This post comes to us from the Obeo blog:

I'm excited to tell you about a great community builder used by over 14 million people in over 196 countries! Meetup has become known as the world's largest network of local groups. The goal of Meetup is to make it easy for anyone to create local groups or find many individuals in already established groups meeting face to face. More than 9,000 groups are currently getting together in local communities each day with the help of Meetup.

Why Meetup Matters to Real Estate Professionals

Running your own business is challenging, and one of the biggest challenges for many of us is networking. Meetup is not only great for those looking to get more involved in real estate groups, but other community groups as well.

Meeting with groups that have similar hobbies or interests can not only get you involved with things you like doing, but also with people that have similar hobbies, and allow for a variety of other networking possibilities. Joining existing groups allows great opportunities for networking.

Do a search for groups in your area that are meeting on topics that interest you. Maybe you want to learn more about WordPress? Or social media? Or try a topic that is purely for fun – hiking, wine tasting or reading. Please remember to be smart, and only join a group meeting in a very public location where you will feel safe and be surrounded by others.

Most of you are probably already involved in social media and online marketing. These are great networking tools, but it's really important to occasionally take those online relationships OFF line, and meet in person.

Why not create a Meetup? How about a Tweetup Meetup with your Twitter friends? Or a Pinterest Meetup? Here are some real estate related Meetups that you might want to create:

• New Homeowners
• Neighborhood Groups
• Condo Groups
• Empty Nestor Group
• Newlywed Group
• Property Flipping
• Finance Group
• Home Improvement Group
• Custom Home Building Group

One of the powerful reasons for using Meetup is the ease of use factor. For example, you can search either by groups in distance from where you live, or see a calendar of events in the area with various groups nearby. This allows for networking in real time, while also finding groups in the area that are of interest to you.

Sites similar to Meetup also include BigTent and GroupSpaces.

To view the original article, visit the Obeo blog.