Twitter Networking

Since the launch of Twitter, I was skeptical of its worth. Constant status updates? That to me just seemed like a way for people to distract themselves from their mundane daily existence or to ramble because they don't have people to share their lives with. You see, I really wasn't a fan.  Does it give these people more personal worth to write about the way their lettuce looked on their lunchtime sandwich? I don't know, but I wasn't really buying into it. Updating my status on Facebook once every few weeks seemed like plenty of insight for my random network of friends to check in with my life.

And then I found businesses on Twitter. Businesses who offered special deals to followers, individuals who offered advice, airlines who gave updates on fare sales or weather delay situations. These Tweets are what helped me to begin to understand and appreciate Twitter. Now, Twitter is my source for news headlines throughout the day, job leads while I hunt for employment and so much more!

And...Twitter is how I found out about the organization Minnesota Women in Communications and Marketing, which lead me to attend my first networking event in Minneapolis since I arrived here.

Held at the restaurant Trygs in southwest Minneapolis, the event was held in a very thin rectangular room, compacting all of us together in a small space. Sold out at twenty attendees, the event was an ideal size for meeting and speaking with pretty much everyone in attendance. Most of the women there had jobs, though a few of us were looking. After ordering drinks and snacking on sliders and veggies the presentation began, featuring the Best Buy WOLF program, designed especially for women leaders inside Best Buy. The program was interesting and the presenter  enthusiastic, but above all it was a great opportunity for me to see how women professionals come together here in the Twin Cities.

Everyone that I spoke with at the event was extremely helpful, and I walked away with business cards for a temp agency that specializes in finding temporary employees for marketing companies in the area, a woman who's good friend started a company that does a cross of identity and brand development (she emailed me with his contact information the next day), and even the card of a suggested hair stylist that one of the women suggested I visit if I were looking for a good haircut. It was a great way to meet people and to get a better idea of the local job market-and even a few "ins" in the industry.

Now, do I want to go into marketing? Not particularly-I am not one to try to encourage American's to purchase more things they never really wanted and will never actually need and will eventually just throw away at some point anyway (I'm quite the minimalist if you didn't know) but I do believe some experience in brand development could help me in what I actually want to do with my life (or what I think I want to do for now), so while I'm surrounded by a community that has lots of marketing and communications I may as well learn a few tricks of the trade.

If you're interested in using Twitter, it's good to know what you're looking to get out of it. For me, my main interests are news, jobs, job search strategies, travel deals and advice, and yoga.  For Minneapolis and jobs, I started by finding the twitter feeds a few big companies in the area. Then I merely went through the people/companies they follow and looked at the bio's of each of those to see if they might be of interest to me. If so, I followed them. With this strategy, I started "following" about 30 new companies, 10 of whom have posted job opportunities in the last few weeks, 7 of which I applied for. And they keep going. Particularly in the communications field Twitter has been great.

So really, Twitter has been pretty helpful for me and I fully intend to keep using it. I wouldn't really suggest that you follow me (I simply communicate with a few friends who post to it and don't post much content of interest myself, so I'd never follow me) but think of some companies you are interested in knowing more about and follow them, and maybe a few of their followers.  Maybe you'll find a job you think I could apply to :)