Patch Columnist Invited to White House Tweetup — Again

She's a popular columnist, but she's no political wonk.

She's a master of domestic policy — at least when it comes to running a household with four young children.

As for foreign affairs, she's certainly interested in imported beer.

Yet, Genevieve Vermeulen, the author of the Mom Tweets column in Wauwatosa Patch, has credentials that interest the Obama Administration. She was invited Wednesday to a state function at the White House for the second time in less than three months.

Vermeulen was one of just 140 citizens nationwide on July 6, the first national tweetup. (The number corresponds to the characters allowed in a Twitter tweet.) That event stood on its own as a celebration and as a means of spreading messages to the masses.

This time around, on Oct. 13, Vermeulen will be among invited guests gathered on the South Lawn to greet the president of the Republic of Korea, Lee Myung-bak, on an official state visit.

Notifications of White House Tweetups go out, naturally, via Twitter, with a narrow window of time in which to apply. You have to follow @WhiteHouse on Twitter to get the notices, and it pays to be an alert user.

"I pulled in to school to pick up my kids, and I saw the tweet, and I thought, 'What the heck?'" Vermeulen said. "I never thought they would pick me again."

That was just after 3 p.m. Wednesday, minutes after the White House sent out its first announcement. Applications would be taken for less than 24 hours, through 11 a.m. Thursday. It didn't take nearly that long for Vermeulen to hear back.

"When I got the e-mail (invitation), I was making dinner," she said, "and I about had a heart attack.

"I think I'm going to start buying lottery tickets."

The process that keeps Vermeulen beating a path to the White House is not as random as hitting the lottery. To apply, one has to a write a brief — one tweet long — and persuasive response as to why the White House should invite you.

The first time, Vermeulen wrote about being a busy mother who keeps connected to a broader community by means of Twitter.

This time, she said, "I was sure that having already been once, I wouldn't be picked a second time. There was no sneakiness about this. I was perfectly honest. I just wrote that I had been to the first Tweetup and thought I did a good job."

While she isn't the CEO of a major corporation, a lobbyist, an important public official or a member of any other class that one might expect to become a regular at state functions, Vermeulen is influential in her own way — a way the White House wants to promote.

She is, in fact, one of those standout individuals in social media known as "influencers" because of the number of people who pay attention to her regardless of her position or credentials. Vermeulen, whose proudest claims are that she keeps track of four kids and has strong opinions about good beer, has 2,500 followers on Twitter, many of them far from Milwaukee.

According to the White House website's Tweetup page, using the occasion of Myung-bak's visit as a tweetup opportunity sends a message to Americans because Korea is a truly "wired" nation.

"The Republic of Korea is on the cutting edge of digital technology," the website says. "Its citizens are active users of social media, and the Blue House, the Republic of Korea’s presidential office and residence, utilizes social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as mobile technology, for public outreach."

Vermeulen, whose Twitter handle is @Einley, said that for this event, those invited are allowed to bring one guest. She has invited her friend Carrie Stuckmann (@CandidCarrie) to join her on the South Lawn.

"But this time," she said, "the whole family is going. (Her husband) Craig is going to take the kids around D.C. while we go in."

The first time Vermeulen went to the White House, she gained several hundred new followers from the notoriety. But she learned that Twitter can be fickle.

"A lot have continued to follow me," she said, "but a number of them unfollowed me after it was over.

"They just wanted to see the action and didn't want to hear about beer and kids afterward."