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..!
Tag:Events
The Next 3 Event Promotion Meme
I was reading my friend Julius’ event manager blog again recently to pick up some inspiration. It’s always full of great ideas for event promotion and management. Anyway, he had this slide deck embedded from SideShare with some innovative ideas for how to promote an event offline. I hope Julius you don’t mind if I share it here too, but also try to build on your 15 with a few The Next 3 Event Promotion Meme …
Here are my Next 3 ideas:
1. Contact journalists writing about topics related to your event and ask if they would like a press pass
2. Create a thought leadership background piece and pitch it as a guest post for related blogs
3. Call your top five customers and ask them if they know of anyone else who might like to attend
I would also like to throw down the Gauntlet to some other bloggers to see if we can grow this list to something really useful…
Raxraxrax – I know Rax can put together a good event, having worked on Smirnoff’s sponsorship of the London Bloggers Meetup with him. But I wonder if he could share some pearls of wisdom?
Peter Marshall – Peter holds regular exhibitions of his photographic work and will no doubt have a wealth of experience in attracting an audience. Peter, any thoughts?
Mecca – responsible for all sorts of social media events and shenanigans, I wonder if we can tempt Mecca into joining our meme with a few ideas for inspiration..?
Tag:EventsSimple Tips for Surviving Corporate Events
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post because I’ve been knee deep in event management work and pitching for work next year. I’ve literally hardly stopped working for three weeks – which is something I’m seeing a lot as people try to get as much work completed as possible before the recession kicks in. I thought about writing a post on event management, you know the ten steps to running a perfect event type thing, but really, it’s too broad a subject. I do recommend you head over to Julius’ event manager blog though, an exceptional resource..
What I am going to tell you instead is three simple top tips for surviving a large corporate event, be it an exhibition, conference, networking event, or other. So here goes:
1. Wear comfortable shoes – I know, it seems obvious, but how many ladies do you see at every event wearing crazy high heels (and sometimes men too). Ditch the heels girls and put on some comfortable flats. Fellas too, make sure your shoes have some comfort value and are not brand new – this is the wrong time to break in those shoes! To aid further, try and sit down whenever possible and take plenty of breaks.
2. Don’t forget to drink (and eat) – another obvious one I hear you say, but it’s amazing how easy it is to forget to keep drinking when you are working an exhibition stand, show floor or conference registration desk. You wouldn’t catch me running an event without a bottle of Lucozade at my side that’s for sure.
3. Plan carefully – nothing creates more stress than being underprepared for an event. Imagine turning up to an exhibition, only to find your furniture hadn’t been ordered and you would have to beg, steal and borrow from other exhibitors (this does happen more often than you’d think).
So there you go, three simple tips for surviving corporate events. Be great to hear your experiences and other tips, what are the essentials you need for event survival.???
Tag:Events-
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