The Serendipity of Twitter

Career Management

serendipity-is-not-an-accidentIt can be difficult to explain the magic of Twitter, which is why I like to provide anecdotal evidence whenever I can. And this is a perfect example.

I was at D.C.’s monthly WordPress Meetup, checking in on Foursquare. I tagged my check-in with the event hashtag, #wpdc, and posted it to Twitter.

Twitter makes magic happen. Really.

If I’m confusing you with digital speak, let me take a quick minute to explain:

Hashtags are a Twitter tool for grouping tweets. If you add a hashtag to a word, it makes it easily findable for others who are searching for tweets on that topic.

Meetup is an awesome website that helps you meet new people with similar interests.

Foursquare is a geolocation mobile app that lets you “check in” at certain places (like restaurants and events), so you can see who else is there.

Since I hashed my check-in on Twitter, anyone who was following #wdpc — mainly people who were at the event or wished they were at the event — could see my tweet. That’s the whole point; by making my tweet easy to find, I could then interact with people at the meetup, during the presentation, without communicating out loud.

Within minutes, I received an unexpected @reply from someone at the event. He was a long-time reader of my newsletter, he said, and was hoping we could meet in person.

Several tweets later, we realized he was sitting right behind me.

We chatted for quite a while after the meetup. I left there with a grin on my face, and not just because he said The Traveling Writer Newsletter inspired him. I grinned thinking about serendipity. Without Twitter, I could’ve been in the same room as one of my newsletter readers and not even known it.

But because we both took advantage of this digital tool, we got to experience a face-to-face interaction. Pretty cool, right? The best online connections are the ones we bring offline. Yet another example of how Twitter can make big things happen.

AlexisGrant_headshot3-150x150Alexis is an entrepreneurial writer and digital strategist, with a focus on careers. In addition to being a dream-chasing traveler, Pro-Blogger named Alexis as one of 20 to watch in 2012 calling her a “publishing powerhouse.”

Note from Kevin: If you found Alexis’ tips helpful, then check out her five-week course: Become a Twitter Power User. If you really want to make connections with people who hold the keys to your goals, she will show you how using this powerful tool. You can see what I had to say about the course too, right here!

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