One of the major causes of backchannel disasters is a mismatch between what audiences expect, and what you deliver. Make sure you match your audience expectations when you are planning your material by using Twitter to reach out to the followers who will be in attendance. Ask for their feedback. Query them about challenges they are facing that you can help resolve, case studies of how they tackled situations related to your topic, or suggestions of what you should be sure to cover.

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Categorizing or grouping  people is so easy and natural to us that we do it without even thinking. Who needs to be in today’s “Meeting”? Who are my “Customers”? Who do “I Need to Call Today”? And in the twitter world; who are “Influential Marketing Bloggers” or who is “Associated with Nonprofits”?

My focus the last seven years has been on how we can use “people” lists. As the inventor of calculating lists I can tell you lists of people can be very powerful for any business. Calc{list}® does for contacts what twitter lists are doing for tweeters – they both answer our “Who” questions.

Benefits and Parallels of Twitter Lists and Calc{list}

Twitter lists are a hit because categorizing tweeters makes it easy to follow a specific group’s activities. You can use other people’s lists and they do all the work. This is huge! Need a list of great accountants? Find someone maintaining just such a list.

Ayelet Noff, contributor to The Next Web blog, has a very keen insight into the potential of people lists. In fact, she believes twitter lists are revolutionary. Her post “The Brilliance of Twitter Lists and Suggestions for Improvement” suggests many of the features already incorporated into calc{list}.

One of her suggestions is to be able to combine lists. With calc{list} you can combine lists but what’s even better is that lists are dynamic and can calculate!

In the twitter world this would be something like:

• @myname/no-fluff-tech = (   @louisgray/toptechbloggers + @technabob/cool-gadget-sites   ) - @Scobleizer/tech-company-executives

In the contact world calc{list}’s calculating lists can be used for contact-based activities like email marketing:

• {Newsletter} = ( {Customers} + {Prospects}  ) – {Opt-Out}

The “dynamic” part is that when a new contact is added to the {Prospect} list the newsletter is re-calculated to instantly reflect the change. Ultimately, both contact and twitter lists have many uses.

Twitter List Uses

Mashable’s Sarah Evans: “10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists”

1. Industry Peers and Professionals Lists
2. Experts Lists
3. Recognize and Reward Customers Lists
4. Niche Lists
5. Employee Directory Lists
6. Political Campaign Lists
7. Location-Based Lists
8. Event Attendees and Live-Tweeters Lists
9. Self-Serving Lists
10. Promote Your Affiliation Lists

Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch: “5 Reasons to Use the New Twitter List Feature”

1. Monitor without following
2. One button list follow
3. Promote your lists
4. Filtered by an expert
5. Build a bigger following

Calc{list} Calculating Contact Lists

1. Marketing Campaign Lists Management
2. Email Marketing List Segmentation
3. Customer Relationship Management
4. Email Automation
5. Office Automation & Workflow

All the opportunities that you recognize in twitter lists are available in your business contacts and more! People lists are the “untapped resource” your business is looking for.

Now what’s going to happen when twitter names are matched to calc{list}’s contacts? Hmm…

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