Hot Tips for Good Meetups
I received an email recently that I thought could be interesting for anyone running event marketing programmes. It was from a friend of mine Navin Arora, founder of Pheonix GMN, a company responsible for the IndiansinLondon.net social network, along with the recently launched UKbloggers.net and countless other excellent networks.
Navin has worked on the Meetup platform to organise and promote events here in London, as have I with the London Bloggers Meetup community. He took it upon himself to share some insights into how he has tried to promote and produce excellent Meetups, many of which could also be applied to general events.
Anyway, I asked Navin if he would be happy for me to share his email, so here you go. Thanks Nav…
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Hello Guys,
I have spent some time on meetup blogs and found out some top tips to make meetups even more attractive in current economic climate.
1) Urge your members to spread the word about your meetup to all their friends. Meetups are a great way to meet like-minded people in a natural and informal environment and attending most meetups are free or costs next to nothing.
2) Try to organise seminars and events with some speaker on some interesting subject. E.g. someone who has done English teaching holiday in Spain, someone who can share some tips about water sports, someone who can share some tips about job hunting and CV making.
3) Do try to tie-up with other meetup organisers in your region to have joint meetups to increase the attendance, which helps in obtaining bigger discounts from various venues. Always try to get group discounts from venues like Cinemas, Theatres, restaurants, bowling alleys etc.
4) Do mention in your newsletter, updates on some other interesting events of other meetups happening around you. This should be mutual and will provide boost to all the meetup groups in return because when your members go and join other events, they will eventually talk about your meetup too and that will bring in more audience and popularity to your meetups.
5) You can also start a “Service Directory” on your “About Us” page, where all members can post what they do and can do for other members. Someone who has already done this says “We ALWAYS look there first, for home repairs, dog sitting, any service work, landscaping etc! We take care of our own FIRST…and have thus created our own MICRO-COMMUNITY.”
6) You can create a dedicated forum thread/topic for job seekers where members can help each other by posting job tips and other insider information about jobs. In current economic climate, this has proved to be a very useful forum thread for many members.
7) You can create a dedicated discussion board forum for your members to post their wares for sale (i.e. free classifieds for selling things, roommates, etc.)
You can create a dedicated discussion board forum for Pooling-Resources like Cars, books, dvds, video games etc
9) You can create a dedicated discussion board forum for finding travel-partners for those Europe or around-the-world trips. Its always fun to go for travel around the world with like-minded people.
10) Use the meetup fee (or a part of it) to do a raffle for your members and award one of the first 10 door-crashers something nice to motivate others to attend and turn up on time.
Please share with me and other Organisers, any ideas of a joint meetup by mailing to the emailing list of this group.
That’s all for now.
Cheers
-Navin
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It would be great to hear some tips from others who organise successful Meetups..!
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34 Responses to “Hot Tips for Good Meetups”
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Mr.Navin seems to be quite committed in planning the meet ups seriously. I think it is indeed a great way of uniting people as they also need a source to be in touch and meet each other. I think that this idea of his will be rocking and many people will appreciate it.
I love browsing Meetups. I spend hours each week seeing some of the amazing things you’re doing… so I can share with everyone what’s working.
Absolutely. I go to several different ones. I became very isolated after returning to the US and a new city after living abroad. I literally had no local friends. I’ve made cool friends through a book club, a women’s social meetup and a language exchange.
Absolutely, someone suffering from that can only benefit from getting out and interacting with others!!
Navin enumerated useful things in organizing meetups. Meetups must definitely have defined plans to maximize the benefit from it.
You can also start a “Service Directory” on your “About Us” page, where all members can post what they do and can do for other members. Someone who has already done this says “We ALWAYS look there first, for home repairs thanks.
I love the idea about using the meetup fees to purchase door prizes for the attendees. This way the can be more enticed to show up, and even if they didn’t find the meetup to be that informative, at least there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. In this day and age, you gotta give them incentive orthey just won’t come.
I think its a great idea to try and combine the meetings together so people have multiple reasons for coming - maybe a seminar with a training session on the same day for example might work. Thanks for the tips though!
Interesting, I have never actually gone to a meetup but I think it’s about time I start. It seems like a great way to meet the people I spend so much time talking to online.
I love the idea about using the meetup fees to purchase door prizes for the attendees.great post thanks.
“Always try to get group discounts from venues like Cinemas, Theatres, restaurants, bowling alleys etc.”
