Guest post by: The Speaker Seeker
There’s no question that Meetup.com has revolutionized the workshop and networking industry. But, in a bad way or a good way?
If you haven’t visited Meetup.com, you really need to pay a visit if for no other reason than to perform your due diligence as a speaker to know what’s happening in the speaking business.
Meetup.com offers a way for in-person meetings to be scheduled on the web in a place where the general public can join as members (usually free) and then receive announcements and sign-up (usually for free or at least for cheap) to attend the scheduled meetings. Anyone can sign-up to start a meet-up group and begin to establish a following. There is a small fee to start an account at Meetup.com but I’ve personally made my money back from the few clients I’ve received from having my own meet-up group. For me, Meetup.com has paid off. But, there is a downside to meet-ups.
A meet-up meeting usually consists of a 30-60 minute presentation from a guest speaker and then a round robin of networking. The meet-ups I’ve attended or spoken at have had an average of 15-40 attendees.
The problem is that I’ve seen a significant change in the speaking industry as a result of meet-up groups. Attendees have grown accustomed now to seeing meet-ups as their sole source for education in a public setting. I’ve personally asked attendees if they go to more or less traditional seminars as a result of the meet-ups and just about everyone has told me they don’t go to ANY seminars or paid workshops anymore and just wait for a topic to come up in their meet-up groups so that they can attend those functions.
There is simply no way any speaker can go into enough detail in a meet-up meeting to actually teach what one would learn in a paid instructional workshop.
I think you’re going to start seeing meet-up groups morphing into a first-level presentation to get people to attend a more in-depth workshop. The next meet-up I present at, that’s what I’m going to try to offer. We’ll see what happens.
Anyway, point being….meet-ups are great but they are just not a substitute for a traditional training workshop. How will YOU increase your speaking workshop business knowing most people only want to attend free meet-ups?
