Why Twitter Lists Are the Most Underrated SaaS & B2B Research Tool

How founders can stop guessing personas and start listening to real conversations.

TL;DR: Twitter Lists aren’t just organization tools — they’re powerful market research signals. Instead of guessing buyer personas, learn how to listen to real conversations, spot patterns, and inform your SaaS/B2B strategy.

Coding Versus Marketing

If you’ve ever written a piece of code that magically worked and didn’t fully understand why it worked, you’re probably a SaaS founder.

Meaning, you’ve built something that works, but you’re not going to stop until you understand the full process and mechanisms of why it works. This is the edge you have as a programmer and a founder.

Software you get. Code you understand. ProductHunt is your jam. You’ve got so many shades of green in your GitHub profile it could be your holiday card this year (hey! that’s an idea!).

But marketing. This is where you need a bit of guidance.

Why? Not to be rude or offensive, of course. But it’s just not your wheelhouse. Marketing isn’t quite as agile as the MVP ship and iterate process. We don’t have a changelog the size of Santa’s Gift list.

In marketing, we need curiosity — this is how we’re alike. But we also need patience. We need a strategic plan (quarter by quarter). And that mental discipline of patience is the differentiator.

We have to trust our decisions and let them work. Yes, sometimes it feels like watching a pot of water boil. More on that from The SDM Show episode I recorded today with Rob Cairns (coming out Monday).

The Fallacy of the Persona

If you’ve been to a marketing conference, you’ve been to them all. Everyone talks about personas the way Founders talk about perplexity. It’s like being in a room full of people describing their ideal spouse.

“I’m looking for a man in finance Trust fund 6′ 5 Blue eyes Finance Trust fund 6′ 5 Blue eyes”

I’d love to show you the WHY behind Lists on X.

So let’s focus on the problem Twitter Lists solves for SaaS Founders: listening (huge). You don’t have to create a fictitious persona. Heck, most of us dont always know our real ideal customer.

Instead of guessing, follow and list your ideal customers on X (Twitter), read their tweets (the list filters your feed), and understand the problems they’re actually having. Take notes, etc.

You should do the same for your Fans and Customers. You want to read how they’re experiencing not just your software but what problems they’re having. This gives you ideas into iterations and add-ons.

Let’s pick on Google Workspace for a minute.

My good friend Rob Cairns loves Gemini. I’m more of a ChatGPT girl, myself, but we would both argue that you should choose one and stick with it. After all, you’re training the LLM.

So I was writing a 3,300-word article for a SaaS client the other day, and I was curious if Gemini could tell me how long I’d been working in that doc. Like, that’s a legitimate business question. Did I make money on this deliverable?

When I asked Gemini, I was told she could not read the Revision History in Google Docs. Wait. What? Isn’t that a reasonable request? Probably now it is. But originally Gemini was just a writing helper. LLMs are the English Majors of AI. They don’t really do math.

Of course I tweeted about this. (See? We all share random information.)

You’d think that Gemini would be able to answer a time-based question in a Google Doc, especially given the revision history.

I really feel like AI should be able to do math. pic.twitter.com/0yvS6Mnx0J

— Bridget Willard (@BridgetMWillard) January 23, 2026

Did I get a response? No. But I do hope they’re listening.

If your prospects are already talking in public, why are you guessing what to say to them?

Watch The Video — It’s Worth Every Dollar You Paid to Read This Post

This short, 19-minute video gives you my secret sauce as a SaaS Marketer on how I use lists to inform blog topics, better understand our ideal customer, and use my time online wisely.

In this video, I explain why Twitter Lists matter and walk through how I actually use them to focus on specific market verticals without the noise.

Stick around until the end — there are some solid nuggets for founders and marketers who feel stuck guessing what their audience wants.

Full walkthrough + resources: https://bridgetwillard.com/twitterlists/

Timestamped Highlights

Next Steps / Resources

• Learn more about my SaaS Marketing Package
• Check out my Twitter Marketing book
• If you want a practical walkthrough of how to create, name, and use Twitter Lists for SaaS and B2B audiences, check out my step-by-step guide here.
• Thumbnail generated by ThumbnailCreator

Full Transcript

(00:04):
Hey everybody, it is your friend, Bridget Willard here from BridgetWillard.com. I wanna talk to you a little bit about Twitter lists or Lists on X.

(00:15):
So I had a recent conversation with somebody in the SaaS field, and it always fascinates me how people have different perceptions of what Twitter can do for B2B. Twitter — I am a huge proponent of Twitter for business-to-business. It allows you to listen to your audience, do customer service, It informs the content that you produce on your website, It helps you with prospecting, and BizDev.

(00:49):
And it’s so great because it’s indexed. Tweets, individual tweets, are indexed by Google. It’s great, but, but also Twitter lists allow you to focus your attention on one certain demographic. And I have a real sinking feeling, a real actual theory that when you use keyword-like list descriptions for your public lists, it helps suggest those same kind of followers.

