Start Your Own Meetup Group

To start a group on meetup.com check out their Organizer's Guide here.

In this lesson we talk about how you can expand your influence in networking by hosting your own meetup group.

Why would you want to host a meetup group? 

Well, let me tell you, number one, you can reach people who you want to do business with. How much easier or simpler would it be to host an event and have people come to you who you want to do business with, and who you want to help them grow their business too?

Number two, you come across as a leader. You're the host of the activity. You're the one putting it together. People look up to you. They look to you as a leader, not a bad thing to have.

Three, once you start building your group, you have access to all the members through meetup and you can communicate to those members through the meetup platform. Now, word of caution. Don't overdo it. I communicate about five times a month for my current monthly meetup and maybe one of those times I talk about my business or a new offering that my business is having. The rest are strictly reminders about the meetup.

So how do you go about setting up a meetup?

Well, the obvious thing is go to meetup.com and click on start a new meetup, but before you do that, let me share with you a few tips. One, know what your purpose is going to be ahead of time. My meetup that I host is a monthly cocktails and conversation networking event. There's no formal agenda. People come in, they get a name tag, they mix and mingle and then I'll talk about what to do after the event, but the purpose of the meetup was to bring people together from a certain area and let them mix and mingle for an hour or two hours at a close by location. Is it a bar or restaurant? Depends on your activity. Mine is a cocktail hour or happy hour, so we meet at a restaurant. When you're looking for a location, do not pay the location to have you there. Okay. You're bringing 10, 20, 30 people or more to that location. There's no reason in the world why you should be paying them to be there. I searched for, I talked to four or five different groups or at restaurants I should say, and four of the five wanted me to pay 100 or $200 just to be there. Insane. So I found one that has worked out perfectly. We bring about 30 to 35 people a month to their location. People have drinks, they buy food. Everybody wins, so don't pay for our location unless it's absolutely necessary. Pick a date or frequency of your activity. Is it going to be once a month? Is it going to be once a week - determine all that ahead of time. Now, once you have that all laid out, then go to meetup.com. Click on the start a new group button and follow the steps to start your new group and I'm going to tell you right now, it's not free. It's not expensive. It's about $90 every six months to host a meetup, depending on the number of people in your group. I think my group is at 375 people and once you get over a certain threshold that may be 750 or a thousand, I don't know to be honest with you. Then the charge goes up a little bit, but don't worry about that.

So once you have your up set up, what do you do next?

Well, you got to promote it. Use your social media, use your email list, talk to your friends or anybody you know, spread the word, tell them to go to meet up, provide a link in your email signature. Whatever you need to do to spread the word about your activity. Meetup will also advertise or publish it when people are searching for things to do in your area so you'll get that exposure as well. Like I said, my group started a year and a half ago, and in the beginning I would've been happy to have 15 people come and have cocktails and mix and mingle and get to know each other. We started out our first night with 23, we average about 30 to 35 and those people, some of them are new every week, every month, others are recurring folks, so it a nice mix. But once you get activity on your meetup, meetup, will promote it even more so it's important to get people signing up. And that'd be a whole other video on how to use meetup. Not going to talk about that today.

What do you do at the event? Well, the day before the event make sure you send out a reminder as well as on the day of the event. Keep it simple. If you're going to do a happy hour, which I recommend once a month, very easy to do and you'll get a lot of traction out of it. So have name tags, have a list, check off the people that show up, maybe you have an attendance policy. If somebody RSVPS and doesn't show up, and they do that two or three times in a row, you kick them out because they're taking space that other people could have.

Whatever the case may be, facilitate introductions. That's your job. After the event, the next morning I send out a thank you to everybody who came. I usually send it out to everybody in the group whether they came or not, and remind them of why they came to your activity, what the purpose was. In our case, it's networking, so I remind them, look, you met a handful of people last night. Take the business cards that you got, whether they're printed or digital, a little plug for my digital business card and follow up. Set up a one on one meeting, get to know, like and trust that person and start building that relationship. If you don't do that, you're wasting your time. And I don't mean to you, I'm talking about the people who attend the activity. So as a leader you need to remind them and push them so that they get the most out of your meeting. If they do, I guarantee you they'll come back month after month after month or week after week, whatever the case may be.