Jim and I are on the road this week but have no fear because #shehechat will take place at its normal time at 8 p.m. CST tonight. We’ll just be tweeting from a pretty cool revolving bar in the French Quarter in New Orleans.
Tonight’s #shehechat topics
1) Twitter and nonprofits
2) The iPhone 4S: Is it worth the upgrade or changeover?
3) Using Twitter when you travel
If you’ve been following Jim and me on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed a flurry of activity in our timelines promoting a few speaking engagements we’ve accepted. Two of them are on consecutive evenings later this month and both are benefiting some great Milwaukee area causes.
In his post yesterday, Jim mentioned that on Oct. 27 we’ll be at Ivy in downtown Milwaukee and proceeds will go to the local affiliate of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. The next night, we’ll land at AJ Bombers for an event benefiting the Wisconsin Humane Society, which recently had an outbreak of canine distemper in its facility.
A single tweet can set things in motion
Over the last two weeks, I saw a couple of stories about how there was a canine distemper outbreak at the local Wisconsin Humane Society. If you didn’t know, I’m an avid animal lover and these types of stories just break my heart; especially sine I adopted my own puppy (pictured) from WHS.
When the story broke about 25 dogs dying of distemper and another 70 being quarantined at WHS, I tweeted it out immediately. Two of my followers, @ACommonDisaster and @LaackeMatt, quickly started exchanging tweets with me about the sad situation. Before I knew it, we had agreed to meet for lunch at AJ Bombers the very next day and pool together some toy donations for the dogs in quarantine.
Tweeting your intentions
As we planned this meetup, we tweeted several times to WHS and AJ Bombers about our intended donations. Both the humane society and the restaurant answered back and, in turn, promoted what we were doing.
By the time we arrived at AJ Bombers, one of the managers had saved spots for us at the bar despite the busy lunch hour and came over immediately to ask if we’d be interested in helping out WHS by putting on a benefit at the restaurant. How can you say no to that? I texted Jim and made sure his schedule was open and before I left the restaurant, the event was scheduled. I put up the invites for the event that very evening.
What I learned (yet again)
Twitter isn’t a toy. It can be used as a powerful tool to bring people together with similar interests to do great things. It’s no coincidence that my followers were the ones who got me motivated to help out. It was a thought-out plan to include both WHS and AJ Bombers in our tweets about our donations.
Would I have gone out of my way to donate toys to WHS without the combining of efforts of other tweeps? Maybe.
Would we be performing “She Said, He Said” at an event to benefit WHS at AJ Bombers on Oct. 28 without Twitter? Definitely not.
What I learned again is that Twitter can be used to benefit those who really need it. I’ve heard and been involved with other stories like this and I’m happy to give to nonprofits who really need the help whenever I can.