Audio By Carbonatix
If you’re new to Twitter, you’re probably thinking that a
“tweetup” is a group of people who talk on Twitter that get together in real
life, right?
Yes, grasshopper. But that was kickin’ it old school, circa 2007.
Lately, things have gotten out of hand here in South
Florida. It’s great that we have a
growing community taking advantage of social media for personal and business
reasons, but let’s face it, if we don’t set some boundaries, even the crackheads
who run the parking mafia at Vagabond are going to start throwing
tweetups.
Not everything is a tweetup, folks! Why? Here’s six reasons to ponder.
1 Old Skool kept it real.
Old Skool tweetups were just that — people who connected on
Twitter, but didn’t know each other in real life, got together without any
particular agenda. The goal of the evening was to put a face to
the name and carry out conversations longer than 140 characters over a cocktail
or two. No big deal. Intimacy increased and new people entered the
fold. The tweetup thing just felt
more natural back then, in a warm and fuzzy friendship sort of way. Heck, sometimes people even hooked
up. Networking happened, but
it was never pushy.
2. Nobody ever sold shit at tweetups.
In the last few years, businesses have come to realize the power of
social media to promote their brands. And truth be told, we all have a
personality to sell on Twitter. If
you’re a power user, deep down inside, you know you’ve got a bit of Twitter ho
in you, even if all you do is joke about penises all day long. But no one ever
leaves cash on your dresser.
While there’s nothing wrong with a company or individual
businessperson gathering a group of people to promote stuff, it’s not a real
tweetup if you’re a fake Twitter friend.
3. If there ain’t no name badges, it aint a tweetup.
True, Old Skool wasn’t about name badges, but this is a
sofa-king size pet peeve for yours truly. If you’re going to do a business- or cause-based tweetup, remember the
one golden rule: It’s called a tweetup because you are harnessing the power of
Twitter. Let me repeat: Twitter. Not MySpace, not Facebook, not Friendster. TWITTER.
How do you expect people to carry conversations about you on
Twitter after your event, if you don’t
even know who they are? So drive your
cheap ass down to CVS and buy a few stick-on name badges and Sharpies. How hard is that?
4. Don’t be a Twitass. Keep your private tweetups private.
Sometimes tweetups are purely social and that’s totally OK.
But, if it’s just you and a few Twitter buds getting together at a
tittie bar,
it’s not really a tweetup — you just happen to be using Twitter to
plan your
night of debauchery. Keep it on
the down low and switch to DM. Not
everybody on your Twitter stream
wants to hear about how you plan to drop a couple hundred Benjamins on
a lap
dance. Besides, it’s sort of rude
to those dudes you aren’t inviting. You wouldn’t walk up to a guy
in real life and tell him, “You can’t come to the party,” would you?
5. Expose yourself. Let your public tweetups be known.
It’s simple, folks. At one point, use a free application like twtvite to make sure your
followers mark their calendars. A heavily promoted tweetup that engages the
vast majority of your followers should
include a formal and very public Twitter-based application for RSVPs. Promoting a tweetup on
Facebook is like, er, asking a hooker to wash the dishes and your wife to have
sex with you.
6. Social objects are cool, but …
Craig Agranoff, creator of Worstpizza.com and pie king
extraordinaire, has done a great job of bringing South Florida people together
through Twitter (@pizzatweetup). Everybody always
gets a few slices of free pizza at his famous tweetups, but he never, ever
overtly sells anything.
Pizza tweetups are a good example of community
building. The Twitter-based
community continues to talk about pizza in 140-characters after any
event. Friendships are forged in that big, hot social media oven that is
Twitter. That is the whole point,
creating relationships around a particular social object of common
interest. In this case, it’s
pizza. What’s not to love?
But now don’t everybody go out there and start calling every
damn food or drink based event a tweetup. If you’re just throwing a special dinner at your restaurant and tossing
out a mention on Twitter without spending time cultivating a relationship with
your followers that’s just the Avon lady calling at the door, and she didn’t
even make an appointment.
