Your Twitter community is waiting. You know… the group of really cool people interested in _____, just like you?  Don’t believe me?  Let’s do a quick, three step experiment:

1) Go to http://search.twitter.com/

2) Type a keyword related to your interest into the search bar.

Does anybody else out there like glue guns?

3) Hit “Search,” and peruse your results.

Hi, LisaMichelleNY!

Hi, robinandmarty!

Hi, Tricia Abbott

Were the search results too general for your liking?  What’s that?  You want to know if there’s anyone else out there in Minneapolis that digs manly beards?  I’m with you on that one…

I’ll run that as an advanced search.  Here’s what I found:

Result for "manly" and "beard" in "Minneapolis"

I followed the link in the tweet above, and found a manly, beard-sporting web communications professional named Art.  And Art lives in the Twin Cities.  Hi, Emily and Art!  Scaled back or not, that’s a manly beard.

A manly beard in Minneapolis

If Twitter communities were Chia Pets, content would be the terra cotta. Conversation would be the weird paste stuff you smear on top.  While Twitter’s search features can help you find people with similar interests, you’ve got to be willing to engage with those people.  Let me give you a few examples of flourishing green Chia afros Twitter communities.

My mom’s Twitter community

I got my mom into Twitter shortly after I joined.  She has been helping a family member cope with a mountain of health challenges, one of them being a mild form of Autism.  With a combination of tweeting about her own challenges, sharing links, and searching for people to connect with, my mom found a strong group of parents that were all dealing with special needs children.  She tells me,

“Lots of these people, especially the special needs parents, share insights and help with each other, and then get into more personal things, like encouraging them to take care of themselves as parents, other interests such as photography, books, foods, movies.”

My mom follows the hashtag #tck (The Coffee Klatch), a gathering of tweets related to the interests of special needs parents.  The group even interacts with professionals, like @JoanCelebi, who offer advice and actually listen.  You can find support for your ambitions, like @ElizabethPW, who got help with her bucket list.  When my mom was tweetless for a month, people noticed and welcomed her back.  Love ya, mom!

North Side Coffee Mornings

I was reading what others had to say about Twitter communities, and I came across a blog post from a group that calls itself North Side Coffee Mornings.  Their hashtag is #nscm.  The post, written by @KateGroom, explains how she became part of several networking groups through Twitter.  Kate points out that her life has become richer as she connects with others and helps where she can.  Kate says,

“I’ve become a #nscm regular, delighting in the connections, conversations and fellowship at our weekly gatherings. Without exception Thursday mornings bring new insights, ideas and inspiration, renewed energy and a feeling of belonging to a community of people who care about others in their tribe. Wonderful!”

YEG

This final example was given to me by @nickcharney.  Nick is one of my friends on Twitter, and when I tweeted, “Please tweet me your thoughts on how Twitter creates community! Writing a blog post…,” Nick replied almost instantly with the following:

@nickcharney's tip

YEG is the airport code for Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  And now, #yeg has become the default hashtag for all tweets Edmonton.  People have taken such a liking to it that new terminology is growing like weeds: yeggers, yegsters, yegalicious, yeg cetera.  @AdrielHampton, who wrote the blog post that Nick shared, grew his Twitter community simply by connecting with Nick and the #yeg hashtag.  Adriel says that he made previous attempts to connect with other locals, but his choice of hashtag wasn’t working.  It seems like airport hashtags are a sweet spot; they’re short and have the potential to be globally understood.  Now I’m going to keep an eye on #cmh!

Content and conversation make Twitter communities (and the ones labeled with hashtags are easy to find).  Also noteworthy, each Twitter communities with its members physically via “tweetups.”  As Kate points out in her blog post, tweetups are casual gatherings of people put together via Twitter, often with little organizational effort.  Face to face tweetups create a strong bond.  I’ve had the fortune to meet several people offline through Twitter.  Go find your community of friends today!  And please say hi to @telesaur (that’s me) and check out #telework!

Do you have a Twitter community?  How have you found your tweeple?  How can Twitter help teleworkers?