The social media movement is all about relationships. The technology is just the enabler; the really important things are the bonds we form with the people we meet in the social media arena.
We at the MACPA have formed some terrific relationships via social media in the past couple of years — folks who have enriched our professional lives, some of whom have even become partners. These are people we never would have met otherwise.
Last week, we decided to meet a few of them in person.
We held a “tweetup” — a networking event for people who have connected via Twitter — at our Columbia, Md., offices. It was a fantastic opportunity to finally meet some of the people with whom we've been collaborating on Twitter for months now. The guest list ran the social media gamut. There were A-list bloggers, CPAs, public relations professionals, association consultants, young entrepreneurs, and even folks who were brand new to Twitter and just wanted to find out more.
And here's the really cool thing: Unlike most networking events, where we grope for any kind of connection or shared experience, the people who attended our tweetup came to the event preloaded with one thing in common: They had already connected on Twitter. The ice had been broken before they had even met.
I could go on and on about what a cool event it was, but I thought I'd let a couple of the attendees tell you instead.
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First up is Elizabeth Hall (aka @ejhall on Twitter). She's a designer at Orange Element in Baltimore and one of the Twitter newbies who stopped in just to find out more about Twitter and its professional applications. Read her take on the tweetup here.
- Then there's Chris Jenkins (@Chris_Jenkins on Twitter). I've known Chris for a few years now. He's the chief technology strategist for the Ohio Society of CPAs, and he's one of the more active (and entertaining) folks I know on Twitter. Chris writes for the OSCPA's TechieBytes blog, and he posted these observations about the event.
Finally, there's this: A recent National Public Radio podcast featured old-school journalist extraordinaire Daniel Schorr, who admitted to being intrigued but skeptical about the whole Twitter phenomenon. At one point he asked listeners, “Why do you tweet?” One of them nailed it, as far as I'm concerned:
“No offense, but that's kind of a dumb question,” wrote @mat via Twitter's 140-character format. “Rephrase as: Why do you communicate at all? Just one more method of doing so.”
Put another way: It's all about the relationships.