I asked my good friend and industry colleague Joe Ruiz to write a guest post about the benefits of attending local tweetups.  Joe and I were Chips Quinn Scholars in May 2006.  Joe is the nightside editor for KSAT.com in San Antonio, Texas.  Since joining KSAT, Joe has been instrumental in bolstering the station’s presence on Twitter.  He has attended several tweetups in the San Antonio area and has co-hosted a series of workshops on how social media can be used in the newsroom.

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One of the greatest benefits of attending tweetups, be they general or industry-specific, are the connections its possible to create based on common interests.I was asked to write this guest post based on a tweet I wrote while involved in an argument about industry-specific tweetups and their usefulness.

Personally, I’ve been introduced to work colleagues who have since become friends. As a Web editor, I don’t make it out of the newsroom at all. I don’t think it’s ever a bad idea to know who your competition is, but despite different paychecks, it pays to have some common ground with which to come back. Professionally, I’ve met people who have helped us develop our social media presence in our newsroom with compliments and complaints. We’ve used the same connections to generate story ideas and find new sources for others. I would even count some of the people I’ve met via various tweetups as friends.

After a chance meeting with another presenter for a tweetup of sorts (the Social Media Breakfast of San Antonio), I co-founded a lunch tweetup group based primarily around media, public relations and business professionals, but the lessons and discussions have been for a general audience. In San Antonio, Texas, there’s a handful of standard tweetups (drinks, mingling, etc.) as well as those that offer some sort of lesson. At the San Antonio Media/PR/Business Lunch Tweetups (affectionately known as #SAMPRB), we’ve had such topics as the best tools for using Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools and are planning our next meeting around legal issues surrounding social media and policies in newsrooms, businesses and other places.

You can’t be afraid to give tweetups a try. They’re generally similar to any other social gathering, except this one will likely have a hashtag and people typing away on their phones more. You’ll meet some great people and some not-so-great, you’ll be pitched story ideas, you’ll find overly-confident people and you’ll find the jerks (hell, sometimes that’s me), but you will gain some benefit, even if it’s just meeting another person on any given evening.

One of the best social media-focused newsrooms around is the Austin American-Statesman. They’ve integrated Twitter and other social media tools into their reporting, they’re blogging and they’ve even hosted their own tweetups. I like to cite the Statesman as one of the best around because they’ve been willing to try new ideas and they produce some of the best content while establishing themselves online in a community widely-recognized as one of the most technologically adept cities in the nation. You don’t have to go all out and host tweetups with your organization’s branding, but if you and your newsroom are comfortable with setting one up, it could help establish your presence online and open your content up to an audience who consumes its information in a different form.

Joe Ruiz (@joeruiz on Twitter) is the nightside Web editor for KSAT.com in San Antonio, Texas. He is one of the new media track leaders for the upcoming National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and will serve as an instructor for conference classes on Twitter, livestreaming video for news coverage and other courses.