Organize your Organization: Meetup.com
Meetup.com is an online tool you can use to find groups of people that meet on a regular basis that might share, change, learn or do things of interest together. It strives to be truly social by promoting interaction among people in a live setting, not via instant messages or chat windows, and fosters newfound connections through a common group interest. It’s a great tool for meeting and even networking with new people.
Of course, if you can’t find a group there you think would be really really great, you can even create a group yourself, and Meetup will do the job of finding an emailing people who might be interested in your group.
Like the Baby Boomer Hell Raising Daytrippers.
Really. There’s a meetup for that.
Getting Started
I’ve been meaning to write about Meetup for a long time. I was turned onto it by my business partner who has connections with the company, and after I signed up I find it one of the most useful tools for running our group without having to think much about it. I use it to organize both “The New York Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology” Meetup (say that 3 times fast) and the “Central Jersey: The Web and You” Meetup.
Sign-up as a user is very easy:
- Enter your name
- Enter your email address
- Enter a password
- Enter your location (country and zip)
- Agree to the terms and conditions
- Click “Submit”
Once you’ve completed the form, you’ll have to check your email for a message from meetup inviting you to confirm your address. Click the link provided to go to Meetup’s welcome page.
Find Your Community
Once on the welcome page, Meetup prompts you to provide topics that interest you so that, based on the interests you provide and how far you’re willing to travel, it can find groups that might have some like-minded people you can connect with.
Doing a quick search for “Knitting with Coffee/Tea” I found “Stitch n’Bitch, a rogue group of needle craft-loving denizens who are based in the Jersey City area who enjoy practicing their craft together.”
After checking out Meetup’s suggestions, you can go and check out a group, find out who are members, RSVP for their next event and really become a part of this group of people that you likely would have never met before were it not for a web site that brought you all together. And that’s what Meetup does best; it brings people together effectively, in a real place, through the use of online tools.
Once you’ve selected one or more groups in which you’ll participate, the meeting stands at the core of the group and regular attendance is encouraged since that is the main purpose of having this tool in place for organizers. However, there are also plenty of tools available to keep the group active in periods between meetings.
- Want to discuss topics relevant to your group? There’s a message board you can use to open and discuss new topics.
- Have photos of an event? You can upload and share them with the group.
- Have a file you’d like to share? Upload it to the “files” area and let the group know it’s available.
- Like to suggest a Meetup topic or event separate from your group’s regular meetups? Post an “idea” in the calendar area.
- Promote Promote Promote! You can even use meetup tools to promote your meeting through Facebook, a link through your own web site, or even physical merchandise you can buy in the meetup store.
Meetup does a lot of great things for groups, but one thing it really does well for its users is to keep them up-to-date on events, group social interaction, and announcements when new members join or post a message. Members can even subscribe to the group calendar via an RSS feed reader, iCal or Outlook, to name a few.
In essence, a very positive user experience and a great way to establish a passive way of keeping track of your group’s activities.
Organizing your Organization
Being part of groups are fine, but if there’s a particular group that you run that you feel could use a little more…well…organization, then creating a meetup group might be just the answer for you. Establishing a group on meetup and using the “Organizer’s” tools to manage it isn’t free; Meetup charges $72 for every 6 months. However, you may find some of the organizer’s tools particularly useful as your group grows and you try to manage members to provide great value and great meetings for everybody. You can, for example:
- Create meetups – obviously the core function of the site, you’re able to create events, called “meetups” for your group. Your meetups will consist of a topic, a location (which is automatically linked to a Google map for you), manage RSVPs for the event (and even create an automated waiting list if you reach capacity of your location), ask questions of your members (maybe something to think about for the next topic of discussion) and promote your meetup via your Facebook account.
- Charge for Meetups – Meeting at a restaurant with a fixed price menu? Want to charge RSVPs ahead of time so you’re assured to have enough money to cover the food you’ll be buying? Meetup allows you to manage that for your group.
- Enlist Meetup Sponsors – One of my meetups is sponsored by “American Express Open” for small business. They subsidize the organizer’s cost for the meeting in order to get some publicity for their own product. We list Ricochet PR as one of our sponsors for some meetings because they generously provide us a free room in exchange for the advertising. If you think you have someone who might like to advertise to the members of your group, enlisting them could help keep costs down for your membership.
- Collect Dues – Aside from meeting cost, you can collect dues for the group separately. You can set the rules as to when you collect the dues, how members pay (it can be handled completely online), and where to send the money (PayPal and Amazon Payments seem to be the main options at this time).
5 Ideas to Get You Started on Your Own meetup
Think Meetup is a cool idea but aren’t quite sure where to start? Here are a few ideas to warm you up:
- Networking Group - This would be the most obvious application for small business. I know of a lot of BNIs and LeTips that are actually using Meetup to collect dues and organize their group, so if you’re thinking about it I’m sure there are plenty of organizers out there who can give you the run-down on the pros and cons.
- Bike riding/sports/activity meetup – People passionate about their sports activities are all over meetup trying to gather people for a group ride, or a regular pick-up softball game, or a bowling night that’s open to anybody who wants to come. Really, so many people are using Meetup now that if you use it for even an eclectic activity (fitness pole dancing, anyone? There are…uh…quite a few meetups for it).
- Book Club – Post upcoming books, identify guest speakers, writing workshops — the possibilities are endless. Use membership tools and/or meeting fees to fund the purchase of a bestseller for all members of the group once a year. Exchange ideas on where to get books at the best rate.
- Political Group – Barack Obama did a really good job of permeating many social media outlets to communicate his message to the masses. One of those outlets, you guessed it, was meetup (though maybe it wasn’t quite as prolific a presence as it was on Facebook and Twitter. Go to barackobama.meetup.com to see all the meetups that were started in support of him and how many are still active in those groups.
- Mother’s groups/Playgroups/Work-at-home groups – For the young couples just getting into having children there are about a million groups out there on meetup.com, each one of them targeting a specific member of the family if you wanted. Okay, maybe a million is a little bit of an exaggeration. But still, it’s several thousand.
If you’ve grown tired of the direct messages, the followers, the latest status updates, the overall time and energy that’s associated with keeping up your online social media presence, keep in mind that it’s not the only way to connect with people. In fact, I’d argue the online connection is more about quantity, not necessarily quality. But meeting up with someone in person, sharing experiences in a one-on-one scenario will probably lead to deeper connections both personally and professionally. Meetup may not be at the top of the pile of social media tools out there, but it takes a unique and powerful approach at encouraging you to be social.
Loading ...If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Very helpful post. Meetup is an indespensible tool for…. well… everyone.