I have been incredible lucky… my meetup group has literally saved my business… maybe even my life.
I’ve created countless amazing connections via my meetup group and It’s now become the 2nd biggest business meetup in the world and we are gaining on number 1. Over the 11 years we have been running it, we have made lots of mistakes and gained a bunch of experiences that I would love to share with you. So here are some of my top tips for how to promote your meetup group.
Meetup promotion tip #1. Choose compelling names.
This is incredibly important as it doesn’t matter how many people see your group and events if the names are uncompelling or confusing.
It seems almost everyone thinks that as long as enough people notice your events that you will have lots of people coming. NOT SO! Names are simply crucial
Quick Rules for choosing a compelling meetup name
- As short as possible
The brain favours simple and short over long and complex. So always run your event-titles through a mental filter of “ can this be said in a shorter or simpler way”?
- Your meetup title must be intriguing and/or contain strong benefits.
- Meaning must be clear
And finally I always ask myself: Can this title be misunderstood in any way?
Even me as an experienced copywriter often revise first draft titles and come up with something clearer, shorter or more powerful. So please put some more effort into your titles … don’t just go with your first hunch but use these 3 principles outlined
Let me just give you an example of a bad title I just found on meetup.com and what I would do instead.
Here is the title of a meetup:
“I Will Send you Top Entrepreneurs 7 videos On Creating Multiple Income Online”
YES… that is the actual title!!! But that doesn’t even sound like a meetup and will cause confusion. If you think this one is bad I’ve seem much worse. Bad titles are actually more the norm than the exception on meetup.com.
Here would be a better title: 7 ways to create multiple online income streams. It’s shorter and communicates the benefits much better.
Ok let’s move on to the next tip
Meetup promotion tip # 2: Have keywords in your meetup description
The internal search engine on meetup.com is very basic. If you mention the main keywords you want to be found on, in your description of your meetup group, you have a very good chance to be found within meetup.com itself. On top of that of course it will help you be found in major search engines like google.
Meetup promotion tip # 3: JV’s (Joint Ventures)
If I was starting out today from scratch, JV’s would be one of my favourite methods. It’s basically partnering up with other meetup and event organizers, to promote each others events and meetup group.
There could be many different variations of this. It could be:
– Swapping links in email sendouts.
– Doing joint events.
– Speaking at each others events,
– Having promo material at each others events etc etc..
Only your imagination sets the limit.
Meetup promotion tip # 4: On your Facebook page
You should have a page for your meetup group. Our fb page now has over 33,000 followers and have been a major key in our success. You should post interesting content at least a couple of times a week.
I have to admit that I’ve let this slide for the last couple of years as we have started to grow organically and from other sources… but it’s something I’m planning to get back to soon.
Meetup promotion tip # 5: Facebook and linkedin groups.
Running an online group is a fantastic way to both keep in touch with current meetup group members but also attract new ones. I don’t use linkedin groups myself, but I know many that have had great results with them. Facebook groups for me has worked much better.
Meetup promotion tip # 6: Facebook and Linkedin EVENT
Listing your events in facebook events can definitely give you some exposure. Lately linkedin has also started listing events and when you invite people that are following you it will end up in their inbox. I’ve had decent results doing this and def worth the effort.
Meetup promotion tip # 7: Paid ads.
Before you discard this idea immediately please note that PAID fb ads has been the main way we promoted ourselves in the beginning. Just note that we actually didn’t drive traffic DIRECTLY to our meetup group. Well we did that and it bombed.
What we did successfully was to drive traffic to our fb page where we served our audience with interesting and valuable content. And then about 1 in 6 posts was about our events.
If you are running paid ads you have to make sure you have a good back-end so you can make money on more than just the ticket prices… or instead having good sponsors.
Without the extra income streams, its unlikely paid advertising will be profitable. But you should work on getting more income streams from the events anyway so it should only be a matter of time before you can start doing paid advertising
Meetup promotion tip # 8: Event listing sites
List your events on Eventbrite.com and other event listing sites like universe.com
This is not necessarily going to get you a ton of registrations but especially in the beginning, a few more people could make a big difference.
Meetup promotion tip # 9: Do Facebook lives.
Doing fb lives with content interesting to your target market could not only attract new members and attendees but also keep yourself relevant to your current members.
Also lately Linkedin has also started doing live broadcasts, but its in beta so not all can do it. To be approved simple google, “how to be approved for linkedin live”.
Just notice that if you have not done live broadcasts on other platforms you will probably not be approved at this point. So the trick is to do live broadcasts on Facebook or youtube first. They need to be OVER 10 minutes in length… and the longer the better.
Meetup promotion tip # 10: Podcasts Interviews.
You could of course do your own podcast but frankly it’s a LOT of work to make it work. What I prefer instead is to be interviewed on podcasts. It’s one of the most powerful marketing strategies I’ve ever used and one time I generated over 900 leads from just ONE podcast interview.
Meetup promotion tip # 11: Social outreach
This takes a lot of work, but it was a big part of growing our meetup in the beginning. Simply reach out to people you are connected to on social media and let them know about the meetup. Maybe you could offer them a special discount on the first meetup to entice them even more.
Meetup promotion tip # 12: Get speakers with a good following.
This is probably one of the best free ways to promote your meetup group. When you have speakers they will announce it to their following that they are speaking at your group. So obviously the bigger the following they have the better. If you are running lots of speaker events this could add a significant number of new members for your meetup.
Meetup promotion tip # 13: Youtube.
Youtube and other video hosting sites can work REALLY well. I know video production can take along time but here is a quick shortcut. Simply record videos from your events and post them. If you have events with good energy this could definitely attract more people.
Meetup promotion tip # 14: Get venues to promote you.
Finally… you can actually find venues with a good mailing list or following that are open for promoting you. After all the more people that come to their venue the better. ALWAYS ask the venues if there are willing to promote you. More often than not they would be happy to
NOW … very important. All these methods are good … BUT they are going to amount to very little unless you understand how to create compelling copy that gets attention and build desire and trust.
This will effect EVERY part of how you promote your meetup group… your email promos , social media posts, meetup descriptions etc etc
Also you need to understand how to structure your events in a way that get you raving reviews and fans that come again and again.
To learn all these things and more check out my training program “Meetup made easy” I’m currently updating the program and will be out with the new version soon. Get on my newslist here to be notified about early bird deals etc.
Hope that was helpful
Have an amazing day and may the high conversion be with you.
Rooting for you – Patrick M. Powers
