After listening to IH podcast chat with ClickMinded, I decided to try creating a Meetup group to experiment with "inbound marketing"; my reasoning is that people interested in meeting new people are already on meetup, so people who would sign up for my group might be open to joining experiments to improve socializing.
Meetup group: https://www.meetup.com/Friendship-Matchmaking-Troy-20s-30s/
After getting approved (Meetup's process took five days from submission to approval), 44 people joined the group over three days, and 18% (eight people) RSVP'ed to the first event.
Reading up about other organizer's stats, I anticipate only a third of the people showing up so hopefully tomorrow's event will bring in three attendees. Yeehaw!