New Jersey on Twitter
February 25th, 2009 by Leora
How can you use Twitter to connect with people live in your location?
One of the wonderful parts of working on this post is “meeting” so many different people who live near my home in Central New Jersey (mostly Central). Over the past two weeks I’ve “collected” these new friends (in no particular order):
Real estate goddess, cycling chick, aviatrix
Deirdre Breakenridge is President of PFS Marketwyse, a full service marketing communications firm and the author of two recent books, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations and PR 2.0, New Media, New Tools, New Audiences. You can read Deirdre's blog, PR 2.0 Strategies.
Lori's Earth Friendly Products: Our mission is to bring natural, healthy, kosher products to our friends, and the world. We carry: Fiber Juice, other fiber products, Stomach Friendly Coffee, Garlic Spray, VitaTops, High-Fiber Pasta and Mac & Cheese, Soy Entrees and Textured Soy Protein.http://www.earth-friendly.com/
Jerseybites.com delivers fabulous and easy recipes, food products and restaurant reviews across the Garden State and beyond.
An original comedic web series about life in a NJ comic book store. Insanity ensues. http://www.issuestheseries.com/
Marketer, video producer, web guy & rabid jazz fan, working with nonprofits & businesses to effectively use old & new communications tools. http://michaelconaty.com/
likes knitting, running, yoga, writing and taking photos (see Exile in Suburbia)
Rutgers-Newark website designer. Photoblogger. MFA Grad Student.
social entrepreneur, cause-related marketer, social media learner, direct selling executive, instructional designer, wife and adoptive mother, living out loud! http://liajen.wordpress.com/
A teacher, a seeker, a part-time tarot card reader. An ex-pat Brit, a stay-at-home Dad. See his blog: An Englishman in New Jersey
It's all about having fun! Organizing Coach, Founder STO / Eva's Edict 5 Minutes #EE5, Speaker, Writer, Volunteer: Intergenerational Programs, Wife, Mom
How did I go about getting these contacts in Twitter?
1) I put “New Jersey” in a search column in TweetDeck and left it there. Each time I start up TweetDeck, I see more tweets about New Jersey. But truthfully, I didn’t find too many new people this way.
2) I asked people I already follow in my location if they wanted to be included in this post. I got much enthusiasm! Some of them suggested other people they follow who live locally. In general, that’s the best way to find new folks to follow; see who your favorite twitterers are following!
3) To make the contact more genuine, reply (use the @, as in @leoraw) to specific tweets to get to know others better.
4) Every now and then, look over everyone else’s tweets, find a good one, and retweet it! To retweet, put ‘RT @twittername’ at the beginning of your tweet. Retweeting is a great way to build community.
Other posts on Twitter:
Twitter Basics for Librarians
A Meaningful Tweet
Update: I hope to meet a few of these “tweeple” (Twitter for “people”) on Thursday morning.
Note: to anyone in this post, feel free to DM or comment below any corrections, edits, suggestions.
Hi Leora!
Thanks for the link
Another great source for finding local Twitter users is Nearby Tweets: http://nearbytweets.com/
See you tomorrow at the Tweetup!
Thanks for the nearbytweets link! Wow, now there’s a lot of Twitterers in there, maybe too many! So many folks are tweeting.
I liked this post even though I have nothing to do with NJ!
Glad you liked it! It took a week of work (at least) to put together!
thanks for including me! always nice to see who else is out there from NJ
Leora – thanks so much for including me in your “Rogue’s Gallery” of twittering New Jerseyans! It’s great to be in such wonderful company.
If anyone is interested in my tarot card readings, there’s more information here:
http://foucault.tarot.googlepages.com/
Graham.
Nora and Graham, so pleased to have connected via Twitter.
Incredible the things you manage to find out and share with us!
Ilana-Davita, so what shall I explore next? I think I need a week or so to recover from this post, first. Also, I plan to go to the TweetUp tomorrow, so that in itself will warrant a new post…
Oh, such fun, Leora. I do wish I had more time to explore this.
And then I attended my first TweetUp this morning… a post coming soon! Glad you enjoy reading about it.
What is TweetUp?
A whole bunch of Twitterers (those who tweet? Folks on Twitter) met together this morning. Eva (who is in this post) with the help of Jen (liajen) arranged the TweetUp. It’s networking, meeting others in the local area.
Do you mean that you all met in person?
Yes! Live! People talking to people! In a cafe.
Hi Leora,
Great to meet you today and thanks for the mention. I’ve used numerous sources to locate NJ tweeters. Twellow.com is a good source and I also use the search.twitter.com and will search under specific towns: Montclair, Red Bank, etc.
Deborah, thanks for all those great tips on finding local Tweeters. There was a service for an RSS feed for local tweets that I signed up for a while, but I got lots of Rutgers students (I live right next to Rutgers).
The meeting this morning had “serious” Twitter users. (oh, can I think of a better, less austere word than “serious”?).
Tweeple…No kidding, that is what they are called. Too funny…