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This blog post is part a series, based on the ebook "Top 21 marketing ways for membership sites Written by the Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

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The Big 6 social channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn. Pick 1 or 2 channels on which your audience lives and where you enjoy interaction. Participate on those channels 5 every day of the week. 80% of what you share should be beneficial or useful for your viewers, with just 20% of it that is promotional. Thus, 1 of five social media activities should be "salesy," that's it. No more, no less.

The social strategy you choose to implement should be tied to your strategy for content marketing. For example, if you have a monthly topic or theme within the membership you have, your content marketing (remember you need a free instead of. paid strategy for content to make this work) must also be in line with the monthly theme. Not surprisingly, your social media strategy will promote and tie in with the content that you are releasing for free that month. Don't reinvent your wheel. Streamline your content marketing and social media strategies through leveraging what you're doing behind your paywall for your members who are paying.

Facebook is an excellent choice in terms of paid advertisements for the majority of websites that are members, as it has 2.3 billion people using the site and unlimited possibilities for customization, however it's not the ideal place for your free social efforts unless you have an existing Facebook Group.

I won't take a deep analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of every medium since it's not within the boundaries of 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 if your membership is B2B (business to business). Using a social media scheduler, like Buffer or Edgar can help you organize your social media shares as well as ease the burden of having to be present on the same social network daily. In reality it is important to show up often and engage with those who are interested, but it's probably not a good idea to add every day social interaction with everything else you have that you must do as the owner of a membership website.

Each week's once-weekly promotion, which is more salesy, and engaging on social media should contain a call-to-action (CTA) that is the same as what your users on each platform might be eager to follow to sign up for your group. It could be a fun contest, taking part in a test and registering for a webinar, accessing your website, or a specific landing page, or the downloading of your lead magnet.

If you're in need of an email address for an article the piece is referred to as an "lead magnet. A lead magnet is a piece of content with a high value and relevance you provide to your prospect as a reward for the email addresses of those who sign up. Anyone who enters their email address must be able to immediately get the content promised via email and be added to your email list. Don't allow them to get on your email list for periodic newsletter emails or similar. Make sure you have a method in place for converting that new lead into a paying member of your website! This is accomplished through preloading a lead-generation email sequence that automatically kicks off when the person downloads your lead magnet. It's true that this is labor-intensive, but it is the most effective set-and-forget selling tool you have available. Do it once, and review your nurture email sequence every six months.

The primary objective of all of your Social CTAs is to obtain a prospect's email address so they can begin receiving your automatic nurture email sequence. Like all marketing efforts activities, social interaction must be planned relevant, appropriate to the context, and easily quantifiable. If you aren't armed with the right information about click-throughs, conversions, shares, and likes or retweets and more. It's possible that you're wasting your time. Are you?

To find out more concerning Facebook Live, grab the Hubspot Ultimate Guide here.

Organic influencer marketing

Partnering with those who have the attention of a critical bulk of your targeted audience is the fastest path to growth for a membership site. You can try to orchestrate the process yourself, or go straight to making a payment.

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 like to be with their company. Engagement is the primary metric to look for when looking for influencers in your field. Certain influencers have tens of thousands or more followers. But this is not enough if the majority of them remain inactive and disengaged from the person they follow.

We've all seen cases of paid influencer marketing where celebrities are contracted to be the spokesperson for a certain brand. Bootstrappers and entrepreneurs have taken that concept and put it into small-scale market.

Odds are, there influencers within your field. Have they written an article on your membership topic? Who organizes conferences that appeal to your intended audience? What are the top 3 blog, podcasts and YouTube channels your audience pays attention to? They are your influencers. You need to identify, find, and start to be helpful to these people. This is how you can be the best you can in order that, with time, you'll be able to build genuine relationships with influencers and work towards mutually beneficial, collaborative projects.

Providing value to your industry's influential people by being friendly and helpful is the best method to be on their agendas. Your overarching goal with this channel of marketing is to begin by establishing genuine relations (to become friends or befriend) with the influencers you're targeting. then, as time passes you can work on creating mutually beneficial ways to reach their audiences. Treat these relationships with kid gloves. Be cautious, attentive, and aware that these influencers often hold the power to influence buying decisions of their audiences. It is important to have this working to your advantage rather than against you.

You start being a helpful individual by doing what you can like: Engaging with them via social media (retweets or likes, remarks, etc. ), reviewing your book(s) through Amazon or leaving a review on their podcast on iTunes and a constant posting of useful comments on blog articles, sharing their content with your audience and tagging their social networks and a short thank you as well as other such actions. Include these activities on your calendar as a regularly scheduled event, so that your influencer marketing strategy is organic and up to date.

When you write an email or initiate an contact via social media to introduce yourself, it's smart to have a quote from the person who is the influencer in a blog post, podcast interview, or recent speaking gig with some thoughtful comments from you about how their advice/expertise helped you or ask an additional query. It shows that you've completed the research, and you're not arriving out of the blue with a plan to follow.

You can then say that you've been long-time enthusiast of their work (because that's what you've followed and providing support to them for some time now, right? ), you've published their work to your followers on multiple occasions, and that you're also within the same business and you thought it could be useful to connect. Then, you can offer the opportunity to introduce them to any within your circle who could help the other (great to have specific people in mind who you're sure they're friends with). It's key that you don't ask for anything in this initial contact. If they're positive, move forward slowly and gradually and provide value to this individual. Work at their pace however don't be shy to ask for collaborations if you think it makes sense.

If your working relationship progresses the relationship should naturally to be able to share information when it is relevant. You should also be in each other's blogs, cross promote services, bundle your services to get special deals, and pursue other creative collaborations for audience sharing.

If your natural influencer efforts come up short or you're short in time, don't worry, you can try for sponsored influencer marketing instead!

Influencer marketing paid for

As with natural influencer marketing you'll initially have to determine the influential people within your field, however you could shorten the process by approaching them about paid promotional opportunities.

Recognized influencers might have a media kit of sorts on their website when they've conducted paid influencer marketing on behalf of others previously. If you're not sure if you've paid them for collaborations or exposure to their followers before it's possible to determine if they would even consider the possibility. 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.

Examples of paid influencers opportunities could include: a sponsored email sent to their mailing list and a sponsored blog and a guest slot on their podcast or paying them to be the guest speaker on webinars or to be interviewed and allowing them to speak at your event or conference, or anything else which is appropriate for your area.

It is often the fastest and most cost-effective way to grow. Be aware of the influence that marketing could have on your marketing and acquisition strategy.