I went to my first tweetup the other night, near where I live, and I have to say that after getting past the initial fear of walking into a room full of relative strangers (well, most of us had ‘met’ online previously), I had a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting time.
It was great to meet in person those you are following, and vice versa, and to build on my new found thirst for all things social media. Drinking crisp dry white wine made it all the more enjoyable too.
The aim of this particular tweetup was to bring together those in our area that like using twitter and other forms of social media. I had therefore panicked slightly beforehand about the whole issue of ‘tweetup etiquette’. Working in PR I have no problem walking up to a complete stranger and striking up a conversation at an event. However given this was not a networking event I wondered whether I should start my conversation asking people what they do? Probably not. Should I discuss the weather, the new coalition? Probably not. Instead I thought I should lead with what brought me there in the first place; where I lived and how I found out about the tweetup. I don’t know why I worried, it was as easy as pie.
Obviously tweetups can be used as networking events or to promote a product or service, but you need to be clear of what your aim is. I am glad that I chose this social one as my first foray into the F2F world of social media. I will certainly be attending more. And yes there were slightly geeky discussions about social media, apps and the like, however everyone had a different story to tell and there were no business cards swapped or mobile numbers given out (that’s so last season). Instead you knew that if someone said they would get in touch it would be done quickly and easily through the power of twitter and that you would all be twittering the next day (or minutes later in some cases) and swapping interesting snippets of useful information to those that wanted to hear.
by Ben Caspersz