Power Your Radio Show Prep with Twitter Lists

One of the best sources for free radio show prep is Twitter. But have you fine-tuned your Twitter feed to help you get to the prep you need most when you need it?

Back when Twitter launched there was very little control. You would follow someone’s account and the tweets they created would show up in your feed in order of when they were posted. For the most part Twitter still works this way, which is a good thing. But if there is a downside it’ is that if you follow hundreds of sources you’re required to scroll through dozens of tweets to find one that might be useful right now.

Twitter feed control got better in 2009 when the company introduced Lists. With Lists, you were finally able to segment who you followed according to a particular group you created.

So let’s create a List. On the Twitter website you do this by clicking your profile icon and choosing Lists. Alternatively you can go directly to http://twitter.com/YOUR-TWITTER-HANDLE/lists.

Next click “Create new list.” Choose a name for your list, such as “Local News” or “High School Sports,” and set it to private. You’re making these Lists private so that competitors who follow you on Twitter don’t borrow your curated source list.

You can create as many Lists as you like, for both personal and professional use. If you have a Hollywood news segment on your show you could create a List of entertainment Twitter feeds. If you’re planning a hiking vacation you could create a list of hiking experts on Twitter.

Some power users make sure every Twitter user they follow is added to a list and they only view tweets this way. Instead of having an endless feed of tweets to surf through on a regular basis, you’ll have a simple list to rely on instead.

Note: Most popular Twitter apps provide a way to create, edit and view Lists. Since you’re likely to do a lot of your story searching on your mobile device, be sure to choose an app that lets you work with Lists.