Today I want to focus on my website and give a little bit of a difference.
This particular website is all about things you do off line.
Itís, from what I can tell, perhaps the largest global online network of meetings that people
are having in person.
These are actual real humans getting together in a real actual place, which is very weird
for the online world.
Iím constantly amazed that people donít know about this insanely powerful tool.
So letís have a little look about how this works.
This is Meetup.com and, as you can see, it defaults by knowing where I am and it says,
ìHey, listen.
What are some meetups that are happening within 5 miles of Austin, Texas, where I happen to
be located, in the next little while.
And all I have to is pop in a keyword and itíll search for different events that are
going on in an area of my choice.
But letís just configure this a little bit to be more relevant.
Letís say I wasnít in Austin, Texas.
Letís say I was in New York.
So I just type in ìNew York,î in this case ìNew York, US.î There we go.
And letís say Iím prepared to look within 10 miles of New York.
Terrific.
And letís say Iím interested in photography.
Once I punch in photography, it starts to lay out for me all of the different photography
meetings in New York at the moment.
And you can see, in this case this is one called Learn Street Photography.
Well, there are 2300 odd people already doing this and their next meetup is December 7.
This one, Drawing the Light ñ Photography and Lighting workshops, 1500 people.
Let me change the sorting from ìBest Matchî to ìMost Members.î Look at this one.
I wanted to do that.
. .Just not alone!!
Thatís a group, I guess.
Letís have a look in the detail here, but itís 9,000 some people and theyíre meeting
up, some of them, tomorrow.
So letís look at the detail.
Iím gonna right click, open that page in a new tab and just go to that tab.
Well, here is the page for that group.
Here you are, the mission of the group, exactly what the name implies, good company, positive
atmosphere, you experience things that you would like to do more and in a group.
And you can see there are 9,700 people in this thing and itís been reviewed 244 times.
This is one of the most substantial groups I think Iíve ever seen and theyíve got 9
events upcoming already booked and theyíve done 800 before.
A very substantial event.
Joining it, by the way, and joining Meetup is free.
All you do is click there.
It says ìJoin usî and theyíll let you into their group and itís as easy as saying then
that you want to attend a meeting.
In this case you can see theyíre about to do a fun run, about 3 people attending that.
Itís not a lot.
Here is a free after-work mixer/fashion show, 43 people going along to that and so on and
so forth.
And over here, on the right-hand side you can see some of the people who are actually
showing up, the people that you get to meet if you turn up there.
And you can see over here some other meetups these people are in.
So itís as simple as finding a meetup and joining the meetup and attending an event.
Why is that such a powerful thing?
Well, it turns out that this is a great place to find new people, not just for social reasons,
but for business reasons too.
For example, what would happen if you wanted to learn a lot about Internet marketing in
the New York area?
Letís type in SEO and see what happens.
Well there you have it.
There are quite a few SEO groups in the New York area, Internet Marketers of New York,
New York Internet Marketers, Content Strategy NYC and on and on and on it goes.
Letís have a little look at this one.
Iím right clicking.
Iím just checking out some of these.
Internet Marketers of New York, 1700 odd people, 25 reviews, 51 past meetups, they talk about
blogging and search engine ranking and all kinds of fun stuff like that.
And you can see they have no upcoming events because itís the end of the year.
But letís look at a recent meetup.
Let me right click and have a look at this event.
You can see they ask for 10 bucks for beer and wine and then they looked into all these
traffic things.
You can see all the feedback from all these people who attended and this is a list of
all the people who attended that you can get in touch with.
In this case, how many people showed up?
Looks like 72 people attended.
So if you want to get into a room with 72 expert in Internet marketing in New York,
this is how you can do it.
But what if youíre not in New York?
Well, again all you need to do is type in on that very front page where you happen to
be and how far youíre willing to travel and whether itís SEO or maybe you want to join
a writing group or talk with some authors.
Here you are.
The 9/12 Project, a screenwriters collective and on and on it goes.
Letís pick somewhere that isnít New York though, somewhere thatís a smaller town.
Letís talk about, San Franciscoís still a big town, letís talk about Saratoga which
is a little town north of San Francisco.
Not a huge town, even there you can see, look at this, Silicon Valley Bloggers and Writers,
763 people.
There are so many people making use of this site to gather and share and connect in a
community.
It certainly doesnít have to be something business oriented.
You can see cars, paranormal activities, LGPT (I have no idea what that stands for), fashion,
technology, science fiction, dating, movies and film.
There are just so many different things in this massive online community and hereís
the kicker.
If you donít find something, for example, you wanted to do milk drinking, which I canít
imagine, in this case letís say that thereís no real milk drinking group.
You can, of course, start your own.
You sign up.
You pay, I think, an annual fee if you want to start a meetup, otherwise itís free.
I think itís about $30, and you can run your own meetup of your own topic bringing people
to your meetups as you go.
By the way, when you do that, Meetup is kind enough to send out emails to people in the
local area saying, ìHey!
A new group has started up focusing on something that youíve indicated youíre interested
in [in this case milk drinking].
Come along and see what itís like.î So Meetup.com, a massive resource.
Letís just say one other really quick scenario.
Letís say youíre travelling.
I showed up in Atlanta a couple of months ago when I was on a speaking gig.
I was on a speaking tour.
I had a couple of days free, thought I might like to do something with art.
So I just typed in ìartî and you can see here Iíve got fashion, Iíve got photography,
Iíve got movies, and I just picked one, I think in this case I picked something about
painting.
But here I am, Arts and Culture, joined the group and went to a meetup that very night.
So itís a terrific social network.
Itís a terrific business network.
Itís just a great way to meet great people.
Iíve had nothing but good results with Meetup.com.