Perhaps Meetup.com for increased DHMN visibility? $12/mo for 6 months...

[Mike Putnam]

Something for the Org Meeting conversations.

We may be able to reach more locals by maintaining a meetup.com account
for DHMN. I'd wager more people have heard of meetup.com than dhmn.net.

http://www.meetup.com/help/Does-it-cost-money-to-start-a-Meetup-Group

There are three plans (all prices in USD):

* $12/month for 6 months (a single $72 charge)
* $15/month for 3 months (a single $45 charge)
* $19/month for the month-to-month billing option

[Ross Larson]

I considered this for NEWLUG, as well.  Eventbrite is a similar service that helps track meeting attendance and increases potential walk-up traffic, but doesn't have a fee.  Both come with some measure of logistical overhead of maintaining and checking the events for RVSPs.

I still find it difficult to justify paying for this service, but I'm willing to listen to any well-reasoned arguments in favor of Meetup.

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[Mike Putnam]

My arguments for meetup.com:

1) A search on meetup.com for active users within 10 miles of Appleton
yields 7662 people

2) Chris Wilson of MadLUG attests that meetup.com has effectively gotten
the word out for MadLUG. I have met Chris and I trust his judgement.

3) Meetup is arguably more well-known than eventbrite

4) To date our ability to draw new people has been largely luck, why not
increase our chances (see points 1-3)

5) The price is within our current account holdings.

Also, the idea of obtaining a community workshop involves making money
in the form of membership dues. DHMN is different from NEWLUG in that
regard and may be able to net more memberships by spending some money.

Mike

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 02:59:56PM -0600, Ross Larson wrote:
> I considered this for NEWLUG, as well.

> Eventbrite<http://www.eventbrite.com/>is a similar service that helps

[Ross Larson]

These sound like well-reasoned arguments.  The DHMN need for growth seems to offset the cost.  I support Mike's suggestion. 

Do you wish to periodically measure the effectiveness of meetup via some sort of metrics?  We could try to track the amount of meetup growth and re-evaluate meetup's continue use after 6 months, or pencil it in under DHMN's operating costs. 

[Mike Putnam]

Yes, I believe a measurement of effectiveness would be wise.

Maybe "How'd you hear about us?" becomes a standard question that we can
then attribute back to an advertising spend. If the answer is rarely
meetup.com then we stop the experiment.

[Bob Waldron]

As part of the 'how you heard about DHMN' measurement efforts, whoever coordinates that may want to at the same time query existing DHMN mailing list members re: how they heard about DHMN so we can leverage other PR/awareness tools to bring in new members.

L-Dron

[Erin Quick-Laughlin]

Let's make the vote to spend on  meetup part of the org meeting this Monday?

[Karl P. Niemuth II]

I vote for the meetup.com expenditure

[Tim Bertram]

As and FYI, a while back I did I had a free facebook ads credit that I used it for DHMN.  In that time we did have an increased number of "likes" I don't have any official verification, but I don't think it gained any active members.  Overall I consider that a success, but it is hard to call any free publicity anything but a success.

I'm not against giving meetup.com a 6 month test.  Generally people who sign up for meetup.com are types that want to do things with groups.  A 6 month trial can easily be justified by one or two new paying members.

Maybe the process for becoming a paying member needs to be modified slightly to collect a little more info.