(01:29):
People can subscribe to those lists and just see the feed of those people. The only time you won’t see the feed of those people is if you have somebody pressing their Retweet or Repost button. Those people, you just go to their profiles and, and say, turn off retweets or reposts, which a lot of people don’t know you can do on Twitter. And that does help turn off the noise, uh, especially when it’s not really them talking.

(02:01):
But it gives you a real good sentiment analysis so that you don’t have to worry about what creating this persona of Bob, The Website Builder, who is 20 years old, lives in his mom’s basement, drinks IPAs, and plays Dungeons and Dragons. Because it’s not even accurate. Bob is 40 now. He has kids. He’s married. He’s got a mortgage. He’s, he likes fine wine. Like he started collecting wine. You know? He’s helping his kids with their Raspberry Pie applications. They’re doing geocaching games. They’re camping. You know? It’s a totally different vibe.

(02:45):
So like, instead of making a hypothetical audience based upon your assumptions and biases, ’cause let’s, let’s just admit it, it’s a bias. Listen to what your people are saying.

(03:03):
People write on Twitter all day long, all kinds of stuff. Stuff you like, stuff you don’t like. But you’re learning, you’re learning about them. How they think. What software they like.

(03:16):
You should definitely have a Google Alert set up for your brand name, your website domain name — as it happens, all results. Check out Alertmouse. I’ve done a tutorial on Alertmouse for you to check that out.

(03:32):
Yes. But Twitter list isn’t about you broadcasting to, to those people. It’s about you listening to a certain demographic.

(03:42):
So let’s do some screen sharing and we’re gonna go to Google Chrome and we’re gonna go to my Twitter account. So on my Twitter account, you have the Helping SaaS brands, all this stuff, right?

(04:00):
I’d like to mention right now that there is a book that I wrote in and published in 2021, “The Definitive Guide to Twitter Marketing. I Double Dog Dare You To Try It.” It’s $5.99. I’m not retiring on this income, but if you purchase it, I’d love a review. Um, it’s also a blog post on my website, and if you want to read it, instead of buying it on as a paperback or a Kindle or or whatnot, then go ahead and do that.

(04:39):
Instead, I’d also like to refer you to my blog post called Be Efficient on Twitter with Twitter list. Last updated in 2021. It’s X. So I mean, but you, you know what, you know what I’m talking about. The, the strategy is the same. You don’t have to read every tweet. You like, use your time well, right? So I will let you go to that link.

(05:08):
So let’s just talk about, so when I go to somebody’s profile, you’re gonna see different options. But I’m going to my profile ’cause I’m gonna show you how I make my lists. So I do, I help SaaS brands, right? So my lists, more, lists. My lists are focused on certain NI niches or niches, however you say it. I have #MarketingTwitter, it’s a hashtag everybody used to use for a while. Automotive people from Arizona. So there’s G Geolocation, too. Bay area, if you can drive to San Francisco, you’re on this list. C-Suite. People on Corpus Christi, Texas. Conferences. Construction, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(06:00):
But this is why it’s good for prospecting. Oops. You can go to, you see how mine has the logo and theirs doesn’t. So when you go to your Twitter List and you, you’re setting them up on desktop, right? You’re going to edit your list and that’s when you can put a graphic here. It’s gonna be 1500 by 500 and you’re gonna want your circle graphic right in the middle so that when they see the list, your brand is there, too. So if I go to marketing, I see all this. So let’s go to back down, ’cause it shows me the list that I’m on, too.

(06:52):
Let’s go to SaaS, SaaS products. So far, I only have 197 people there. So I have a couple of options. I can either just look at the members or I can read the tweets. So if I look at the members, I could also say, I’m over it. I don’t, this is a bad lead or whatever. You don’t have to unfollow them, but you can decide maybe I just don’t want them on my list anymore. I kind of don’t wanna pick on anybody. But let’s see. I wonder if there’s some people on here that, that are irrelevant. Well, Dymtro, he’s not really a, a SaaS, so I’m gonna remove him. He’s cool. He is in my Construction List.

(07:45):
Alright, so, and you see I have SaaS, uh, Alertmouse. So if I’m in prospecting mode, I can go ahead and look at this list and only focus on these tweets. Anthropic.

(08:04):
David Phillips, this guy is the CEO of Fondo.com, which looks like such a great company and such a great account. That would be so great. So, “Collision, installed this selfie with @PatrickC and our Y Combinator aluminum friends, uh, alumni, friends.” Aluminum . So I could reply to that and say, “what was your biggest takeaway, right? What was your biggest takeaway? Do websites still matter or eCommerce?”

(08:50):
Okay? So you can do that, or you can use my free Chrome extension “Sidekick for SaaS” where you could toggle it on. Now my little face is in the way. And I can pick a, I can pick up any kind of post. Let’s see, go back. Oops. Let’s go back to SaaS products.

