Tuesday Training: How to Promote WordPress Meetup In Your Local Tech Community To Get More Attendance [Meetup Marketing Guide]

If there’s a question you’d like to see answered or a topic you’d like to see discussed, please share it in the comments or email support@wordcamp.org with the subject line “Tuesday Trainings”. Now onto this week’s topic!

Promoting your WordPress meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. and getting enough attendance might look more challenging at this moment because of COVID-19, but there are a handful of things that you can do and increase participants. The Marketing team previously published WordPress Meetup Tips & Tricks to help you promote your meetup and we hope it helped you. 

In this guide, we will focus more on how to promote your Meetup Event in a non-WordPress community and reach a new audience in order to increase attendance.

First Things To Do: Tailor Your Meetup Event Page For New Audience

  • Catchy Meetup Title & Featured ImageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts.: Meetup titles and featured images are very important to grab initial attention. Make sure you are utilizing that properly to make people sign up. 
  • Compelling Description to Welcome Anyone: Please make sure you have a proper description for your meetup event and a basic agenda. Mention clearly that anyone, even folks that are new to WordPress, is welcomed to join.
  • Information About Speakers & Expertise: Gather diverse speakers with different expertise to make people interested in the event.
  • Pick a Suitable Time & Date: Consider adjusting the time and date for your event to ensure that it is convenient for your targeted audience. Even though many organizers prefer hosting their events during weekends, the perfect date/time for scheduling a meetup changes from place to place.

10 Ways to Promote Your Meetup To Non-WordPress Community

1. Embrace The Power of Social Media

  • Share on Facebook Local Groups: In many countries, Facebook groups are very popular and a great way to engage with people. Find the relevant tech groups in your local area and share your meetup links with some customized caption to connect with that specific community.
  • Share in LinkedIn Feed: Unlike other social media, LinkedIn is popular among professional people. So sharing WordPress meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. on your LinkedIn feed might be helpful to spread the word to different professional individuals. 
  • Share on Instagram: In these days, people love to share about attending events and their experiences on Instagram with images. A photo from a previous meetup can be intriguing and could be a great way to invite people to join your next event.
  • And Tweeeeet: Twitter is commonly very popular among the WordPress community and you should leverage this to promote your meetup. Use hashtags and share them multiple times on Twitter with your meetup event link.

2. Find Diverse Speakers & Empower Them To Promote Meetup

There are a lot of people who are involved in more than one technology community or use CMSes other than WordPress. Find them and invite them to participate in your WordPress Event. Once they are onboarded, ask them to share about your meetup with their networks, especially out of the WordPress community. Help the speakers with blurbs to share on social media to promote to their followers. You can check out WordPress Diversity Speaker Training Workshop to learn more.

3. Leverage Your Sponsors To Spread The Word

It’s very common to accept sponsorship for the venue or refreshments for in-person meetups. Ask your sponsors to spread the news about upcoming Meetup events.

4. Partner With Local IT/Tech Companies

Reach out to local IT companies, even those that are not focusing on WordPress. Invite them to join your WordPress meetup for FREE and connect with fellow programmers

5. Help Attendance to Promote With Pre-written Text Messages

We are all busy. If you can prepare some pre-written text messages that anyone can easily share to promote your event, then it can be very helpful and a lot of people can quickly share with their networks. 

6. Collaborate With Other Local Communities

In most countries, there are multiple tech communities. You can partner up with them and promote your WordPress meetup in their community to get some new attendees. 

7. Reach Out to WordPress Experts In Your Locality

As they are passionate about WordPress and have long experience, request them to spread the word or ask for suggestions if they have any plan to promote WordPress.

8. Invite With Local Universities Or Educational Institute

Reach out to the IT department or club of the local institute and invite them to attend the meetup. It could be helpful and eye-opening for students and potential users.

9. Utilize The Meetup.com Message Feature

Request your existing member to join and share your event with their friends and colleagues. Using the Meetup.com ‘Contact Members‘ feature, you can easily send emails to current members of your meetup chapter.

10. Turn Attendees Into WordPress Ambassadors

Your attendees liked your event enough to register in the first place and they are the most passionate advocates of WordPress. So, it should be easier to convince them to spread the news and become WordPress Ambassadors.

Questions?

Contact the Community Team, or come join the conversation in the #community-events channel in the Making WP Slack!

Are you a Meetup or WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizer and have more tips for promoting WordPress events? Please share your ideas in the comments!

#meetups, #tuesdaytrainings