Social Media Novice Does Tweetups

A few weeks ago, I made some more headway on this list: I attended my first tweet-up. It was Mashable’s Hyatt4Good Tweetup in Boston. I decided to go for a number of reasons:

- It was for a good cause (or at least I hope that’s what my suggested donation of $20 went towards).
- It was getting a lot of positive buzz online (Mashable had held these tweetups in Hyatts all over the country).
- I thought it would make a good blog post.
- I wanted to fawn over the Mashable people.

And I’m really glad I went. There were some really nice people there (including the ones from Mashable, who were really cool about my blatant fawning) and the venue was really nice (score one for the Hyatt in Downtown Crossing). It was also a learning experience, should I choose to go to future tweet-ups (and I think that I will).

Put your Twitter handle on your nametag

Putting down your name and company is fine, but the Twitter handle is just as necessary. That way, as you talk to people, they can actually tweet about having met you. Brett from Mashable was taking twitpics of people at the event and used people’s Twitter handles to identify them in the photos. About halfway through the event, I finally broke down and had someone write my Twitter username on my nametag (I couldn’t do it myself because that thing was practically glued to my arm).

Things are easier when you have a Blackberry or iPhone

Yes, you can tweet things via text on a regular cell phone (which is what I do), but at these things, it’s much easier to have a Blackberry or iPhone. Particularly since you’re often tweeting the usernames of people that you’ve met and the event’s hashtag. A bigger keyboard makes for easier, faster, and more precise tweeting. That being said, I don’t plan on making the change anytime soon. Unless someone wants to sell me one for $5?*

If you’re going to make a joke, don’t make one where you pretend to not have heard of something Internet-related

I did this with Nielsenwire. I got a lot of strange looks and a couple of, “Oh my god, are you serious?

* Attention cell phone companies. I will do product placement out the wazoo for you if you make this happen. Pretty please?

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