Social Media for Business: Meetup.com

We’re currently in our fifth installment of our articles series on social media tools and how to best utilize them for your business. In previous articles we’ve discussed the history of social media tools and looked specifically at how to utilize tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In this article we’ll be discussing how to use a social media tool called Meetup.com.

In contrast to other social media tools like Facebook or LinkedIn, the primary purpose of Meetup.com isn’t to connect and interact online – rather, it’s specifically designed to help people connect in person, in real life (what a concept!). It provides a toolset to allow people to create groups based on common professions or interests, and help them arrange meeting times – called Meetups – for common activities. Meetup subjects range from serious and business-focused topics like marketing and entrepreneurship best practices, to hobbies and common interests like learning Chinese or discussing philosophy. These meetups’ organizational structures are also quite varied: some meetups are very organized, with a planned speaker and agenda for each meeting, while others are just a group of people who meet over coffee each month to shoot the breeze. They range in size from a handful of people per meetup to several hundred. It all depends on each meetup group’s administrators and participants.

There are many benefits of participating in these meetups through Meetup.com. The first benefit is that it’s a fantastic opportunity to network with other businesspeople, whether it’s other professionals in your same field or people in your company’s target client industries. In fact, many people who used to involved themselves in traditional networking groups such as rotary clubs and Chambers of Commerce are now spending their time doing their networking through Meetup.com instead.

Another benefit of meetups is that they provide a fantastic opportunity for continuing education in your profession. Oftentimes meetup groups will have a featured speaker or facilitated discussion groups to discuss the latest industry developments. This is extremely important for people in highly technical and fast-changing industries such as web design and online marketing, where technological advances and novel business models rise and fall so rapidly. These meetups have been an invaluable learning tool for us in our own work, helping us learn new tools and services that we can then offer to our own clients.

In addition to the benefits of attending meetups as an attendee, there are also many benefits to taking a leadership role yourself, such as arranging to be the featured speaker at a meetup, or even organizing your own meetup group. Similar to how being involved in LinkedIn discussions can raise your profile in your industry and demonstrate you or your company’s expertise in your field, being a featured speaker or meetup organizer does the same thing. It shows your leadership skills through your ability to organize and lead the meeting, and it give you an opportunity to display your subject matter expertise about the topic of discussion. For instance, our friend Todd Barrs specializes in online conversion optimization: helping business turn more of their website visitors into paying customers. He hosts conversion optimization meetups around this topic, where he and/or another speaker will present on the principles of their practice to interested business owners. Those businesses who recognize their need for additional help in this area can then hire him for his conversion optimization consulting services.

We hope this article has given you some good starting points on how to utilize Meetup.com for your business. As with any social media tool, how much you get out of Meetup.com depends on how much you put into it, so don’t be afraid to set up an account for yourself and try it out. Next month we’ll be discussing how to best utilize blogs. In the meantime, if you have additional questions or comments about anything in this article, please feel free to contact us.

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