Being Cheryl: Social Media Marketing Tips from Columbus, Ohio

Authors Note: This isn’t a blog about politics. You’re going to read the first sentence and think “Oh crap, a blog about politics,” but you’ll be SO FREAKING WRONG! Read on, you’ll see. Oh, you’ll see…

I spent most of the day Tuesday anxiously awaiting the results of the 2008 presidential election. When I got home from work, I realized that I didn’t really feel like sitting alone in my basement on my computer watching the election results come in. I wanted company. I wanted a physical group of people to laugh/cry/debate with. Unfortunately for me, most of the people I know are either idiots, completely apathetic about politics, or, more often, both.

So I decided to tap into Twitter for 30 minutes and see what the power of social media could do to get a group of strangers together.

I’d like to thank @ssines @ldysabelle @dieverdog @JHamlin @jmposton @dhall614 for accepting the open invitation =D We spent the night drinking, chatting, live-blogging and getting photographer and interviewed by USA Today (where the hell is that story?!)

(I know this isn’t the OMGZ QUALITY SUPER HIGH DEF EXTRAORDINAIRE imagery you are USED to seeing on BeingCheryl.com, but I took this picture Tuesday on my crappy cell phone camera - get get get get get over it.)

What’s interesting to me is that people who are ON Twitter don’t think “tweetups” are strange, creepy, etc, and don’t have a problem with meeting people from the internet. I never even THOUGHT of it as a potential problem until I started discussing Tuesday’s fun with NON-twitter people and got lots of “Um, you’re meeting strangers online?” responses.

Well… yes. And no? I really feel like I know people from Twitter. And honestly, maybe I place too much faith in the particular Twitter medium, but I don’t really worry about creepy internet predators finding me on there. It’s not like “Myspace” to me - I can’t really articulate the difference between the two, but I can feel it.

I mean, I would never meet strangers in a non-public place. I don’t even know if I would do meet one on one with Tweeple if I didn’t know personally someone who knew the other person in real life, you know?

Maybe this is faith misplaced. Maybe when I try to organize the board game Tweetup in the next few weeks I’ll accidentally invite a serial killer and the Columbus Twitter population will lose a few dozen members. I don’t know, but I don’t foresee myself ceasing to meet people from Twitter either way, because the people I’ve met have been fantastic and at least two of them are now very close friends of mine and one of them got me a job.

Thoughts on Tweetups? Are they risky and am I naive? Are you a serial killer interested in “Tweeting up” with me? DM @CherylHarrison I’m not scurred.