How to Use X Lists.

The short answer

To use X Lists, open Lists from your profile menu or the navigation bar, create a List, name it and set it to private, then add accounts from their profiles. You do not need to follow anyone to add them. Only you can see a private List, so it works as a quiet listening feed.

Why a List beats following

X describes Lists as a way to “customise, organise and prioritise the posts you see in your timeline.” Open a List and you see posts only from the accounts on it.

That is the whole trick. Following a competitor, a journalist or a loud customer from the brand account mixes them into everything else you read. A List keeps them in one place. X says plainly: “You don’t need to be following an account to add them to your List.”

Operations leads who are about to pay for a listening tool should build these first. They cost nothing, they take minutes, and they tell you what a paid tool would need to add before it earns its place. It is the same logic we apply to Reddit as a listening tool before it is a content channel: read the room before you post into it.

Public or private: decide before you build

The default is public. X’s wording is that a public List means “anyone can follow the List”, while a private one is “only accessible to you”. On private Lists, X is direct: “Only you can view your private lists”.

Our rule is simple:

• Competitors, journalists you are courting and customers you are watching: private, always.
• A curated List you want to share, such as the creators in a campaign or your own team’s accounts: public, as a small piece of community goodwill.

A public List of competitors is a signal you did not mean to send. If you would not want the account owner to see the List name, it is private.

How to create a List

On the web

1. Click Lists in the navigation bar.
2. Click the Create new List icon at the top.
3. Choose a name and a short description, then choose private or public.
4. Click Next.
5. Search for people and add them.
6. Click Done.

Names have two rules: no more than 25 characters, and they cannot begin with a number. Plan names your team will recognise at a glance, because “Competitors UK” survives a handover and “List 3” does not.

On mobile

1. In the top menu, tap your profile icon.
2. Tap Lists.
3. Tap the new List icon.
4. Add a name and a short description.
5. To keep it private, turn on the slider next to Private.
6. Tap Done.

Whoever builds the List should do it logged in as the brand account the team shares, not on a personal handle. A List on someone’s own profile leaves with them.

How to add and remove accounts

On the web, open the account’s profile, click the more icon and choose “Add or remove from Lists”, then tick or untick the Lists you want. On mobile, tap the more icon on the profile, choose “Add to List” and tick or untick.

To clear out a List you already have, use Edit List, then Manage members, and delete the accounts you no longer want. X notes that this removes them from the List entirely.

Prune once a quarter. A listening List that only grows becomes a second main feed, and the point of it was to be narrower than that.

The four Lists we would build first

Imagine a mid-sized retail brand starting from nothing. These are the four we would set up in the first afternoon:

1. Competitors. Their brand accounts, their founders and their heads of social. Private.
2. Press. The reporters and editors who cover your category. Private, and reviewed before any announcement.
3. Customers. The accounts that talk about you most, good and bad. Private, and the one community and support should both read.
4. Partners. The creators, retailers and agencies you work with. Public is fine here if the List name is something you would say to their face.

Four is enough. Each extra List is another feed somebody has to read, and a List nobody reads is not listening.

Pin the Lists you check every day

X lets you pin Lists to your timeline. A pinned List appears to the right of the For You and Following timelines, so it is one swipe away rather than three taps.

To unpin, go to Pinned and tap the pushpin icon so it is no longer highlighted. X notes this does not delete the List.

Pin the one or two Lists that feed a daily habit, usually customers and competitors. Leave the rest unpinned so the top of the app stays quiet.

Where Lists fall short

A List is not a full listening tool, and X’s own help page shows two of the gaps.

First, replies. X’s example is that if only @XSupport is on a List and @XSupport replies to @X, that reply will not appear on the List. Our reading: a List shows you what its members say, but not always the conversation around it. When something matters, open the post itself.

Second, protected accounts. You only see an account’s protected posts if you have been approved to follow it, and X says the same applies to anyone else viewing your List. Adding a private account to a List does not get you past that.

If a List you have just made shows nothing, X’s advice is to refresh the page or clear your browser’s cache.

The limits

X sets these caps:

• 1,000 Lists per account.
• 5,000 accounts per List.
• List names of 25 characters or fewer, not starting with a number.

No social team is going to hit the first two through normal use. If you are close, the problem is structure, not the cap.

Turning a List into a brief

The List is the easy part. The value comes from someone reading it on a rhythm and writing down what they saw. Without that, it is a feed nobody owns.

A simple pattern: one named person reads the competitor and customer Lists at the same time each day, notes anything that changes the plan in a shared document, and brings three lines to the weekly meeting. That is a listening process, and it is the kind of routine our workflow and operations consulting helps teams put in place when good signals keep getting lost between people.

Decide in advance what counts as worth reporting. A competitor launch, a journalist asking for sources in your category and a customer complaint gathering replies all qualify. A competitor’s routine post does not.

When you are on someone else’s List

You can check which Lists include the brand account. On mobile, tap your profile icon, then Lists, then the more icon, then “Lists you’re on”. On the web, the more icon sits next to the new List icon.

It is worth a look once a month. Being on a journalist’s public List is useful to know. Being on a List with a name you would not want customers to read is useful to know too.

X’s route out is blunt. It says that to remove yourself from a List you need to block its creator, which you can do from the List itself. For a brand account, that is a decision for the head of social, not whoever happens to be holding the phone.

What good looks like

• Four private or public Lists, each with a clear name and a named reader.
• The daily Lists pinned, the rest left alone.
• A quarterly prune, so each List stays narrower than the main feed.
• A short written note from the Lists each week, so the listening reaches people who never open X.
• Every List built on the shared brand account, so it survives a change of staff.

Next step

Lists are one of the free tools most teams have and do not run on purpose. If you want to find the others, our social media audit checklist is a good place to start, and if your team is posting regularly but still feels stuck, NBK can help find the constraint in the system.