That’s a great way to get people to cooperate in the meet ups! From my own experience I can assure you that nothing gets people more interested then some good old discounts.
Communication nowadays is amazing. I’d love to go to a bloggers meeting, sharing points of view and meeting new people. It’s a nice way to promote your blog as well.
Hi Naveen, the idea of using meetup fee is really-2 good. Meetups must definitely have defined plans to maximize the benefit from it.
Meet ups are great especially to get to know and share perspectives. Sometimes you’ll find a new better way of looking at things and it helps to get that from someone involved in the industry as much as you are.
It is really good platform to work with. I hope Naveen you will get the best result in this event.
Thanks for sharing this mail. It has some points worth to consider carefully.
The tips are great and absolutely true and i am sure that many people would be planning for the meet ups.
what a nice post That’s a great way to get people to cooperate in the meet ups! From my own experience I can assure you that nothing gets people more interested then some good old discounts.
Great post. I still in the process of meet up but I think will I start now.
Wow, these are some really great tips. I’m really considering tip #5. Loved that idea!
Thanks
~ Rhonda White
Thanks for sharing - I recently used tip 10 and it turned up quite well! Starting from our second meetup, venue was almost full way in advance
Great tip!
Interesting
Meet ups are great especially to get to know and share perspectives. Thanks for the good article, has been very useful for All
My advice is to use social media for advertising purposes. Get the word out about your meet-up on places like Twitter and LinkedIn.
This will be fabulous, i have to connect with meetup to get my word out through my friends and further their friends, by the way i think we can use the same strategy to famous your wording in other social networks through your friends and other contacts. Thanks for the tips.
The idea about using the meetup fees to purchase door prizes for the attendees is lovely.These are some really great tips. I am considering to apply the tips.Thanks for sharing
I love browsing Meetups. I spend hours each week seeing some of the amazing things you’re doing… so I can share with everyone what’s working.
I love the idea about using the meetup fees to purchase door prizes for the attendees and I love browsing Meetups that is why most of my time is spent on the meetup sites.
nice meet up ideas here
i love to use meetups. Great place to make friends and other social communities.
This sounds like an interesting idea to explore.
The last commenter used the word “place” to describe the location of a meetup.
In our town, any known place where groups of people are going to meet requires a permit.
For example, if a meetup is successful, what number of people might we expect before the number becomes “permitable” by the authorities?
Or do we use the word “meetup” to circumvent the necessity for a permit.
The reason I ask this is that, as I go about speaking with Cinemas, bowling alleys, restaurants, etc about deals for a meetup, the more chance there is that the “authorities” will be concerned about crowd control and event control.
In our town, even if we rent a small room at our library for a small college preparation meetup, a security guard must also be hired.
Even if we have as few as a dozen people who will be attending. A security guard comes with the use of the room, and of course there is a fee for that.
I know we in the US believe we are free to meet whenever we want to, but unfortunately that turns out to be a myth.
Show up with 50 people in a hotel lobby and the authorities will be looking for the “organizer” and will want to see the permit.
With over 30,000 day time police officers in most big cities, the American people have no idea just how surrounded they actually are by the authorities.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone appreciates a good officer in an emergency.
The only problem is that we have too many laws getting too many people arrested for victimless behaviors that those in power simply do like.
In my mind, that’s the very definition of freedom. That is, the ability to do something that the other guy disagrees with, so long as you don’t hurt the other guy while doing it.
Only the US and Russia in the Western world still have the death penalty, and we both still have 9-10 times the murder rate of any countries in the world, 50% of that directly related to our crackdowns by the police on various forms of victimless crimes. 10,000 murders a year are directly related to our drug laws. Repeal the drug laws save 10,000 lives per year.
Repeal the drug laws and people choose marijuana instead of alcohol, thereby saving another 30,000 lives per year. People on alcohol WANT to drive and fight. People on marijuana want to go to sleep.
Gosh folks how far I’ve come from speaking about meetups.
Anyway, what about the permits?
These are excellent tips. I’m going to pass them onto my friend who organises a meet-up group.
These are excellent tips. I’m going to pass them onto my friend who organises a meet-up group.
I would love to get a meet up going, but I can never get anyone to respond. I think the possibilities are endless when it comes to this type of networking and how it can improve your business.
It’s quite amazing really how online networking was at first influenced by many things such as real life networking and now this online networking has started to become the real world networking such as meet ups.