In 2021 my mate Amund1 started an SEO meetup and asked me to help run it. I said yes. After 3 years I’ve handed over to someone else and walked away. Here’s some things I learned.
Reflections
- It is indeed a super fast way to build a network. Starting out, we kinda just wanted to make new connections and learn a few cool SEO strategies. And for this purpose, the group was fantastic. I’ve met some of my closest friends through the group.
- Facebook beats telegram, probably. We decided to build the group on Facebook instead of a chat channel like WhatsApp or Telegram. And I think that was the right choice. Looking at other groups run on chat apps, the conversation seems too fast to properly notify people of events, which you probably need to post somewhere like Facebook anyway.
- Two hosts are better than one. Running the groups is way easier with two hosts instead of one. You get sick, travel or sometimes just want to do something else. Amund and I took it in turns to run the events themselves, with him doing most of the hosting when in town and this worked well.
- It’s a great introduction mechanism. With people visiting through me constantly, having the group was a great way to introduce new friends to other friends in a very quick, social way and they make their own friends there in a single night.
How we grew the community
TLDR, organic growth was the main method but there are some nuances:
- Start with your own friends. As the group started, each of us mainly invited existing friends and connections. That was a fast way to get the original group going.
- Promote in other friendly groups. Another technique Amund used was to promote the group and its events in other friendly groups (with permission), like the local digital nomad groups and SEO communities in general.
- Meetup.com was a waste of time. Not because it didn’t get attendees, it did. But for this particular group you needed some hands-on experience with SEO. Meetup.com attracted a lot of generally curious people, who found it hard to integrate with the total SEO nerds that typically join. Had the group been a bit broader in context, like generally being a digital nomad, it would have been a good growth channel.
- Organic growth is the 80/20 driver. Eventually, the group took on a natural, slow but steady organic growth trajectory of its own. We didn’t have to try to grow it as people brought friends and their friends brought friends.
- You need to have a good consistent time + location. This wasn’t one that I originally thought of, but the location and consistency of events really made a difference. It’s intuitive really. Things started to grow faster once we picked a consistent time, the 2nd Wednesday of every month. And also when we changed venue locations to places more convenient, too. Amund spent a huge amount of time trying to find a good location and that was really worth it.
Managing the group
Managing the group was the least fun aspect of it, so probably more hard lessons learned here.
- Don’t forget to add the actual rules to the group. We forgot to add rules to the Facebook group, and eventually some people started spamming it or behaving poorly. It was a bit awkward to remove/moderate those folks without having rules to point to so don’t forget to add those early on.
- Establish a rhythm for the event, e.g. eat first, chat after. In the beginning, it was a little unclear for us whether we were there to eat, drink or just chat (or all 3). Towards the end there it became clearer that we’d all meet for dinner then chat/drink after. Setting this expectation seemed to improve the smoothness of the events themselves.
- Don’t feel stressed about people having a good time. In the beginning, I spent a lot of effort trying to make people feel good and welcome at the event. But somehow this made the events feel like much more hard work than letting it flow, whatever happens – happens. Loosening up my own expectations here made it easier to run the event. Ultimately, if people can socialize – they should. If they can’t naturally, it’s not necessarily my job to help them.
- Deal with the trouble makers through key members. This was an interesting one. Now and there, there were dramas and accidents. But because we grew predominately organically, we had the benefit of asking members who knew the person who created the drama to help manage the situation. That worked great.
Handing things over
I had one false start trying to find new leadership and management for the group. We both felt they were a natural fit, but somehow their interest just dropped off out of nowhere. I still have no idea what happened!
Thankfully, in the end, Amund found another organizer to take my place.
- Make an email list. We didn’t, and should have. Having an email list would have made the group more valuable to sponsors and notifying people of events easier, but sadly we never made one. Not sure why exactly. Probably just lazy.
- Consider adding potential hosts in early. The replacement host for me was an active member of the group already. It was a natural fit to hand things over. So if I went back in time and needed to find new leadership, I would have just invited one or two people as assistant hosts for a few events then pick the best one. Benevolent dictatorship…?
- Perhaps university-style club management practices are a good idea. It’s too late for the community now, but it would have been interesting to see how the group would have operated and grown had it been run like a university club. Yearly presidents, treasurers, events calendar, website, email list, etc. These are probably why university groups live for so long in the first place.
- Amund is the founder of Forsikringsduden ↩︎