Developing Exclusive Content for Memberships

One of your first jobs when having a membership website is to keep it full of exclusive, relevant content. You might want to add a blog post each day, but only add eCourses each quarter, with a new white paper or report every month. If you’re not sure what type of content your membership needs, consider some of these.
 
* Exclusive Interviews – You can use Skype and a plugin called Pamela to record interviews. Or do them live as an event with Google Hangouts On Air, record them, and use them in the membership later. You’re killing two birds with one stone in this manner.
* Instructional Posts / Videos – Teaching your members to do something happens to be an important part of having a membership website. You can do instructional posts and videos and a combination of both. If you do any how to blog posts, you can also make a video out of it and vice versa.
* Case Studies – A case study is an important aspect of a membership site. It enables members to see stories of those who have succeeded with the methods or issues that your membership website is about. A case study can be written in the form of a report, or as an interview.
* Member Profiles – People love seeing profiles of others who are part of the group. You can have members fill out their own public profiles in text, but you can also encourage each member to make a short video about them to include.
* User Generated Content – One of the biggest driving factors in most membership websites is a group or community of some form such as a message board, or a private Facebook group. There are pros and cons of both. If you have a message board on your website, you own the content and always control it. If not, you don’t.
* Curated Content – All the content you share doesn’t have to be original. You can also include content that has been created by other people in the form of curation. A simple blog post that provides a short description of the content, why it’s relevant, and a link to the original content is a great way to share important curated content. Hint: Some affiliate programs allow you to link to any page of the website and get credit for sales.
* Infographics – An infographic is an excellent way to share important data with members in a way that is understandable. If you have any data-centric blog posts or articles, try turning that data into an infographic and put it with the text content to help increase understanding. If you make the infographics sharable (watermark them), you can even attract new members with them.
* Motivational Memes – People often join membership groups to commiserate with, and be motivated by, like-minded people. Creating a daily meme with a quote that is relevant can make members feel connected.
* White Papers – A white paper usually explains a hard concept to grasp with a lot of research and images. The paper describes the problem, and then recommends several solutions that are popular, including your solution which is highlighted more than the others.
* Courses – ECourses, or “drip” courses, are not that difficult to add to your membership website if you have the right software. These are courses that your members can sign up for which are included in membership, or can be offered at a discount to members over what you charge the public. You can host the courses yourself if you use aMember.com, rainmakerplatform.com or another membership option. You can also put them on a system like CourseCraft.net.
Creating new content on a regular basis is crucial to maintaining a profitable membership website that provides value to the members. The value of the content is what will encourage members to stick around. You don’t have to add massive content daily, but you should add something on a regular and planned basis.