Perhaps this blog has gone to the dogs but I figured I’d end the week with a fluffy overview of Meetup.com. If you have never been to this site, I’d highly recommend that you stop reading this, click on over there and check it out. The premise is wonderfully simple. Affinity groups of any kind can Meet Up online and then Meet Up in real life. For example, I own a French bulldog and recently joined the NYC French bulldog group which has an astounding 360 members, each probably as dopey about their Frenchie as we are. They have hosted 42 events so far and undoubtedly one of the next ones will be like the call of the wild for us.
What’s interesting to me about this idea is that it uses state-of-the-art technology to let people do what they have been doing since people started walking upright — getting together and bonding over common interests. Meetup creates new communities, new tribes if you will, just when the world probably needed it most. Meetup breaks down the walls, the hedges, and the gates, letting people congregate with a simple excuse like, “Hey I like Frenchies, you like Frenchies, let’s compare notes.”
For marketers, the opportunity to engage these affinity groups is wide open. Meetup has over 2 million registered users spread across over 21,000 different Meetup groups. A smart marketer will find a way to support the groups that are relevant to his/her product/service in a meaningful and non-intrusive manner. I can’t give you specifics yet but I can tell you that I’d love to get a Renegade client involved with Meetup. Stay tuned…