by Roger B Rueda
If you do business locally, or you want to publicise whatever you’re doing in your local market, Meetup offers a wide range of features that can help.
Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups. It makes it easy for anyone to organise a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up head-on. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.
Meetup boasts an impressive 9 million visitors a month, meets in 45,000 cities worldwide, and has 280,000 monthly Meetups on every topic imaginable. Use the search box on the homepage to look for a group that fits your interests. Or start your own group.
Here are the ways to use Meetup in a P.R.drive:
1. Create a Meetup account.
Even if your group has no special events to publicise, or you don’t intend to meet regularly, or even if your membership is invitation-only, create an account at least. Write a good description of what you do and the kinds of people who would be a good fit. You never know who’s searching for you.
2. Attend a meeting, meet members, and start forming relationships.
Don’t go intending to blast a free commercial about your business or hand out copies of your latest press release. Nobody likes that.
Meetup’s business groups have a lot of ways for members to endorse their businesses to each other. Get a feel for the group, its practices and offer free, helpful information. They’ll be dying to know what else you know. They’ll also be more of a mind to spread the word about what you’re doing.
3. Offer to speak at a Meetup group that includes people in your target market.
Give a content-rich presentation on something they are interested in and walked away with a pocket of business cards of people who want to subscribe to your weekly ezine or blog or whatever you have online.
4. Offer free information and samples to Meetup groups.
Group organisers love free stuff they can pass along to their members during a Meetup. A doggy day care owner can offer aking-size all-natural dog biscuit for a Meetup group of dog lovers. A plumber can give away a step-by-step guide on how to fix a leaky faucet to mums in a Single Mums Meetup. You can find the group organiser and contact information for each Meetup on that group’s page.
5. Connect your Facebook account to Meetup.
This allows your Facebook friends to see what you’re up to on Meetup, and vice-versa which further spreads the word.
6. Take advantage of Meetup promoting your group.
Once you’ve created a Meetup group, Meetup will promote it automatically. Most groups have new members within a few days.
7. Found a Meetup you love? Look for similar Meetups.
On some Meetup pages, you’ll see a box that says, ‘People in this Meeteup are also in…’
8. Need to get in front of bloggers? Many communities have blogger Meetups.
Get to know bloggers long before you want publicity. It is a great strategy. If you don’t have a blog yet,that’s OK. Ask them how to start one.
9. Learn about PR, publicity, marketing and social media.
In most major cities and many smaller ones, you’ll find Meetup groups keen on these topics. It is a fun way to learn more about whatever you need to know.
10. Look within Meetup groups for PR-related vendors.
Do you need a press release writer? Photographer? Ghost-writer? Publicist? Meetup’s search box makes it easy to find, within minutes, local groups where these people come together.
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