Many people don’t know what to do with Twitter when they first take a look. How can anyone connect with only 140 characters sent off to who knows where?

I have met many people in my geographical area, New Jersey or more specifically Central New Jersey, through Twitter. Some of them I have later met in person; they continue to be valuable business contacts. I have been saving many of the New Jersey in a folder in my email; I decided to organize some of those Twitter contacts (tweeps? tweeple?) on a page called New Jersey on Twitter. I organized the page by professional area, so if you are not from New Jersey, you may still find valuable contacts on that page in fields such as web services, social media or public relations.

Note: on this post, I used “New Jersey” often as the example. You can substitute your city, state, country or other geographical area.

Suggestions on how one can use Twitter to build a network of people in your area:

Find Some People on Twitter in Your Area

• Use TweepSearch to search bios. You can put in “New Jersey” and get results of all sorts of people with New Jersey in their Twitter bio.
• Put keyword “New Jersey” in http://search.twitter.com/ and see who is talking about New Jersey. Chances are, some of them are from New Jersey. Or try “new jersey network.” Follow the ones that interest you.
• Nearby Tweets – I demonstrated this application at a Twitter research workshop I conducted to find people in New Jersey who were in the pharmaceutical business. We used keyword #pharma to narrow our selection to pharmaceutical tweets.
• UberTwitter for Blackberry – if you have a Blackberry, Geri Rosman recommends this app.
• Follow some people from New Jersey (or your chosen location) and then ask them for suggestions of more people from that location.

Find the Power Users in Twitter in Your Area

How do you know someone is a power user of Twitter instead of a casual user? Large numbers of followers might be a clue, but not always. Look to see the content of their tweets. Are they talking about your area? To others? Do they ever mention networking or Tweetups? A Tweetup is a gathering of Twitter users face-to-face – great way to network with others. Do they have a Twitter list of your geographical area? See next section for more on Twitter lists.

Using New Jersey as an example, I would suggest Eva Abreu, who has a website devoted to social media in New Jersey or njfamilymag who tweets many New Jersey events. Do you have someone in your area that you would consider to be a power user of Twitter? Look to see who that person is following or who follows that person to find more people in your area. Perhaps they also know about networking events in your area.

Create Twitter Lists

Create your own geographic lists. Visit the lists of others in your area. Follow some of those lists.

Examples of Twitter lists organized by location:
http://twitter.com/leoraw/newjersey – my own list (most are some with whom I have had at least one exchange on Twitter – by no means an exhaustive list of Twitterers in New Jersey)
http://twitter.com/Brightfarm/areastuff – Barbara Lopez lives in Sacramento.
http://twitter.com/eric_andersen/boston-social-media – Eric Anderson’s list of social media in Boston.
http://twitter.com/mominisrael/israeli-bloggers – Hannah Katsman’s list of Israeli bloggers

Some areas are harder for forming social media connections than others. Ron Graham, who used to live in New Jersey but now lives in Akron, Ohio, put together this Social Media Akron Facebook page in the hopes that he could build a local Akron Twitter list. Know any business people in Akron? Tell them to connect with Ron Graham.

Share Your Location Feature

New on Twitter is a Share Your Location feature. This seemed to go live as I wrote this post. Not much information yet.

What have been your experiences connecting with others locally via Twitter? Feel free to share the good, the bad and the I-don’t-get-it.

Photos: upper left – Boston Public Gardens (Wikimedia), bottom left – Sacramento (Wikimedia), upper right – Cape May, lower right – Jerusalem