I tweeted, therefore I exist

Yesterday I went to a Gilda’s Club lunch with 150 other women, of whom I only knew three. We were all there to help Gilda’s Club raise funds to support people living with cancer.

It was a lot of fun for a good cause, but I was a bit distracted by a strange thought that was repeated throughout the afternoon: This looks a lot like Twitter. It hit me right after we got there. Some people had bought whole tables, so of course we couldn’t sit at them. I joined a table with most of the strangers. It was like Twitter only with Twitter, my computer is the table.

I like to meet a lot of people.

As with Twitter, I spoke to a few people I know, but mostly I was eager to meet people I had never met before. On Twitter, I follow new people all the time, as long as they’re not spammers, bots, or think frequent swearing is cool. A friend tells me that you are great on Twitter only if you follow a few and thousands of people follow you. For me, the more the merrier. I recently had a party in my apartment with about 60 people for dinner.

You never know when you meet a potential customer.

Every now and then one of those business guys will ask “Why do you waste your time with all these people if your goal is to build your business?“They would never understand my real reason, so I usually tell them some version of a true story I blogged about a while ago: Selling a fully loaded Ford Explorer to a blind man: Who would think you could sell a car to a blind?”. ?

The idea, of course, is that you never really know. This is why I follow and enjoy people on Twitter like Aviation Art Life. If you build a network of friends, good things happen. Or not.

Reciprocity and “give first” work.

It amuses me to retweet interesting or useful information so that people can enjoy or use it as well. And I always thank people who retweet my comments. It is courtesy of Twitter.

Marketing is my passion.

Many of my tweets are about my business – marketing, branding, getting measurable results for programs. So when I read a great article in a marketing magazine, I find it online and then provide it with a link. Last week I mentioned a Harvard Business Review article and one of my followers said he was pulling it out of his “comfort zone“. He made me laugh.

People come from Twitter to my “real” world.

I get to know some of my Twitter friends so well that they start sending me information about themselves or their companies. Then they call to make an appointment to visit. Joe Blumenfeld of the JoeBees vitamins, and a few weeks ago, Chuck Flagg of The Flagg Agency stopped by on his way to a cruise.

So, like Gilda’s Club, Twitter can help people do great things. Sometimes it’s that big protest in Egypt, sometimes it’s as fleeting as reading celebrity Tweets. Above all is a place to build relationships with many people who might one day become friends for no reason except that they like you!