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This blog post is part an ongoing series, which is based on the ebook 'Top 21 marketing ways for membership sites published by The Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

 Download the entire series as an ebook >

The 6 major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn. Select one or two channels that your intended audience lives and where you enjoy engaging. Engage on the channels five every day of the week. The majority of the content you say should be helpful as well as entertaining for your audience, with just 20% of it being marketing. So, 1 out of five social media activities must be "salesy," that's it. No more, no less.

Social strategy must tie in seamlessly with your content marketing strategy. If, for instance, you're releasing a monthly theme or theme for your membership, your content marketing (remember that you require a free instead of. paid content strategy to ensure this happens) should also align with the monthly theme. And not surprisingly, your social media strategies should promote and relate to the free content you're releasing that month. Do not reinvent your wheel. Make your content marketing more efficient and social media strategies through leveraging what you're doing behind the paywall with your paying members.

Facebook is a slam dunk to advertise on paid for websites that are members, as it has 2.3 billion active users. Infinite modifications are possible, however it's not the ideal site for your social efforts unless you have Established Facebook Group.

I won't take a deep analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of each medium, as that's beyond what's covered in this article. We do recommend Instagram, Pinterest, and/or YouTube if your membership centers on highly visual instructions or education, as well as Twitter and LinkedIn for memberships that are B2B (business to business). Using a social media scheduler, like Buffer or Edgar can help you organize your social media shares and alleviate the burden of having to show up on the social media platform every single day. In reality, you should show up regularly and connect with the people who are listening, but it's probably not a good idea to add regular social interactions to everything else you have to do as a site's owner.

The once-weekly, promotional, and more salesy, or social media interaction social media should contain a call-to-action (CTA) which is in line with what your users is willing to complete in order to join your group. That can include entering an exciting contest, taking part in a test and registration for a webinar visiting your website or a specific landing page and downloading your lead magnet.

If you're in need of an email address to send the content you've created the piece serves as what's called lead magnet. A lead magnet is something with a high value and relevance that you offer to your potential customer to get the email addresses of those who sign up. The person who puts in their email address will immediately receive the promised content via email . They will also be included in your email list. But don't just let them join your list to get the occasional newsletter email or similar. Make sure you have a method to convert this new lead to a paying member of your web site! You achieve this by preloading a lead nurturing email sequence that automatically kicks off when someone downloads your lead magnet. And yes, this is tedious work, however, this is the most effective set-and-forget marketing tool available to you. Do it once, and review your nurture email sequence at least every six months.

Your primary goal for the social CTAs is to get a prospect's email address so they can begin receiving your automatic nurturing email sequence. Like all marketing efforts activities, social interaction should be intentional as well as contextually relevant and easily quantifiable. If you aren't armed with proper information on click-throughs, conversions, likes, shares or retweets as well as other such metrics. You could be in the wrong place. Are you?

For more information concerning Facebook Live, grab Hubspot's Ultimate Guide here.

Organic influencer marketing

Working with people who hold the interest of a significant mass of your target customers is the most effective route to growth for a membership site. Try to accomplish the process yourself instead of trying to pay for it.

For the purposes of membership sites, the term "influencer" is someone who has amassed a large, loyal, and engaged following online because they are the expert in their field, or just super funny/interesting/etc. And people love to hang out close to them. Engaged is the most important measure to be looking for when seeking out influencers in your field. There are some influencers with hundreds of thousands or more followers. But that means nothing when the vast majority ignore and are disengaged from the influencer.

It's been reported that there are instances of paid influencer advertising when celebrities are hired to be the spokesperson for the brand they represent. Entrepreneurs and bootstrappers have taken that concept and applied it to small-scale markets.

Chances are that there influencers within your field. What author has published a book about your topic for membership? Who organizes conferences that appeal to your target audience? Which are the best 3 blog, podcasts and YouTube channels your audience pays at? These are your influential people. They are the ones you must identify the ones you can find and then begin being helpful to these individuals. This is how you can put your best foot forward so that, over time, you'll be able to build authentic relationships with those who influence you in order to create collaborations that are mutually beneficial and collaborative.

Providing value to your industry's influencers by being kind and useful is the most effective method to be on their radars. The primary goal of this channel of marketing is first to establish authentic relations (to make a friend and befriend) with said influencers - THEN in due time, work towards creating mutually beneficial methods to connect with each other's audiences. Take care to treat these relationships like kid gloves. Be cautious, aware, and be cognizant the fact that they often have the power to influence the purchasing decisions of their followers. This should work to your advantage, not against you.

Start to be a positive person by consistently doing things like: Engaging with them via social media (retweets, likes, comments, etc. ) and reviewing your book(s) at Amazon or leaving a review for the podcast on iTunes, consistently leaving helpful comments on blog posts, sharing their content to your followers and tag their social networks with a quick thank you, and so on. Include these activities on your calendar as a regularly scheduled event, so that your organic influencer plan stays up to date.

When you write an email or initiate an contact via social media for introducing yourself to the world, make sure you include a quote from an person who is the influencer in a blog post or interview on a podcast, or recently held speaking engagement, along with an thoughtful comments from you about the way their guidance or expertise helped you, and/or to ask them you a follow-up inquiry. This shows you've done the research, and you're not comin' in hot out of the blue with an agenda to execute.

Say you've been a time-long enthusiast and admirer of their works (because they're a part of your life them and providing support to the team for a while isn't it? ) You've also posted their material to your audience multiple times, and that you're also working in the same field and thought it might be helpful to make connections. In the next step, ask them the opportunity to introduce them to any in your network that might help them (great to have particular people that you are certain they're buddies with). Be sure to not request anything during this initial contact. If they are positive then move on slowly and gradually and provide value to this person. Work at their pace however do not be afraid to inquire for collaborations as it makes sense.

If you are working together the relationship should naturally to share each other's material when appropriate, participate on each other's podcasts and cross-promote services. bundle offers for services as well as explore other innovative collaborations for audience sharing.

If your influencer marketing efforts organically aren't working or you're short on time, don't fret and try sponsored influencer marketing instead!

Marketing with influencers paid

As with the organic marketing of influencers, you'll first have to determine the influential people within your field, however you could shorten the entire process by reaching out to the influencers about advertising opportunities.

Recognized influencers might possess a media kit some kind available on their site if they've done paid influencer marketing for others in the past. If you're unsure if they've been paid for collaborations or access to their audience previously, you might need to determine the possibility of this. Regardless, you're better off if you've followed the relationship-building steps outlined in the previous section on organic influencer marketing so you're on their radar before you make that inquiry.

Opportunities for paid influencers can include: a sponsored email sent to their mailing subscribers or a blog post that is sponsored or a guest appearance on their podcast and paying them to become a guest on a webinar, paying to interview them and allowing them to speak at your next event or conference or any other thing that makes sense in your space.

The ability to borrow the audience of someone else is often the fastest and least expensive path to growth. Don't overlook the power influencer marketing can have on your marketing and acquisition strategies.