30 Days Of Meetup

Meetup.com provides web tools for all sorts of groups to schedule events and communicate with group members. Meetup has challenged local groups to do a membership drive to increase the presence of Meetp in the area. The local Organizer group has created a promotional event call 30 Days of Meetup. 30 Days of Meetup will highlight events from different groups each day of September.

This event will only highlight a small group of Meetups out of all the Meetups in the area. Currently there is on average 340 Meetup events each month with more than 3,000 members attending the events. Events range from small groups of 6 or so to groups with over 100 attendees. Groups focus are about almost anything, from writing groups to play groups. Meetup provides groups for almost any interest almost anywhere, because Meetup is a world wide community. Unlike other on-line social sites, Meetup's goal is to use on-line tools to get people off-line and together in the real world. If you can't find a group to fit your interest, you can always create your own.

Meetup groups help provide community on a larger scale than a subdivision. The Raleigh-Durham area in continually growing and Meetup is an excellent resource to new residents who are looking to connect with the area. If you are looking to increase your community, check out the highlighted events this month or just join Meetup yourself, it's free.

Updates to the flier

I had Meetup HQ give me some statics about event and attendance rates for September over the last 3 years. They also gave me the weekly totals for the current year up to the end of July. I am using those stats as part of the calendar information. I am also starting on the lists of participating groups.

This is a mock-up of the flier to be used for promotion the 30 Days Of Meetup

The 30 Days of Meetup Promotion

The idea behind 30 Days of Meetup is to promote all Meetup groups in the Raleigh-Durham area. The method of promotion will be a combination of fliers, events, and publication. The 30 Days of Meetup will happen in September 2008. Every group is encouraged to participate in the event and every Meetup member is encouraged to spread the news about Meetup.

The Fliers
The money given by Meetup HQ for this promotion will go to creating fliers for distribution by the Meetup groups. The fliers will be 8 1/2 x 11 tri-color (red, black, white) print on one side and possibly gray scale print on the other side. Depending on space and group participation, there will be either one or two fliers. The filers will consist of three parts; Meetup Description, Calendar, and Group List

Meetup Description
This section will display the Meetup logo with the words "30 Days Of" as part of the logo. There will also be a generic description of Meetup and how it works for groups and how that there are groups for almost any hobby, interest, or activity. Included at the bottom of the description will be an invitation to check out Meetup.com.

Calendar
This section will display the month of September calendar. In each day there will be text stating the number of events happening on that day. (i.e. 10 Events) The number will be based on all events for the day scheduled by the printing of the fliers, regardless of group participation. All group are encouraged to schedule as many events as possible for the month before the deadline.

Group List
This section will contain a listing of all the groups participating in the 30 Days of Meetup promotion. Depending on space, the list will contain the group name and possibly url. If space and time allow the space might show group images in the style used during the Meetup HQ advertising in New York City. The flier they used had multiple Meetup badges with the group name and a group picture inside of the badge. At the end of the list will be the words "... and many more" or something to the effect that there are many more Meetup groups available.

Events
For each day of the 30 Days of Meetup there will be one featured event. We will get a Meetup banner from Meetup HQ to be at the event and have the group participating in the event take a picture with the banner. The only highlighted events will be for groups participating in the promotion of the 30 Days of Meetup. If there is more than one event scheduled for a particular day, then one event will be drawn at random from the available events. It will be up to the organizer of the event to write up a description of the event for the publication part of the promotion. The organizer should also work with the Meetup banner holder to get the banner for the picture.

Publication
As mentioned in the Events part, each organizer will be responsible for doing a pre-write-up of their event. This should be at least a paragraph long and be about the event and the group. This write-up will be posted on the 30 Days of Meetup Blog. From there, everyone who is willing to re-post the article on their blog should do so. The image from the event will be posted as soon as it is available.

In addition to posting the event to blogs, it will be encouraged for Organizers to get their event publicized. Examples of this: A Dinning Meetup Group getting a write-up by a dinning out writer with the N&O. Hiking Meetup Group getting a write-up by the outdoors writer in the N&O.
It will be up to the individual Organizer to find this resource. The Organizer should emphasize that the event is part of a larger activity by local area Meetups.