As our world has become more digitized, there are more people every day that are working from home. Less people are going into an office and less people’s co-workers are seen in person. Many of us (including me) stare at a computer screen for 8-14 hours a day and the most connection we get from our work is a phone call or a Google Hangout… if we’re lucky.
How did this happen? And more importantly what’s going to become of this?
We are social creatures and we can’t hide from each other forever. Today we’ll talk about whether or not your business is capitalizing on the newest social trend: meetups.
A Brief History
As technology has improved over the years, more people (and companies) have found advantages to staying home to work. If someone stays home from work there is less overhead at the office, when people stay home to work they often get more done than if they were working in an office, and if someone is completely remote the are location independent of their work.
This could never have happened 30 years ago since email (not even the internet) was just becoming popular only 20 years ago. We have just recently come into an era when people feel comfortable doing business with someone that is not physically present with them.
The rise of Skype, Google Hangouts, FaceTime, and other visual communication methods have given us comfort in the fact that we can always reach our remote co-workers. Still, most work is still done via written word: email, text messages, and other forms of instant messaging. We just want that comfort that we can see our co-workers if we want to.
The Build Up
In 2012 approximately fifty million workers, 40% of the workforce here in America, could do their job remotely, as opposed to only 2.5 million in 2008. The trend is becoming more and more popular and allowing more people to be location independent.
I have worked remotely for about 7 months now and there are major advantages like fewer distractions, increased productivity, less meetings, and more. But there are also downfalls such as a lack of interaction with people for projects (you can only do so much through a screen for so long), the lack of camaraderie, and the lack of resources (people down the hall) when you get stuck.
In my opinion, and in the data’s opinion, remote work has more upsides than down and we have more remote workers every year. But now that so many people are working from home, they have less social interaction. We are social creatures and we crave social interaction.
There are days when I itch just to go downstairs in hopes of talking to someone in the elevator because I’m going stir crazy. It doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert or an extrovert, we all need to interact with others!
Now that more people are working remotely, they are more willing and excited to meetup with other people. We want to get out of the house, we want to meetup with other people since we don’t have nearly as much human interaction at work. What we are ‘missing’ from our work, we are attempting to pick up in other places.
Unconsciously, the leader of the WordPress Meetup I went to last week stated this right as we were getting started, “Wow, this is our biggest group yet! How many of you are first timers? Over half the room, that is great!” In a room full of 30 people, over half of us were new to the meetup, apparently a huge increase from only a month ago.
The meetup trend is growing and as more people work remote, more meetups will continue to happen. The question is whether or not your business will take advantage of them and begin to facilitate them.
The Meetup Trend
Meetups have been happening for years, but we often refer to them as parties, get-togethers, and interest groups. Someone has an interest and wants to find others that have those same interests. In my recent cases it has a WordPress meetup and blogger meetup.
Many are facilitated through like Meetup.com, which is free to use and free to join. These can be groups for interests ranging from jogging to atheism to bourbon. The only limit you have on the meetup is how many people will decide they are interested in that topic as well.
So how can you incorporate meetups into your business? How can you capitalize on this trend of people wanting to get out of the house?
Maybe you have a bourbon enthusiasts website and you want to grow your audience. You could start a local group and talk about bourbon and then invite the people at your meetup to join your site. Or maybe you have a personal training business that you are trying to grow. You could start a workout meetup once a month that you lead and be sure to let everyone know that you are for hire as a personal trainer.
And if you have a somewhat mundane business, like selling mattresses, you can still take advantage of this trend. Most mattress stores are spacious, so start a meetup on a something you are interested in personally and host it at the store. You now have people who are going to sit in your store once a week/month and stare at all your furniture for an hour. Who do you think they’ll call when it’s time to buy furniture?
There are many ways to be capitalizing on the newest social trend of meetups, you just need to get creative and put yourself out there!
What sort of meetups do you attend? Are they beneficial to your business?
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Leave a comment below or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you.
Have a great week!
