I try not to bring too much Twitter to my blog because I haven’t seen that much crossover yet. People who follow me on Twitter tend to stay on Twitter. People who read my blog tend to simply be blog readers.

But I think the two worlds are meeting more and more, and I think we’re ready for a Twitter tale.

A couple three weeks ago, I was griping about my SanDisk MP3 player on Twitter, and, long story short (but spelled out here in detail in a guest post I wrote for Chris Brogan), within 10 hours of my original note on Twitter, a new SanDisk player was on its way to me at no charge.

WooHoo!

The fact that Chris Brogan asked me to tell my SanDisk story on his site was HUGE… the man has 40k-plus followers on Twitter (I have 857 as of this morning, but it’s constantly growing), and I recognized this story as an opportunity to spread my name around a little more.

So, over the weekend, I saw Ann Handley from MarketingProfs was Twittering away. MarketingProfs is HUGE, and one of my blog posts was once featured in one of their newsletters, bringing me hundreds of hits and even a couple of new clients. Ann has thousands of followers as well, but she and I had interacted a couple of times when she helped spread the word about my Virtual Food Drive.

Ann and Chris Brogan interact on Twitter, so I dropped Ann a little note via direct message. “Ann, did you catch my SanDisk story on Chris Brogan’s blog? I thought you might be interested for one of your newsletters….”

I sent off the direct message, and as soon as I hit send, guilt crept in. It was a weekend. Ann just had minor surgery a few days ago, and that threw her for a loop. She had to send her dogs away while she recovered. What a bummer.  She was in the midst of a cool interview with David Meerman Scott, a well-known author and another cool dude who helped spread the word about the food drive.

And here I was, bugging her with an ill-timed, 140-word pitch to get a little free publicity. What an insensitive creep.

Twitter has changed the way I interact with and think about entrepreneurs, authors, celebrities, thought leaders and just plain old ordinary folks like me. All of a sudden, the faces behind the companies are interacting, telling us about their morning coffee preferences, their kids’ big days at school, their unexpected trips to the emergency room. Twitter is humanizing the internet and creating people from pixels.

I didn’t send a pitch to info(@)marketingprofs(dot)com. I wrote to Ann, whose insights into business and her personal life I’ve really come to enjoy. And although Ann has thousands of followers, perhaps she recognizes my name, not just as another PR person with an agenda, but as someone who works hard and cares much and is real just like she is.

Through Twitter, I’ve learned how frustrated Lance Armstrong is with all the random drug tests, how Soleil Moon Frye (aka Punky Brewster) loves being a mom and how Demi Moore feels a little humbled when she’s dressed up to go to a fundraiser and hubby Ashton Kutcher discovers and plucks her wild nose hair.

I’ve connected with runners all over the country and have followed their tweets as they finished their first or their fifth marathons. I found two women who are dealing with close family members with cancer, just as I am. I’ve watched two people start new jobs and have given support to others who are searching. I follow countless fantastic writers, some with published books, others with great ideas they haven’t yet put to paper. And they relate when I write about my runs, my writing, my attempts to grow my business.

I’ve also connected with people who can help my business, but perhaps all those stories require another post.

We’re all people here, and we’re all getting to know each other. If you step into the Twitter fray, be sure to look me up.