I was recently asked to keynote the final presentation at the NH Travel Council’s Governor’s Conference on Tourism in Portsmouth, NH. My focus was (shock, surprise) social media. But instead of just talking about social media, which frankly, I think there is too much talk about social media and not enough doing,  I decided to share some real examples of organizations within the travel & tourism space who are doing social media and doing it well.

I have to admit, I was really nervous about this presentation. I mean, I have spoken before, but never as the “keynote” and certainly not for a whole 60 minutes! So, in preparation for my big keynote debut, I leveraged my network and put a call out for some great examples of travel & tourism organizations having success with social media. I got several responses, one of which was from The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire.

Being familiar with The Museum from working with them for one of my NHTweetUp events and because they are local, I chose to include them as one of my featured case studies. So, I took my kids and my video camera and made my way to The Children’s Museum to speak with Heidi Duncanson, director of marketing for The Museum.

I was impressed. Really impressed with how Heidi was spearheading The Museum’s social media efforts. With their Facebook Page and Twitter account combined with their email newsletters (what BlueSky Factory calls the “Social Glue”), The Museum is able to connect with its members while building and nurturing their community.

During my video interview with Heidi (click below to view), she shared the Museum’s social media strategy along with some great examples of how just simply listening resulted in a visit from an out of town travel blogger who then wrote about her experiences within her blog that caught the attention of several other travel writers.

In later posts, I will share some other great examples from my presentation including my talk with Taste of Portsmouth about their social media efforts including their involvement with Foursquare Day in Portsmouth.  Please check back for that.

Hope you enjoy my video interview with Heidi. In case you are wondering who those two little cuties popping up in the porthole of the submarine are – they are my girls!

Know any organizations actually jumping in and doing social media and doing it well? Shoot me a note here or on Twitter @cmajor to let me know. I am always looking for great examples to capture and share.

A big thanks to Salina McIntire, Membership Director with The Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce for her assistance in planning this event and others. And we definitely couldn’t do it without the help of our sponsors – Microarts, Vital Design, Patti Fousek of CreativeMind Search Marketing and Awareness. Thank YOU!!

I am also very excited to be able to bring you live music from The Sea Captains!!

Adam Flaherty @aflaherty_media (also a member of @TheSeaCaptains) created this awesome video to help promote the event while we were at @RedHookNH yesterday afternoon. Check it out!!

See you on 2/18!!

NH Tweetup :: Retro TechUp 2/18/10 @ Redhook, NH from The Sea Captains on Vimeo.

- I had kids! Two girls who are amazing, beautiful and so smart (I love you with all my heart A & L)
- I sold my house and built a new one. Well, I didn’t build it, but I had a lot of influence on what went into it. I made a lot of trips to Home Depot and Lowes that summer!
- I bought and sold 5 different cars (3 minivans, 1 Jetta Wagon and my current vehicle, a Nissan Cube) Guess I am fickle when it comes to cars
- I worked at 3 different companies. I am currently at Awareness and loving it! (you can include the bonus in my next check)
- I launched this blog
- I started planning these silly events called “TweetUps” where I brought people together offline to network and strengthen their online relationships
- I met all of you!

As I continue my journey into the next decade, I am excited and optimistic of what the future will bring. And I am truly thankful to everyone who has come along with me for the ride.  Each and every one of you has made an impact on my life in some way or another and I thank you for that.

So, without getting all mushy, I want wish you all a happy and healthy New Year. With you all there to join me, it truly will be an amazing journey.

As they entered Brewhouse Foyer, the smell of fresh hops filled the air.

“Thar’s the smell of some of the finest beer ever brewed,” said the old brew monkey master to the group as they entered the room.

As the brew monkey master was broadcasting to the world, the zombies began to come to life and started to slowly (they are zombies afterall) lead everyone out of the room and into the cemetery for a Thriller dance.

