A small secret, I’m a bit of a clubs junkie. At university, I am quite sure I held the record for number of clubs joined. At the beginning of each semester, I’d easily have joined up to about ten and sometimes even twenty clubs from everything from the Soccer club to the Swedish club (I don’t even play soccer and I’m not Swedish!). The cool thing about the internet is that there are so many groups and forums on the nichiest of niches, you don’t need to go anywhere except to your own computer to join them.

But this might be a problem if it means you don’t go anywhere else. Meetup.com is a service that allows you to start your own club (or “meetup”) focusing on a particular niche (or group of people) and it helps you find people online but the end result is to actually MEET UP in real life.

A great example of how to do a viral campaign

Getting out and meeting up in real life is the focus of Meetup’s current viral campaign – Unplug Your Friends. It’s well worth checking out as it ticks a lot of boxes for a good viral campaign and the video (below) has been posted on quite a few prominent blogs. What I like most (and is replicable) is that Unplug Your Friends website cleverly goes beyond a standard “Send this to your friends” email but it allows you to customise it by giving you a number of amusing options. It also taps into an issue that has a lot of social currency – that we’re spending too much time interacting with technology and not enough time with people. So by tapping into that issue that some people feel passionate about, adding a charming video and some funny email options (and don’t forget the cool product at the end of it), they’ve guaranteed themselves good virability as much as possible.

So what’s the marketing idea?

Depending on the product or service you have, starting up your own related meetup could be a great way of marketing it either directly or indirectly. Meetups can be started to add value to clients/customers you already have or they can be started to attract new ones or both.

Some services are going to work particularly well. For example, if you are, say, a Salsa dance teacher or run a dance studio then you could start a Salsa meetup – attracting Salsa lovers who want to learn more. You could say that new members get a free lesson to attract Salsa beginners. And you could also use the sociability of a meetup as an added benefit for your current students/dance studio members.

If you make handmade chocolates, maybe have a chocolate lovers club where once a month, you meet up and you can provide free chocolates (or at cost price).

I saw one art gallery started a culture club where they use the meetup to announce events at their gallery.

I’ve seen a number of coaches set up meetups around their coaching area. Even meditation teachers have set up meditation meetups.

If you’re a musician, you could set up a meetup around your style of music. I wouldn’t be only pushing your concerts, but if you created events to see other performers in your genre then there would be no problems also listing your own as events too.

Some products and services are obviously going to work better than others, but be prepared to think out of the box.

Remember too that meetups can also be a great way of networking, even if you didn’t start it. Heading one up or taking on a prominent role in meetups in your area may also be a way of building authority.

Remember you want people to join your meetup

If you do start a meetup for marketing reasons, remember that it is still a club, so it needs to be something that provides enough reason for someone who isn’t your business partner to join and stay involved.

People don’t want to be sold at, they are are looking for new experiences, new people to meet and something to do on a Thursday evening. Be passionate about your club and realise that people with competing businesses may also join (especially if you haven’t build it around your brand) – see it as networking!

When coming up with ideas for meetups, think about:

• why would someone join your meetup?
• who are they likely to be?
• what would they expect/hope to get out of it?
• how can you deliver this?
• how will you make sure people will want to keep coming back to the meetup?
• how will you support the community you’re creating?

Check to see that you’re not coming across as selling your product/service or your club will just look like a front for your business. This may make sense in a few cases (the dance studio or art gallery above) but in most others, will just turn people off. 

Most of all, make it fun!

Costs

It’s not free to start up a meetup (it costs around $12/month) but it’s free to be a member of Meetup.com and usually free to join meetups (meetup owners tend to charge a small fee at events to recoup their outlay – it’s not recommended though if you’re using this promotionally).

While I do think the $12+/month is a little steep for the service, the upside is that it removes a lot of the tire kickers – you’re not going to fork out that amount of money if your club has no members and no activity.

You can just be a member of an existing meetup

Be aware keeping up a meetup does involve follow through and work – if you’re not prone to liking these things or the likely return on time investment is low for your product or service then just a member often can be just as good. You might find that there’s already a relevant (but neutral) meetup already started. So if you were the chocolate lady, someone might already have started a chocolate appreciation society.

Don’t be afraid to take an active role and market yourself either directly (e.g., provide chocolates) or indirectly (e.g.,networking). You might find the meetup owner needs some help managing the meetup. Above all, it’s a great way to meet new people who are interested in the same things as you. 

Sponsoring a meetup

If you find a meetup around a relevant niche and it already has a number of active members, you could consider sponsoring either an event or the whole meetup. It could be through providing discounts or free product. Or it could be as simple as donating the approx. $12/month to keep the meetup registered. 

Depending on your product or service, you can look at meetups interstate or internationally which might provide more of a return on investment if there isn’t a relevant one in your home town (or it only has three members).

Social Networking

I’ve filed this under Social Networking because it is a Social Networking service – it’s just a lot more face to face than how we have come to view Social Networking like MySpace and Facebook.

It’s a reminer to be realise that Social Networking tools like Facebook are just ways to faciliate communication – and often that’s communication is geered at meeting up. These days most of my invites to my friends’ events come through Facebook. Through Facebook Groups I’ve joined, I’ve been sent more invites to events with people I’ve never met before. Meetup is just more specialised.