(09:23):
So Fondo reposted, “Congrats on this launch, @TheChowedhary,” oh, I probably wanna follow this guy, but I also wanna put him on a list. So I’m not gonna follow him here. I’m gonna open it in a new tab. Okay, bear with me here. He’s a CEO. So he’s also in San Francisco. So those are three lists, right? So what I’m gonna do before I follow, I always do this before I follow, is I’ll go more the three dots, right? Shish kabob menu. Add/Remove to to lists. He’s gonna go on my C-suite.

(10:54):
Now, see, it’s not this, this way, it’s not in alphabetic order. This is an order of creation. So I know that my Bay Area list is way, way down. Bay Area. And I’m also going to put him in the C-suite. Boom, save, follow.

(11:30):
So let’s see if there’s something I wanna talk. They are launching the most accurate and fastest web search APIs for AI agents. Um, that’s pretty amazing. So the infrastructure for agentic AI. So, uh, if I wanna use my Sidekick for SaaS, I’ll say, I’ll press the Chrome extension, toggle sidebar on this tab, click off, highlight the text. I’m going to say “use selected post,” and now I’m gonna generate comments. I could rewrite it like me or just generate comments.

(12:33):
So it says, “exciting launch, the ability to transform guessing into doing can really elevate the effectiveness of AI agents across industries. Love to see innovation.”

(12:46):
Like you could just copy it and then insert it. Or you can do rewrite, rewrite as Bridget. This didn’t mean to be like a pitch. I mean it’s a free Chrome extension.

(12:58):
“Congratulations. It’s exciting to see that. Love the focus on speed and accuracy. Two things every SaaS founder knows are critical.”

(13:06):
Now, that sounds like me, right? So I’m gonna copy it , and I’m gonna go right here and I’m gonna paste it and I’m gonna reply, right?

(13:25):
So if we go back to the list, so @FounderJournal, what is done by Fondo. Fondo’s, right here, you can reply to that, right? @LemonSqueezy, they’re retweeting themselves. You can reply to that.

(13:46):
But also, some of these are big SaaS companies and some of them are small SaaS companies, right? ’cause Fondo’s Big, I don’t know what Buddy Punch is. Oh, I think it’s a time card. Yeah. “Time tracking software to manage your workforce.” Yeah. “Remote job sites expose the limits of most time tracking software.” Yeah. Like, so you see what I mean? Right? So let’s stop sharing.

(14:16):
So the point is that it, no matter what you’re working on, whether you’re trying to learn about, you know, different verticals, right? Construction people, SaaS people, WordPress people, WordPress Products, whatever it is that you’re focusing on, using lists and always doing that list management, which is part of all of my Twitter plans, by the way, even the lowest one, including the graphic. That is key.

(14:47):
And I’m gonna tell you something, I had a little bit of a demo today of, of a really cool product. Well, it’s a SaaS. And it’s called FlowChat.com. And they have the ability to import contacts that you put on your Twitter lists and put them into your sales funnel, follow and your automation rules for whether or not they are a qualified lead. And then, you know, away you go. In this Kanban style thing,

(15:32):
I’m, I am blown away at what people are building right now. It’s really fascinating. So you should go check it out, FlowChat.com. There’s some very lovely people that work there and they’re doing great things that I think could really change how omnichannel works, right? So Omnichannel being everywhere, but we’re on, we’re omnichannel, but we’re not omniscient. You need kind of a command center for all of this. And then how do you even track all those leads?

(16:05):
They, of course it works with a, a bunch of CRMs and stuff like that. I’m not an affiliate yet. Or you know, you never know. But I did just see it just as a like, intro call. We were just talking to each other and I’m like, I don’t know about my clients. Some of my clients would probably like this, but I’m kind of thinking that it’s gonna be my next big purchase. Because it is a very cool tool that will allow you to be more serious about your prospecting on Twitter.

(16:37):
Twitter lists are huge. They are an untapped resource of people talking. Everything that they’re thinking about online based upon your ideal customer profile, right? Or your persona or what, or Bob, The Web Builder, whoever, whoever it is that you’re trying to, to prospect, right?

(17:04):
Who, who is it? Where is your biz dev happening? Maybe it’s just local, right? Maybe it’s just roofing websites.

(17:11):
Either way. Um, Twitter lists are huge, humongous, very huge for SaaS because who uses SaaS? Other companies. It’s B2B. Twitter and LinkedIn are the best for, for B2B, hands down. But I’ve already talked a lot about LinkedIn, so it’s time for that video. Another day we’ll talk about that with the 3, 2, 1 method. Just look it up, you’ll find it. I’ll probably put a link.

(17:40):
Thank you for reaching to the end of this video.

(17:43):
Hey, if you want some help with your SaaS, I have three levels of pricing. I have different ways you can engage with me. Of course, I have the SaaS platform package, which is four blog posts a month and Twitter Pro. But if you haven’t been writing blog posts, there’s no way I would let you buy that from me. So just if you need help, you’re tired of being the founder who’s floundering in “build-in public” community on Twitter on X, and you need some help, let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s figure it out. Let’s, let’s get it done.

(18:21):
My name is Bridget Willard and you can find me at bridgetwillard.com. Bye.