The spooky food was delicious and included everything from wart of toad to eyes of newt and was provided by Walter “wanna be a Thriller zombie” Elly from MicroArts, The Vital Design Construction Workers and the masquerade masters from Ballards.

A creepy contest ensued as one of the lead zombies waddled away with a night’s stay at the Haunted Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Portsmouth. Other SpookUp guests were lucky to walk away with:

• A Redhook Ale Gift Certificate
• Some freshly ground coffee from Port City Coffee Roasters
• Your choice of a beautiful print from Stephanie Wales Photography’s NH Fine Art Gallery and Phil Cohen
• Bluetooth® Home Stereo Adapter DC800. $70 Value from CreativeMind Search Marketing, LLC
• A $35.00 Gift Certificate to Portsmouth Tea Company
• Zombified T-Shirts from Zombies at Work

The night ended at the stroke of midnight (well, it was more like 10pm) when all the zombies, ghosts and goblins journeyed back into the night. But before they disappeared into the fog, they all gave each other one last “elbow bump” and agreed that they should meet above ground more often.

~Fin

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This Pirate wants to thank everyone for dressing up and coming to the SpookUp on a rainy, gloomy night. It was an amazing event which could not have been possible without some amazing people including Salina McIntire from the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, Amanda Telford and Jessica from Red Hook Brewery, Tara Sullivan – Zombie Coordinator Extraordinaire, Walter Elly of MicroArts, Brian DeKoning of Vital Design, Ballards, Patti Fousek from CreativeMind Search Marketing, Tara Aiken from Port City Coffee, Stephanie Wales photography, Phip Cohen who not only took pictures of the SpookUp, but donated a print to raffle, Marshall Malone from Portsmouth Tea Company, Mike Schneider - aka BelchingMonkey and all of YOU!

Thank YOU for making these events a success for everyone involved.

The pictures from Phil Cohen will be added here soon and I will tweet about them when they are available. Until then, here are some shots from Amy Greenlaw – @GirlGamy

If you have any photos or videos or comments about the event to add, please do so in the comment section below.

And if you wouldn’t mind – please share your thoughts on the event by filling out this Boston TweetUp poll: http://bit.ly/BTUPollSpookUp

Thank you!!

-Christine

Photo credit: Walter Elly (Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burundy)

I love Halloween. And it’s not because of the candy. It’s never been about the candy for me. In fact, as a kid, I used to give away all my candy. Well, at least after I went through my loot and grabbed everything I liked such as Kit Kats, Reeces Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey Bars and Nestle Crunches – the rest could go away ( I was a generous kid). Halloween for me is about being someone else for one (or a few nights) around Halloween. I love getting dressed up which is probably why I ended up being a theater major in college. I also dig scary movies.

Coming from a family that has run its own party store (Ballards) for the past 30 years where Halloween was and is still the biggest time of the year for business, I have been fortunate to have a huge selection of costumes to choose from. And because of this, Halloween has been a bigger holiday for me than even Christmas (gasp!).

This is why I am especially excited about bringing together my passion for Halloween and also networking to bring you the NHTweetUp Halloween #SpookUp! with The Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, October 28 at The Red Hook Ale Brewery in Portsmouth. Sponsored by MicroArts and Ballards.

Along with a great networking opportunity, we are going to offer a tour of Red Hook Brewery, a costume contest, Belching Monkey will be doing a live show from the event which will be streaming on the Web!

I am also very excited that The Port Thriller Zombies will be performing Michael Jackson’s Thriller Dance for everyone. Feel free to join in if you want (I know I will be doing it). If you want to learn the dance before the event, check out this video tutorial:

We will also be raffling off some great prizes including:

• A Red Hook Ale Gift Certificate
• Some freshly ground coffee from Port City Coffee Roasters
• Your choice of a beautiful print from Stephanie Wales Photography’s NH Fine Art Gallery
• And More!

As I told my friend Walter Elly from MicroArts (long time NHTweetUp sponsor), The SpookUp is kind of a big deal for me which is why he created the picture above of Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy in Anchorman.

