You can always leave a group and return at a later date. What you want to avoid is joining 10 groups and getting overwhelmed by all the activities. Try just one or two at a time, stay with the ones you like, and move on to check out others.
When it comes to finding a group for learning social media, you're going to go outside your business interests. At the top left of the Meetup site are two links. One says "Find a Meetup Group" and the other says "Start a Meetup Group." We'll leave starting a group for another article.
To find a group that will help you learn about social media, you can always type "social media" into the search box. That will get you lots of results.
My suggestion is that you narrow it down by searching for groups of copywriters, site designers, marketing and advertising professionals, or media consultants. One type of group you should avoid is MLM or Network Marketing. It isn't that these are bad groups — quite the opposite, actually. It's just that their focus is quite narrow, and you'll spend a lot of time fending off recruiters.
In my experience, people in my profession are quite willing to answer your questions. We'll spend time with you at an event - especially if answering your question draws a crowd. You can usually even get 30 minutes to an hour for free after the event.
You'll probably even find someone you can work with to develop a social media marketing plan. That will give you the help you need to combine your current traditional advertising with social media — just like you're doing with Meetup.
Article comments
1 - Conrad Hall
Hi Olaf,
Thank you for your comment. You're right, there are a lot more people on Facebook than Meetup. Having more fish in the pond does make it easier to catch a fish.
The questions is: What kind of fish are you trying to catch?
Meetup is an excellent place to start for every business owner who:
1. Doesn't know what kind of fish they're after, and/or
2. Isn't sure how to fish with social media.
Meetup offers the comfort of traditional, in-person meetings and the opportunity to learn about social media. Most business owners can, I think, put that to good use.
For business owners who are social media savvy, they can use Meetup to build traffic at their store. As you suggest, they can participate in groups on Facebook and become part of a community. To make the connection between that online community and their bricks & mortar store, they can use Meetup to great effect.
A local business owner has little need to reach people in another state or another country. Since most content on social media is about reaching people on a global scale, and touching people by the thousands, it's easy for smaller, local business owners to think social media is of little or no use to them. Yet, the most spectacular aspect of social media is that it is scalable - all the way from global giants like Coca-Cola right down to a Mom&Pop shop.
Meetup is a tool for both ends of the scale.