A detailed guide to hosting your events online
It's the season of spring. Many places in New York witness flower blooming accompanied with butterfly dances and sweet, warm breezes. A faint, aromatic air fills every corner of New York at this time of year, signifying happiness, calmness, and tranquility. The timing could not be any better than this to host your events online.
Do you love meeting new people? Then, this is the perfect time to organize small or large gatherings, based on your preferences, and meet with new people. Although nowadays, it is not necessary to visit a community or spread posters to organize local events in New York, many scheduling apps for friends, family, and strangers, such as Leaf, are available on the play store and app store that allows you to host your event online.
You can create a local or community event and add topics, ideas, location, and timings of the event and post them online. Many meetup events are organized this way.
Several times, pre-planned meetings get postponed or canceled because of several reasons. Some could be valid others can be made up. But whatever the reason may be, holding an event or making plans with friends often is difficult.
It's a normal thing to face difficulty hosting an event. Of course, because you need to take care of everything on your own and ensure that meetup is fun and engaging rather than dull and boring.
So, if it's your first time hosting an event, organize a meetup with strangers. Below are some points that will help you host your first meetup successfully.
Journalize your Idea
Our brain is surely a powerful tool in our body. However, it has its own limits. For example, you can only remember a part of your whole day. So remembering each and everything can be difficult. So start Journaling your thoughts and ideas on the meetup.
Think about how you want to organize your party? Surely you won't get the idea on the first go, but you will have a trail of thoughts after thinking about it. These thoughts will help you understand how you want it to be? Is it going to be a leisure meetup, dinner, going to an amusement park, or simply having a cup of coffee in the library?
Of course, you will have a ridiculously large number of ideas in your mind, and keeping a track on all of them is humanly not possible. So, keep a journal or notebook with you and write down everything you are thinking about. So that later on, you can look at them and get creative ideas to host your events online.
After you write, strike off the unnecessary points or do not fit in with the overall goal of your meetup. You have to understand that every meetup has a goal, whether to learn more about each other, increase the network of people, discuss a common issue, or just hangout.
Be sure to convey the aim of your meetup to people and attract people who have the same idea as you and want to contribute to your event. This is particularly true when you have a specific topic genre that can only interest a handful of people, and inviting other people can make all your work go in vain.
Organize your idea
As we said earlier, jot down every idea you have, and once you have the collection of ideas, strike off what's inappropriate and consider useful ideas. Ideas can come from anywhere; maybe while organizing, an idea will cross your mind, which is better than your previously written idea, or mix a bunch of ideas to create a brand new idea.
Whatever it may be, organizing your ideas will align your thoughts and come out with a clear intention for the meetup. Of course, if you are a group of friends, then anything is fine. However, if you are planning strangers meet up. Then directing the flow of meetings is essential to keep the fire alive during your event.
Think about what you want to do, what topics you want to discuss, where to meet, and what fun activity you want to include in the meetup. Then, generally organize everything, to know what follows after usual hello and hi's.
This will also help you and the attendees who run out of ideas get an idea and maintain an interesting conversation.
Sign up to meet up apps
If you want to make plans in NYC, you need to use smarter ways. NYC is a city of technology that first finds a 'need' for technology and then develops the technology. And hosting meetings online is also the same thing.
Meetup apps allow you to create an event and post it online to find interested candidates to join. You can select the number of people, adjust timings, choose a location, post the event, and ask people to join.
You can send invites to your friends and ask them to join your event. Moreover, these apps also allow you to start a conversation and know about each other more. So that you can have a decent idea about the people you are meeting at the event.
Be courteous
If you are hosting an event, reach the event location on time. As the host, you should be the first person to take the lead. This marks a positive impact on other people you have invited. Lastly, be kind and generous with your words. You don't need to be formal, but keep it appropriate and respect their ideas.
Often in such meetings, despite having common interests, the thoughts may not match, which may lead to dispute. In such times, keep an open mind. It's unnecessary that you are always right and do not get defensive. Instead, respect the other person's opinion about the topic and understand why they think it that way.
One of the fundamental principles during meetups is listening to understand, not respond. As many people are habitual of responding to people without thinking about what they are saying, this can be a big red flag in your event.
Be respectful and mind the other person's boundaries and keep calm during the event. Pay extra attention to people's thoughts and try not to provoke people.
How are meetups beneficial for you?
Since the last few years, many people have stayed indoors and didn't have much opportunity to meet new people or even with their friends. So, as the rate of the pandemic is declining every day, people have started falling back to their old patterns and want to enjoy others' company.
Increase your network
Meeting new people builds your network. So what's the difference between a politician and a normal man? The difference is between the size of the network. A normal man has a network of relatives and friends, but a politician has a huge network of people, including friends and relatives.
Meeting people at events and connecting with them builds your network of people. This network of people can help you land a new job, find a new client, or maybe find someone to say 'I do' in the church.
Expand your knowledge
Knowledge is the only thing that increases when you spend it. The more people you meet and learn from their experience, the deeper your knowledge grows.
In events, you meet people from various backgrounds allowing you to understand and learn from their experiences. After all, people's experiences are more valuable than any degree or textbook.
There are majorly two types of people- Introverts and extroverts. While extroverts love talking to people and enjoy events, introverts do not. But introverts do have social batteries. So as long as their social battery is charged, they will indulge themselves and talk a lot. But as soon as it runs out, introverts disappear. But meetup events can work for both types of people.
Meetup for extroverts
Well, there's nothing to say. You are already good at speaking and love talking to people, so it is obvious that you will enjoy meetup events. As talking and knowing about other people is natural, hosting community events in New York will be easy for you.
Meetup for Introverts
As introverts are already shy, it can be a little difficult to push yourself out of your comfort zone. However, hosting events with fellow introverts and planning the topic beforehand will ensure that you host a successful event. Because 'Topic' is the only problem with introverts, and if you can come up with interesting and common topics, your event is successful.
Wrap up
A well-planned event will ensure your first-ever hosted meetup will be a great success. Host your events online using meetup apps like Leaf to post an event status, get the attention of like-minded people, and increase your network to ensure a successful event.
These apps are also helpful to make plans with friends and let you have responses from them. So next time you make a plan with friends, try using meetup apps.
