Hello to all my fellow Pittsburgh enthusiasts. My name is Mandy McFadden and I’m going to be sharing my side of the Steel City with you every week! My first task is to inform you about Pittsburgh’s first TweetUP. I guess I should start with explaining exactly what Twitter is. Twitter is a micro-blogging site that allows users to chat with followers using 140 characters or less. The “tweets” can include links and you can “retweet” messages to ensure proper exposure.

Now that you know WHAT Twitter is… let me tell you what value it has. I work for an interactive marketing agency in the strip and we use it for our biz to notify contacts of recent job postings, new hires, new account and site launches. We are also beginning to use it for our clients, which are mostly higher ed, tourism and non-profit. Those clients have tons of ways to reach out to their audience via Twitter, like open houses at colleges, special travel packages and charity event reminders. Twitter has accumulated quite a following and Pittsburgh is a huge part of that following. IheartPGH twitters, PGH Tech Council twitters, Pittsburgh Post Gazette twitters… need I go on?

So back to the TweetUP. We decided it was high time for all the Pittsburgh Twitter(-ers?) to meet in person to discuss on a casual front, topics related to social media, technology etc… This will be a true meeting of the minds! All skill sets are welcome and topic suggestions can be sent to @m0remandee or @hmaust via Twitter. The minds will be meeting on Wednesday, October 1st from 7-9 at the Firehouse Lounge in the strip. You can visit our NING page here and become a part of the Pittsburgh TweetUP group. There we can share photos, info and more. I hope to see all of you Pittsburgh twits there! (HA!)