Every week, we share one of our favorite ‘how-to’ posts about blogging, social media, and the community we LOVE to love. Our desire is you consider HLB a resource in your efforts to blog BETTER – we want to be stronger bloggers ourselves, and we see the desire for stronger posts and cleaner designs. We understand wanting to know the BEST plug-ins, aps, programs, and resources to keep your site in tip top shape. And nothing makes us nerd-out more than getting super meta about all things blog-world. We’re not experts, we’re simply bloggers ourselves – sharing our own experiences, tips and tricks of the trade each Thursday with a BTT post. We welcome your questions, your suggestions for future topics, and your ‘how-to’ post recommendations at healthylivingblogs@gmail.com!
Today, we are lucky enough to have Sarah from The Smart Kitchen here to talk about blogger meet-ups. Getting together with people who truly get the blogging side of you is a beautiful thing and clearly we at HLB LOVE hearing about meet-ups – they are an essential part of our blogging community! Sarah has had a ton of success planning meet-ups with other healthy living bloggers. Here she is to share her how-to tips and tricks!
How to Host a Blogger Meet-Up
[AKA Organizing a Lunch(eon) for People You've Never Actually Met]
Find bloggers! You can’t have a meet-up without people to meet (up). How do you do this? Well, hopefully you know a few in the area. If not, the Healthy Living Blogs database is a good place to start, as well as searching the many blogs you read or people you follow on twitter for ‘locations’ near you. Stay open-minded, and include bloggers as well as blog readers.
Pick a date. Don’t give people too many options. Pick two days that work for you–you can’t host(ess) a meet-up if you aren’t there, now can you?–and offer those up in a mass e-mail. [Picking more than one date inevitably leads to a downward spiral of confusion involving such questions as, "Wait, did you mean the 20th or the 21st?" and "I thought you meant Saturday, not Sunday!"] Try to keep the time frame within two or three weeks. This gives people time to commit, but not forget about it!
Pick a location. Once you have a good idea of how many people are coming, you can choose the right place to meet. How do you know it’s the right place? Well, ideally it is a small, but accommodating, local restaurant with a creative menu adaptable to lots of dietary desires. If you can all order separately, that is all the better. [How awkward to have just met someone and then have to passive aggressively encourage them to contribute the extra $2.00 they owe for tax on the split bill!]
Recruit a wing(wo)man. Before you confirm a date with the rest of the blogger invitees, secure a reliable blog reader and/or writer friend who you know will commit 100% to being there. That way if no one else shows up, at least you won’t be sitting awkwardly alone at a table for ten.
Send the invite. No need for fancy schmancy e-vites (although when did those become “fancy” invitations?), a simple e-mail will do. Try to NOT be like me and, rather than quipping around the bush, quickly get to the point and avoid any loquaciousness-induced confusion.
Amp up the excitement! Tweet about it. Blog about it. Come up with a cute moniker that might look nice as a hashtag or on a T-shirt. [I mean, don't you want a "Virginia is 4 Bloggers" tee?]
To read the rest of Sarah’s awesome how-to and tips for Blogger Meet-Uping, click here.
I’ve never “hosted” a meet up, but have been fortunate enough to actually now meet several bloggers and it was a great experience each and every time! I’d highly encourage it:)
Great tips! I hosted one blogger meetup. I did a lot of the things you suggested. I invited about 8 people and only 2 actually showed up, which was a bit disappointing. But I was so glad one of my fellow blog friends came so I wasn’t sitting alone!