Sketching Out Blog: Sketches of art, watercolor, photos, recipes, books, interviews, Jewish topics, and Highland Park, New Jersey

New Jersey on Twitter

twitter_birdieHow 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):

realestatechick

Real estate goddess, cycling chick, aviatrix
deirdre

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.
lorisefp

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

Jerseybites.com delivers fabulous and easy recipes, food products and restaurant reviews across the Garden State and beyond.
issues_logo

An original comedic web series about life in a NJ comic book store. Insanity ensues. http://www.issuestheseries.com/
mikeconaty

Marketer, video producer, web guy & rabid jazz fan, working with nonprofits & businesses to effectively use old & new communications tools. http://michaelconaty.com/
phigirl

likes knitting, running, yoga, writing and taking photos (see Exile in Suburbia)
rn

Rutgers-Newark website designer. Photoblogger. MFA Grad Student.
liajen

social entrepreneur, cause-related marketer, social media learner, direct selling executive, instructional designer, wife and adoptive mother, living out loud! http://liajen.wordpress.com/
grahamgudgin

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
eva

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.

Mike Conaty says

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!

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leoraw says

Thanks for the nearbytweets link! Wow, now there's a lot of Twitterers in there, maybe too many! So many folks are tweeting.

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mother in israel says

I liked this post even though I have nothing to do with NJ!

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leoraw says

Glad you liked it! It took a week of work (at least) to put together!

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nora says

thanks for including me! always nice to see who else is out there from NJ :)

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Graham says

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.

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leoraw says

Nora and Graham, so pleased to have connected via Twitter.

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Ilana-Davita says

Incredible the things you manage to find out and share with us!

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leoraw says

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...

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East Gwillimbury WOW! says

Oh, such fun, Leora. I do wish I had more time to explore this. ;-)

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leoraw says

And then I attended my first TweetUp this morning... a post coming soon! Glad you enjoy reading about it.

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Ilana-Davita says

What is TweetUp?

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leoraw says

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.

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Ilana-Davita says

Do you mean that you all met in person?

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leoraw says

Yes! Live! People talking to people! In a cafe.

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Deborah Smith says

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.

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leoraw says

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"?).

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ramblingwoods says

Tweeple...No kidding, that is what they are called. Too funny...

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