New Meetup advice please

[nevildev]

I just started up a new Ron Paul meetup in Plymouth, NH. Can you guys give me advice on how to attract new members from the region? The only thing I've done so far is schedule the first meetup for next Friday, Dec. 7th in Plymouth...

Thanks!
Evan

[belian78]

face to face interaction is always the best way. have the link to the site and other info handy to give to people that you meet, encourage them to sign up and actually take some initiative in electing a president.

[cameronb]

1) Email your local papers - many smaller, local papers will list announcements of local events or meetings or clubs for free. You never know until you ask, but my local paper ran an announcement for our "Ron Paul Open House" for 1 week and then put it in their "event calendar" the following week.
2) Local colleges or universities? Look up what kind of politically oriented clubs exist on those campuses and search for an email address for their leader/coordinator. This person may dissemminate word of the Ron Paul meetup group, or may allow you to show up at one of their next meetings to let them know what its all about.
3) Word of mouth / networking! This is the best way of course, if you can get people you already know, and they can tell people they know and so on and so forth, but of course, this is the obvious one.
4) Any local street fair / or other similar event? You may be able to inexpensively get a booth at one of these types of things and thus get face time with many hundreds of people. It only takes getting 2 or 3 people on board to make it worth it (sometimes just 1).

Anyway, thanks for taking the initiative - keep up the good work!

[Mark]

Find and contact other meetups in NH and surrounding areas.

Some people in other meetups might be closer to you than the one they're in now,

and also ask them to pass the word about your new one.

also, Craigslist Political section for your area.

http://nh.craigslist.org/pol/

[nevildev]

Thanks!

I'll search the Plymouth State Univ. site for political groups. They definately have one there since a bunch of Democratic candidates have been on campus to talk. There ar e a couple local papers and clearly an interest in Ron Paul with a huge Vote for Ron Paul in downtown! This is going to be awesome!

Evan

[airborne373]

The best thing you can do is start having RP events. Start with sign waving, it is free, fun and very effective. Take pictures and video and post on your meetup page and YouTube. Your meetup will grow and eventually become a living thing itself. Have lots of fun and be prepared to meet new people and make new friends.

Congratulations on your efforts.

Liberty in Our Lifetime.

[cameronb]

I agree with Airborne373 - if you just make yourself visible, people that already support Ron Paul will come up to you to join forces... and those on the fence will come up to ask questions. Even just slim-jimming in a parking lot, politely asking, "have you heard of Ron Paul?" can be a great tool for this.

[Roxi]

I also agree events will bring in new members from the streets

also print out some of the promotion materials from the meetup site they help A LOT

and put an ad on craigslist

also try not to over manage everything, by nature most RP supporters are strongly independent and will react negatively to authoritative management techniques
and be available... its a lot harder to be an organizer than it first seems, you spend a lot of time checking emails and if your not careful it will take over your life, set a specific time every day to check and respond to emails twice a day if possible and don't check them outside of those times. and most of all relax, breath, and know that everything will be fine if you have fun doing what your doing.

[ross11988]

What I do is street actions. Everytime I do one I have like 5 new members. You can tell they work because I live in a County of 120,000 and catching up member wise quickly to a county of 230,000 because they do not do street actions and frequently as me.

[princessredtights]

There's an option on your meetup site that says "promote" ... there is an option to make business cards and also the flyer with the tear off tabs -

I like to make those up and post them on the community bulletin boards around town (usually in grocery stores)...


Have fun!

[deedles]

ask your local cable community access station to put in on their community calender

[Brad Zink]

You could go to MySpace.com and search for "ron paul, plymouth new hampshire" in the MySpace search box.

Here's a link (http://sads.myspace.com//Modules/Search/Pages/Search.aspx?fuseaction=advancedFind.results&searchtarget=tms&searchtype=myspace&t=tms&get=1&websearch=1&searchBoxID=HeaderWebResults&searchString=ron+paul,+plymouth+new+hampshire&q=ron+paul,+plymouth+new+hampshire)

Also, you could substitute nearby towns for "plymouth" in the search box. Thanks for starting the Meetup group and good luck!

[terryhamel]

How to run an efficient Ron Paul meetup group (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aobCdbg7F7Y)

Liberty Sells Itself (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5042B16BA8AA4B86)

[aknappjr]

Make events fun and social and convenient and cheap.

[jonahtrainer]

I agree with Airborne373 - if you just make yourself visible, people that already support Ron Paul will come up to you to join forces... and those on the fence will come up to ask questions. Even just slim-jimming in a parking lot, politely asking, "have you heard of Ron Paul?" can be a great tool for this.

Ya. We were out placing yard signs and some jeep pulled over and comes talking our ear off about Ron Paul. He wanted to join a group. So, we pulled him into our new Meetup. Now we are going to make him a District Leader over like 7 precincts.

Another example is we went to wave signs at the mall. Some guy was waving a sign to sell condos. So I went over to ask him if he knew who Ron Paul was. He said he was a big supporter online but felt he needed to get active locally. So, he came to our Meetup and brought 3 friends.

If you get out there with a sign you will run into people. Then invite them. Make sure you have lots of materials. Purchases from the campaign store count for campaign contributions.

As your Meetup grows you will need to split and create more Meetups. We have already created 6 from our initial group. Find the people who step up as leaders and give them room to grow and lead. Then they get their own group. Our goal is to have a Meetup group in every 2-3 precincts with about 10-15 active members per group.

[Cindy]

The best thing you can do is start having RP events. Start with sign waving, it is free, fun and very effective. Take pictures and video and post on your meetup page and YouTube. Your meetup will grow and eventually become a living thing itself. Have lots of fun and be prepared to meet new people and make new friends.

Congratulations on your efforts.

Liberty in Our Lifetime.

Thats what my local meetup organizers did to grow in the early days. They put a lot of signs out and had sign waving events often.

Paul supporters want to be a part of such things and seek out who and what is organizing such events when they see them.

It also helps to have a business card made up with your meetup groups web-address to hand out to people during the sign waves who ask how to get in on the action.

You can even make your own sign to put up during a sign waving event that says

Ron Paul
(name of area) Meetup Group
meetup web address


Take advantage of your groups message board. While things are slow, put up tons of positive posts about Ron Paul, how well his campaign is going, and videos about what other meetup groups are doing. This will help to entice lurkers at your site and motivate them to sign up and get involved.

Put up posts asking for new ideas. Put up posts asking for asst organizers. Do things to help draw people in to making it their own.

Always remember that the members are volunteers.