As an open source product, we strongly believe in community values and always encourage our users to contribute by exchanging experience, supporting each other and inspiring new members to join. That was the main reason why we decided to start nopCommerce meetups.
Why organize meetups?
Community things are nice, sharing the ideas and having fun, but we consider meetups as one of the best opportunities for your business as well. It doesn’t matter whether you are a developer, have your own developing agency or managing the nopCommerce based online store you can find a good reason to organize a meetup here:
Gathering a local community around your company
Sometimes it’s crucial just to be the first. Setting up meetups in your region is a good way to promote your company as a market leader with an expertise to potential clients and to find developers or other professionals for your team.
Discount on nopCommerce products and partnership packages
We appreciate your time and efforts and can convert them into discounts. If you are eager nopCommerce meetups organizer you can get a discount up to 50% on Premium support services, Certification, Copyright Removal Key, our annual conference tickets and even on Gold partnership if you’re interested.
Partner points and MVP
Meetup hosting is also taken into account when awarding with MVP status. If you’re a nopCommerce solution partner you can earn points for hosting meetups, which affect your ranking on the solution partnership page.
Marketing support
We promote meetups and mention the organizer via our social media channels (over 30k subscribers) and newsletters (over 90k subscribers) for free. Also, we list all the meetup groups and events on our site. If you don’t have an experience in promoting events we will definitely help you to reach your audience.
Meet nopCommerce team
Many of our team members are frequent travelers. We (our team) are ready to join almost any meetup, if it is well-organized, and is attended by many people.
Cost sharing
If an event you are working on requires big investments and they are reasonable we can share costs and help you with the organization.
Badge “nopCommerce meetup organizer”
Meetup organizing allows you to get the badge put on your partner's page and your forum page.
Where do we already have meetup groups?
Since the start of nopCommerce meetups initiative, several nopCommerce groups were created on meetup.com by our community members. You can browse them on our site. These groups help to bring together local nopCommerce users to easily organize meetups and find nopCommerce professionals. Few meetups have already been hosted, you can find the list of nopCommerce meetups and other events here.
How to start your meetups?
- Register on meetup.com.
- Create a meetup group. It’s better to create a general local group to gather a community first (like Russian nopCommerce meetups), and then to add particular meetups as many as you want. In this case, there will be no need to look for meetup attendees every time you’re going to host it.
- Invite your team, clients, and whoever else might be interested in eCommerce software and online business to join this group.
- Contact nopCommerce team to get an assistance with promoting your meetup group via nopCommerce channels. For example, our team can add your group to our meetup list here.
- After your group becomes crowded, you can add a particular meetup. Your meetup can be hosted in any format (with presentations or just networking with cocktails). And don't forget to also submit it here. Also, someone from our team can join your meetup if there will be such an opportunity.
- After the event, don’t forget to share a presentation (if you had any) and post some pictures to inspire others ;)
How to pick a meetup format and agenda?
A meetup can take any form from a lecture to an informal gathering. Have presentations, panel discussions, roundtables, workshops, etc. The topic should make the format obvious. If you want to educate your audience pick workshops format. Don’t over worry about format, try a bunch of them, and let the topics you pick determine the level of competency. The more detailed your topic announcement the more likely you’ll get the right people.
How to gather people?
The main question is how to make your meetup crowded enough. Actually, in most of the cases, it’s not a very big deal. There are several things you can use.
Set up a detailed page on meetup.com
There will be a general local meetup community page and you dedicated meetups pages as well. Take some time to fill these pages with details on why you decided to launch meetups, what exactly people can get from this, always share the agenda at least one or two weeks before the meetup.
Use social media channels
Your audience should be active and you can easily reach them by announcing a meetup in your social media. You can not only use your corporate groups, but your personal accounts as well. If you are to find external people you can announce your meetup in popular professional groups.
Send newsletters
If somehow you collect your users’ emails you can send them newsletters about upcoming meetups with all the details. If you don’t have it, you can use nopCommerce community newsletter.
Other blogs, forums, portals
There should be other local resources where you can announce your meetup.
Please contact us if you are ready to start meetups in your region or if you are still doubting and need any help with this :)
Author: Nina Okhmanovich, nopCommerce marketing team
Comments