Jeffrey Slater Posted July 22, 2013 Posted July 22, 2013 Hi, I have recently been going to the meetup group in my area, but I have found it very difficult to get to the freedomainradio meetup site. I basically can only access it by first coming to this website and going through the 'meetup' link under the 'community' section. In other words, the meetup is not searchable through the main meetup site. Even when I type 'freedomain radio' in the meetup.com search, it tells me that it doesn't find anything in my area. I wonder if this could be one of the reasons we are having issues getting people to show up. Is this intentional? Can someone explain the rationale if so? As I see it, it might be nice if our meetup showed up when people searched for related terms like 'philosophy' or 'anarcho-capitalism', so that even people who have never heard of FDR could find it and learn more.
JamesP Posted July 22, 2013 Posted July 22, 2013 This is because the Freedomain Radio meetups are a separate function of meetup.com called Meetup Everywhere. This is not under our control. You would have to find ways to advertise your local group such as posting here, on Facebook, etc. You can also create a local group and put "Freedomain Radio" as one of the interests.
Jeffrey Slater Posted July 29, 2013 Author Posted July 29, 2013 I sent an email to meetup but they basically just verified what you said. Here's the text: "Hi Jeff, It sounds like you're referring to the 'Find a Meetup Group' page. Is that correct? If so, please know that since Everywhere and Meetup are considered two different platforms, I'm afraid that Everywhere communities won't be listed on the 'Find a Meetup Group' page. " I'm hoping they will clarify why these two platforms are not integrated, but in the mean time I will have to find some other way to advertise. I was thinking I might just make a regular meetup group for our city, and instead of posting any meetups to it I can just put a link to the meetup everywhere site. Anyways, thanks for helping me to clarify the problem.
JamesP Posted July 29, 2013 Posted July 29, 2013 One reason for this might be that "Meetup Everywhere" is for groups that span over a large area but are specific to that group. It's for interest in the group itself, whereas interest categories on meetup.com's regular site are usually (but not always, of course) about a set of ideas independent of a given group. At least, that's my best stab at the idea. It's up to the group who has a Meetup Everywhere presence to promote it, which is done on the Community page off of the main site, as well as in my signature.
Wesley Posted July 29, 2013 Posted July 29, 2013 It's up to the group who has a Meetup Everywhere presence to promote it, which is done on the Community page off of the main site, as well as in my signature. As well as in that post, which draws attention to your signature, which draws attention to the meetup everywhere page.
Jeffrey Slater Posted September 4, 2013 Author Posted September 4, 2013 So, I got another response from the meetup team and here is what the email said: Hi Jeff, Folks who use the Everywhere platform generally have a strong following elsewhere. That way they're able to drive most of the traffic to their community pages. If you're looking for more concrete promotional help, and a way to build a local community over time, then you'll want to create a Meetup Group. Please know that Meetup is very location based. If you create a group in Austin, someone who live in let's say--Plano--may not necessarily see the groups and the Meetups. I can understand the rationale for doing this, but I still wish the two sites were more integrated, as I would like people to find our meetup group in both ways- by going through this website, or by finding it through the meetup website. Right now our meetup members are discussing setting up a regular meetup to go along with the 'meetup everywhere' group that we already have.
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