With recent enhancements to the Members page, Stitch now provides an easy and convenient way for members to search for and connect with others in the community who share their interests.
Let’s take a closer look at how that’s done.
Simply search & connect
The Members page on Stitch is designed to help you connect with other members of Stitch, regardless of whether you are seeking new one-on-one companions or are trying to reach out to members to help build the community.
Our most recent addition to the Members page is the ability to search for people with common interests, and message them directly.
For example, if you have an interest in archery, simply search ‘archery’ in the search bar on the Members page and you’ll be presented with everyone who has specified archery as an interest on their Stitch profile.
Try it now with an interest you have!
Empowering event organizers
Along with this latest change comes a big boost for those members who are organizing events or activities for other members on Stitch.
If you have organized an event, you’ll now receive a big boost to the number of people you can message using the Members page. This is so you can reach out to other members to invite them along. Getting a personal message from an event organizer makes new members 10x more likely to attend than if they just receive the standard notification from the system.
If you are on our Basic membership, for example, you usually only get to make 1 new connection per day on the Members page. If an event you have organized is coming up in the next 30 days, however, this gets boosted to 30 new connections!
Similarly, if you are on our Standard membership, you can usually make 20 new connections per day. If you’re organising an event, this gets boosted to 60, and even all the way up to 200 if you are Gold status or above.
The idea is to make it easy for event organizers to connect with people who might be interested in attending their events, or in joining their interest groups.
Let’s take a look at how this can work.
We’ll use a hypothetical example of someone who has set up a group for people who are interested in ballet.
(This is not actually such a hypothetical example: Stitch member Cecelia from California has set up exactly a group like this. Cecelia has been teaching adult ballet her entire teaching career. She has studied at the School of American Ballet in New York City, and taught in colleges, at her own private studio, and is currently teaching at the San Francisco Ballet School Adult Program. Wanting to share her passion for ballet with other interested members, she created the Stitch Group Gentle Ballet Barre for like-minded members. We think you’re fantastic Cecelia!)
Cecelia has set up a group for people who are interested in ballet, and in particular who would like to participate in Cecelia’s virtual ballet classes for Stitch members.
Members not only learn ballet at these regular activities, but they begin to connect with each other and form new friendships along the way.
The new features on the Members page are designed to help organizers like Cecelia find and connect with people who might want to come to her activities.
All she has to do is search for ‘ballet’ and a list of people who have listed ballet on their profile will appear.
Cecelia might choose to send a message like this to the people she finds:
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve found that members who receive a personal invite to an activity are 10X more likely to step out of their comfort zone and come along.
So what are you waiting for?
All Stitch members join for the same reason, and that is to enrich their lives by doing things they enjoy with like-minded companions.
That’s why the Members page is so important — it’s a tool that can help connect our like-minded community members.
If you are an event organizer, why not start using the Members page to invite people along to your event?
And if you haven’t organised an activity yet, it’s worth giving it a try. It will help you connect with a lot more members who share your interests. It doesn’t take much to set something up, particularly if it’s just a virtual get-together using the Stitch Video Chat feature. You will be surprised how many like-minded members you will meet!
I have just come across your network and welcome its inclusive, community minded approach. However I am only interested in joining if there are members in my region that I can potentially meet up with once it is safe to do so (and I don’t have the time to start a local network myself). I’m not sure I want to participate in another wholly online community at this point! I would rather not go through the process of joining – uploading photos etc – to find that there aren’t any members within striking distance geographically. I would be interested to hear your comments on this, appreciating the necessity to preserve member data privacy.
Hi Patricia,
Totally understandable question! Unfortunately a bit challenging to comment on specifics without knowing your location — which I can also understand you not wanting to post publicly here. The other challenge with this question is that things are constantly changing as the community grows: areas with no members today could easily have an active community in a month or two.
So my general answer to this question is usually to recommend people sign up to Stitch, regardless of whether the community is active in their area yet. Doing so will mean you get notified when the community in your area starts getting active, and you can even choose to be notified when new members join in your area. You don’t even need to complete a profile, but if you do it will mean other members in the area can reach out to you when they join.
Finally, I’d also recommend not closing your off from the virtual activities on Stitch. We’ve discovered they actually help people make connections first which then leads to real-world connections … it seems the virtual environment helps many people overcome their initial hesitancy about meeting new people, establish connections, and then meet in person as part of the community. The online activities are turning out to be a real pathway to connecting in the real world, which is fantastic, particularly for our members who don’t live in high density urban areas.
Cheers,
Andrew.
Hi Andrew
So far I’ve been a member nearly 2 years but have failed to make any connection yet.
I do understand with the virus crisis in this world it is hard for all of us to get in touch except thru virtual tours.
I would like if one time as new members if you can please arrange a group meeting somewhere in a convention centre in the city one morning over a cup of tea and if you can please spare a moment with an opening speech and all members present get introduced to each other giving an opportunity to move forward.
For example I do get plenty of invitations by various lovely members and I would like to attend but at the moment I am holding back because I feel uncomfortable to accept any offers as not sure and feel I don’t know anyone as yet.
Meantime I wait patiently for a group gathering.
Thank you
Martha
Hi Martha,
There are still plenty of in-person group gatherings already happening in the Sydney community, despite the lockdown. Just check out the Activities page on Stitch to see what’s going on. If you’re a little shy about attending an in-person event, one of the things that many members have found is that it’s great to break the ice by coming along to one of our virtual get-togethers, which gives you the opportunity to “break the ice” in a very casual environment. I run some of these myself regularly, but we’ve got hundreds of other activities run by members of the community too. You’re only a Limited member (i.e. free) at this point so you won’t be able to attend any Members-only events, but there are still plenty of Public activities that you can attend. Don’t be shy, you’ll be glad you came along!
Andrew.