Twitter recently announced lists, an easy solution for adding a group of your brand’s favorite to your Twitter page.  Lists are like bookmarks on your browser, or a blogroll on your blog, but for your brand on Twitter allow you bring relevant brand related content to your Twitter page.

Here are five ways your brand can benefit from Twitter Lists:

1. Follow Other Brands or People in Your Industry

It can be hard to navigate the vastness of Twitter.  Twitter Lists allow you to group users that are important for you to watch.  Well crafted lists help your firm build credibility among those in your industry as well as make it easy to @reply and retweet industry peers by following them in the same place.

2. Recognize or Watch Valued Customers

Use Twitter lists to connect with your customers.  By creating a List of your customers, it’s very easy to follow the customers you care most about.  Lists make it easier to send out tweets or messages to the designated list members, which is a great way to recognize important tweeters to your brand. If you’re concerned about listing your customers on a public forum, you can also keep that list private and just refer to it yourself.

3. Create an Employee List

Many times brands create Twitter accounts that then appear to be run by “robots.”  Customers value knowing who they are talking to. A Twitter List that highlights the Twitter accounts of your employees allows customers to reach out to representatives that might cater to their needs more precisely than if they contacted the master account.  Include official company accounts, employees who tweet for your company, and any personal accounts that employees wish to share as well.

4. Showcase Experience

Brands can use Twitter Lists to showcase with whom your company has worked and the kind of work done. This is a valuable way for other users to see what you’ve been up to and how you stay connected.

5. Increase Your Following

By using and promoting your Twitter Lists you can drastically increase your following. Think about it this way, you’re including industry specialists, clients, employees, etc. in your Twitter Lists – chances are, if you’re this involved, you’ll get added to lists as well. It’s a “snowball” effect and before you know it, you will have been completely infiltrated into the Twitter world. Being added to a Twitter list allows users who may not be following you to see your tweets. This increases your visibility and puts your brand out there so others can follow you.

Check out Context Optional’s Twitter Lists!

With all the talk of Twitter and Facebook slowly taking over the world, we’ve all seemed to forget about MySpace. Many of us don’t even equate MySpace with social networking as we once did. It seems as though MySpace is now just a place for musicians and advertisements.

During the past six months, MySpace activity has dropped significantly. According to Mashable.com, MySpace’s U.S. traffic dropped from 55.6 million unique visitors in August to 50.2 million in September. Wow. That’s more than five million users in one month.

MySpace is in a downward, accelerating spiral. It’s losing millions and millions of dollars for News Corp., not to mention three executives and countless staff layoffs the past few months. MySpace is losing users like, whoa.

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Social media can seem overwhelming. Trying to keep up with what your friends are doing on Facebook, following experts on Twitter and reading up on blogs can be time-consuming. Once you’ve exposed yourself to the social sphere and are just as addicted as everyone else, it’s important to strike a balance between work and social life.

This is a challenge that many brands across the social networking world face every day. How do I make my page stand out among the millions of others? How do I get individuals to visit my page, and keep coming back?

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It was recently announced that Facebook is making significant changes in the ways application developers have access to Facebook user data. According to PCWorld and InsideFacebook, Facebook is changing the privacy features over the next year as a result of a meeting with the Canadian government. The meeting included recommendations from Canada regarding the distribution and acquiring of information by Facebook applications. In response, Facebook will increase the publicity of its privacy features and tighten privacy controls. So, how does this affect application developers?

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For brands trying to survive and thrive in social media, quality should more important than quantity. The number of followers or page views or fans your brand has doesn’t matter, posting highly useful information and building a strong relationship with your consumers does. Those who love a brand will tell their friends, and that is the core of how a brand builds audience in social media. However, it seems as if quantity is what many brands are focused on – more followers, more page views, more fans, more subscribers, more, more, more, and this mono-focus on scale can have a detrimental impact on the brand.

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