For more information about the event and to sign up, go to the official SpookUp Eventbrite page at: http://bit.ly/SpookUp

I hope to see you there! You don’t want to miss it!

It all started during a discussion with Michael Schneider about the burrito, which we both agree  is the perfect food. We thought it be great to get a bunch of people together who also felt the same way about burritos as we did.

The BurritUp was born.

You see, one of my favorite things to do is bring people together around common interests and passions. In this case, the focus was centered around the burrito – plain and simple.

The plan was to keep this little TweetUp low-key, but the day I posted the event on Eventbrite, it was written about within The Brookline Tab Blog by Neal Simpson (who also attended the BurritUp with a photographer for a story he wrote about the event here). Through the power of word of mouth, or Twitter in this case, buzz continued to build about our little “BurritUp” and before we knew it, there were 60 people signed up to share some burritos with us.

John Pepper, CEO and founder of Boloco, who always looks for opportunities to connect with customers offline as well as online, loved the idea and decided to come along. He also gave all the BurritUp attendees gift cards to come back for a free burrito. Before the BurritUp began we had a chance to ask him a few questions about how he uses social media to market Boloco and future plans for the business. Please check out the video interview below.

Ultimately 45 burrito lovers came out to the first ever BurritUp. Which goes to show you that all you need is a great idea, passion,  and some amazing people with big appetites and you have all the ingredients for a successful event! This will certainly not be the last BurritUp and there were a lot of grumblings about other food-related TweetUps that we are sure to see soon!

Want to get a taste of what the BurritUp was all about? Take a peek at this video slideshow of the BurritUp I created below using Animoto’s new video feature (very, very cool). I also included a photo slideshow Steve Garfield pulled together using Animoto (Thanks Steve!)

Other BurritUp photos can be found on Flickr. Videos from the BurritUp can be found on BurritUp TV.

Be sure to follow @BurritUp on Twitter for news about future BurritUps and just talk about burritos.

I have attended and been involved in planning many TweetUps over the past year with my first being an impromptu one I “organized” with @girlgamy and @Geechee_girl at Pocos Bow Street Cantina in Portsmouth, NH. I use the word organize loosely because all we really did was decide we wanted to hang out and meet some people we tweeted with then chose a location and Bam! People actually showed up.

Jeff Cutler & Christine Major MargUp! (photo credit: Steve Garfield http://www.stevegarfield.com & http://www.twitter.com/stevegarfield

Since then, I have planned many other TweetUps including, the #MargUp at Margarita’s in Portsmouth, the #NHTweetUp at The Portsmouth Gas Light Co. (which ended up in the upstairs lounge because it rained) and some movie-themed events such as the #BondUp for the James Bond movie Quantum of Silence and the #BostonBeamUp for the new Star Trek movie. In all cases, we were able to draw a nice group  - both Twitter users and non-Twitter users, who also shared the same passion for networking and just hanging out with friends (along with movies and popcorn).

The latest NHTweetUp - tagged The #DeckUp – took place on 8/12/09 at The Portsmouth Gas Light Co. again, this time on their outdoor deck since the weather actually cooperated with us. Local videographer/photographer Jay Duchin from Duchin Productions attended and brought along his video equipment to capture some on-site interviews and footage of the event. He asked a few attendees, including myself, several questions about TweetUps, specifically what makes for a good event and the benefits of attending a TweetUp. Below is the final version of his video. If you are curious about what a TweetUp is or the value of attending them, you will want to check this out. Better yet, find out when the next TweetUp is taking place in your area and just go!

So what do you think? What makes for a good TweetUp/networking event? Let me know your thoughts with a comment below. Would love to hear from you as I have been having many discussions around this topic lately with varying degrees of responses. A future blog post perhaps? You bet!

Photo credit: MargUp Jeff Cuter & Christine Major photo taken by Steve Garfield