May 14, 2009

Any business person in Charlottesville can tell you networking is crucial, but in today's economy it's not always enough to shop your resume around or advertise your company. Many in the area are turning to twitter to advance their careers.

Charlottesville has a vibrant community of bloggers and tweeters who communicate online. CBS19's Bianca Spinosa attended a Tweet Up to delve deeper into why people tweet.

Every day more people follow Barbara Hutchinson's Twitter account. The Executive Director of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport also keeps a blog.

"We thought the blog was an opportunity to introduce ourselves, as well as to share news or interesting facts," says Hutchinson.

Only two other airports in Virginia have Twitter accounts. The stream of information can't be hurting CHO. Ticket sales are taking flight. Hutchinson tweets that passenger traffic increased by 10% this year.

We're hearing a lot about Twitter these days, but the technology isn't new. People in Charlottesville have been tweeting for years. I decided to leave my twitter page and attend a Tweet Up to meet people who've known about Twitter longer than I have.

A group of friends meeting up for drinks at South Street on the Downtown Mall the first Wednesday of every month. Seems pretty ordinary, but how many of your friends own software companies?

Daniel Strickland, CEO of Cloudbrain, and Adam Healey, CEO of Hotelicopter, are friends. Word quickly got out about an opportunity to network with local business owners like Healey and Strickland.

"There's really no agenda," says Healey, co-founder of Hotelicopter, a locally based hotel search engine. "We're just focused on exchanging ideas and meeting like minded people. There are developers, designers...folks that are interested in the internet."

At these Tweet Ups, you can meet people in person that you knew online, which can be good for business.

Nikki Haffey is the Marketing Director of Openspace, an internet-based company that leases space to people who work online out of their homes or from coffee shops.

"Obviously we have our bars we can get together at, but I can find someone at Twitter, facebook or Linked In and establish an immediate connection without having met them," says Haffey.

What if your job doesn't involve the Internet? Can you still benefit? Jim Duncan is a local real estate agent who not only attends Tweet Ups, he helps organize them.

"Someone will hit me up and say when's the next tweet up?" says Duncan, a Realtor with Nest Realty.

In an economy where the housing market is sliding, Duncan is moving into a new office. He says clients have found him through Twitter. But to see your business grow with social media you have to be willing to spend a large amount of time out of your day Tweeting.

It's not something you can do once every six months," says Duncan."It's the constant stream of who I am."

But don't expect Tweeting to substitute person-to-person relationships. Perhaps that's what the Tweet Ups are for.

Tweet Ups happen often in Charlottesville. The next one is coming up on May 18th at Rapture in Charlottesville.

You can see the story before it airs on You Tube . We've also set up links on our Facebook and Twitter page.