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to be all work and no play. You can use Twitter as a tool to organize whatever kind of group you want, including those on the lighter side of life. Food and spirits enthusiasts have been taking advantage of Twitter lately: A thriving foodie community, for example, socializes online and plans dinner parties, restaurant weeks, and other offline excursions to celebrate their passion for food. This community is both international and local, at the same time. They trade recipes and ingredients, solve cooking problems, and spread the word about new restaurants together (see Figure 13-7).

Figure 13-6: Beth’s Blog is a resource for how nonprofits can use social media, including Twitter.

Figure 13-7: Planning to eat food. Mmm!

Banding together for creative purposes

If you want to drum up user-generated content for your company or clients, or use that content on a Web site or blog, then you can often find enthusiastic participants by reaching out via Twitter. Twitter users have banded together on creative projects of all sizes, some of which were started by corporate marketers. Tyson Foods uses Twitter and its blog to generate blog comments that trigger in-kind donations to food pantries. Marketer HubSpot often gathers people in the Boston area — both company employees and outsiders — to “star” in musical videos about inbound marketing on YouTube, and they do it by rallying the troops on Twitter.

Creative content from Twitter is definitely not limited to commercial purposes. Twitter users have planned, written, and cast whole online Webisodics (television-style video series based online only) via the service. When they need to change a plot or scout a location, Twitter can come to the rescue, letting interested participants help the project in real time.

Do you need to organize an audio or music challenge, such as the RPM Challenge (www.rpmchallenge.com), shown in Figure 13-8? Twitter can help you do that, by allowing people to participate or express interest in your idea. Twitter is also a fantastic tool for collaborating on projects. You can find co-authors, lyricists, people who play various instruments, and more, just by shooting out a few strings of 140 characters into the Twitter universe.

Figure 13-8: The RPM Challenge Web site.

Planning an event

If you plan events — whether they’re small, impromptu meet-ups or large weekend workshops or seminars — Twitter can help. You can use Twitter to find speakers, scout locations, score discounts, locate equipment, and drive attendance.

Here’s how you can make the most of Twitter for your event:

1. Create a landing page.

Even though you’re doing most of your organizing on Twitter, Twitter itself isn’t feature-heavy enough to provide all information to your potential event-goers and volunteers. Make the landing page an off-site location for signing up, recording offers of help, and generating interest. Your landing page can be a blog, a Web site, or an event page on a site such as EventBrite, Amiando, or Upcoming. TwtVite is a relatively new event-planning site purpose built for Twitter that incorporates the Twitter avatars and profiles of those who sign up.

2. Choose a hashtag (keyword) for your event.

Take a minute to check Hashtags.org (www.hashtags.org) or Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) to make sure that no one else is using that hashtag. A unique hashtag will eliminate confusion.

3. When your event landing page is ready, set up basic alert tracking for your event.

Several free services such as Google Alerts or BlvdStatus conversions (see Chapter 9) will meet your basic requirements.

You can also use a paid media monitoring service such as those offered by Radian6 (see Chapter 9) to track your event. When you need to decide what to track as your keyword, your hashtag is a great place to start. You can also track the venue, the theme, and other related keywords.

4. Now that you have laid the foundation for tracking interest and attendance to your event, start spreading the word!

Don’t let talk of the event completely dominate your Twitter