Social media makes it easier than ever for you to find people who find the same interest, share ideas and connect online, and eventually make commitments to attend offline support groups, events or conferences. One such website is http://www.meetup.com. Many social media leaders and entrepreneurs post free events on meetup.com, covering many major locations throughout the country. There are 179,000 meetups in over 11,507 cities throughout the US.

Straight from the site, this is what meetup is all about:

Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.

Meetup’s mission is to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.

Signing up for a meetup.com membership is free, fast and easy, all you need is an email address. After signing up, you can then start looking for groups that meet within your area that would be help you as your grow your knowledge. Just click on the button that says “Find a meetup group” on the upper left corner to get started. Here are some examples of meetups that might be helpful to you. Check out this link and start browsing through the many social media marketing meetups in the country.

Practical Social Media is dedicated to the success of your social media marketing for your small business. Please continue to check out the Practical Social Media blog. We will continue to publish and share social media marketing tips, updates, news and information that helps you out in your social media strategy and implementation.