposted from Influential Marketing Blog


There is no denying that Twitter has had a huge impact on how marketers are thinking about using social media tools for marketing. One thing that is most interesting about it, however, is how the site has managed to avoid overcomplicating itself with more features. Twitter is simple, and it just works. Of course the one overused word that has been used recently to describe Twitter is that it is a "firehose" of information, shooting out at a speed and volume that has threatened to make it unusable for many people. So when I had a chance to try out Twitter's new Lists feature (which I had been looking forward to seeing for some time), I was not only surprised, but also excited about what this will mean for all of us who use the site. Here are just a few reasons why I think lists may revolutionize how you use Twitter.
1.You can segment your firehose. The #1 criticism of Twitter is that if you follow thousands of people and see all their tweets appearing in one interface, it's tough to manage. Searches in third party tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck have made this more manageable, but those usually only work based on keywords, which is inefficient. What if I wanted to just see all the tweets from my colleagues at Ogilvy? That was tough to do. Now with lists, I can create my own group of colleagues and just reference that.

2.Offers a more meaningful metric of influence. You'll notice if you have a Twitter account that in the spot where it used to just list the number of tweets you have done, it now shows how frequently you are "listed." This is a new metric of influence that sits somewhere between followers and retweets - but one that indicates how frequently other Twitter users who are creating their own lists are including you on their list. In short order, I imagine that number (along with retweets) will become more influential than having hundreds of thousands of robot followers when it comes to measuring influence on Twitter.

3.Allows you to easily follow a trusted group of individuals. One of the biggest issues I have had in the past with Twitter is that it is difficult to follow a group of users all at once. Of course, you used to be able to use services like Tweepml to do this, but that was incomplete and the lists were often anonymously posted and so the data may not be as trustworthy. Now with Twitter Lists, you can create a list of all the attendees at a particular conference, for example, and with one click anyone can follow them.

4.Lets any user of Twitter segment who they actually read. Up until now, the greatest compliment you could give someone who you follow and read on Twitter was to retweet something they posted. Now with Twitter Lists, you can add them to a list and not only make your own experience of reading content on Twitter better (see #1 on this list), but you can also send a subtle reminder to the person you are following that unlike the other thousands of accounts you might follow, their's is one you actually pay attention to.

5.Gives brands an opportunity to aggregate multiple accounts. Many brands have multiple accounts - for example hotel brands that have a master account and then separate accounts for separate regional properties. This phenomenon was becoming more widespread, but now with Twitter Lists, brands can aggregate all their accounts together in a list - and best of all, if each Twitter account does this, the lists will show up on the sidebar linking anyone who sees one branded account to all the others.

Clearly, I'm excited about what Twitter Lists has to offer for marketers. What do you think - is this a big deal for marketers or for anyone else?
PS - Follow me on Twitter at @rohitbhargava