Why not create your own networking group?

If you’re an avid networker and entrepreneur, you’ve probably considered creating your own personal networking group. You can imagine it, can’t you? Inviting people, greeting them, getting into deep conversations, and growing your own network.

But how do you build the group, manage the invites, get the word out, hold the events? And—my worst nightmare—what if you throw a party and nobody shows up?

Well, now you can just do it—or, rather, Meetup.com will do it all for you. It’s a web engine that lets you create a networking group, manage the group, send out invitations and manage responses, post notes to all members, and in general have a great time. And the coolest thing is that when you’re just starting, it contacts people whom it thinks will be interested in your Meetup. Instant friends—you’ve got to love it.

Meetup.com groups get together around the world. Canada has Meetup.com groups in almost every city and on almost every topic. For instance, Sarnia has five different Meetup.com groups just for dog lovers. Toronto has a huge number of Meetup.com groups (Toronto is a very friendly city).

Each Meetup.com group is run by an "organizer" who pays the fee ($15.00 or less per month) and registers the group. The organizer is effectively the owner of the group. Once the group is up and running, the organizer can use assistant organizers.

Although Meetup.com is a for-profit organization, the expectation is that the group is focused on a topic and that those attending are interested in the topic and won’t be getting a sales pitch. On the other hand, business Meetups are business Meetups. People go expecting to sell and be sold to.

One thing I love about Meetup.com is that you can find a group name and then be alerted when people are interested in joining that group. If you have an idea for a Meetup.com group, just create an "Alert"—when people are interested, you’ll be contacted. If you think the interest is good enough, create the Meetup and boom! you have instant members. Meetup.com gives all sorts of interesting advice on how to create your Meetup and attract people to it—everything a newbie would need to know.

The Toronto Meetup.com Queen must be Janet McGinty. Janet is a busy mom of two young girls, a financial planner working for BMO Nesbitt Burns, and a community activist who participates on the board level of several organizations. If a woman of Janet’s talents is involved in Meetup.com, it must be the thing to do.

Through her four Meetup.com groups, Janet merges her personal loves while at the same time meeting potential clients. She runs Boomer Group (for the "sandwich" generation); The Coffeehouse Group (social conversation and coffee); and Toronto Hip Momma (cool, sexy moms). Janet is the assistant organizer for The Toronto Entrepreneur Group, through which I met her. Her activities are as eclectic as she is: in the same week she’s taking one group tobogganing and helping people with business ideas.

If Janet is the Toronto Meetup.com Queen, Shawn Tedder is its biggest addict, attending events three or four times a week. Shawn was a few minutes late for the Toronto Marketing Meetup run by David Yao because he had just left the Toronto Social Media PR Meetup. I wonder if there’s a 12-step Meetup.com group for recovering Meetup.com addicts....

David Yao did something I thought was an excellent idea. All Meetup web pages have a file section where users can upload files and information. David added a scan of all members’ business cards to this file section. Attendees can put up a visual ad without worrying about email addresses being grabbed inappropriately.

Are you a Janet, Shawn, or David? Go onto Meetup.com for your city or town and find the networking event for you. If it’s not there, create it—and don’t forget to invite me!

--Zale

Contact Zale at ZaleT@TheNationalNetWorker.com or TNNW Blog.