4 Top Tips for Planning Your Membership Around Your Life
Obviously, we start a membership to cater for the needs and wants of our members. But to ensure it’s manageable, so that your membership has longevity for those members, you need to consider your life now and your personal plans for the future, as well as your members’ needs when planning your membership.
We have four top tips for planning your membership around your life.
Planning Your Membership Tip 1: Batching Your Content
Now, this tip isn’t new, but it’s key. Whether your membership is going to include video tutorials, written articles, interviews, worksheets, challenges, courses, social media assets, whatever, make sure you batch create your content and schedule it 3, 6 or 12 months in advance.
Set aside a week to create content. Set aside another week to schedule the content on your membership site and in your community, such as a Facebook group and then that’s done for a few months. You need to pop in and check that it’s actually gone live when it should but that’s a quick two minute job.
Planning Your Membership Tip 2: Only Commit to Being Live Twice in a Month
It’s important that you show up consistently for your members so only commit to what you will be able to do every month. If you commit to showing up for something live every week, you will have to let your members down when you want to take a holiday.
Some people might like the idea of going live on their holiday with the sun shining, beach in the background, giving the air of someone who has achieved freedom in their work life. In reality it will be raining, you’ll be stuck in your hotel room with your partner/friend/family member trying to keep the children quiet as they ask too loudly why they had to wait in for Mummy/Daddy to do work stuff when we are supposed to be on holiday.
Planning Your Membership Tip 3: Don’t Always Do Things on The Same Days
So, as you can see it’s important to be realistic with what you commit to and even better, add in an element of flexibility.
You might commit to live Q&As or coaching calls twice a month but don’t always do them on the same day or at the same time every time. This is useful for your members because if you always did your live Q&A on the first Monday of the month at 2pm but one of your members always has an appointment at that time or if you have an international audience, 2pm might be in the middle of the night for them, then they might leave your membership if they can’t get the most out of it. If you mix it up each month that’s good for your members but that also means you can work it around your other appointments, school holidays etc.
It is important though that you give people at least a couple of month’s notice of the dates and times you will be doing things so they can get it in their diaries.
Planning Your Membership Tip 4: Don’t Overload Your Membership with Content
We have said this before and we will again, only plan four pieces of content or input per month for your membership. Any more than that and it gets too much for you to deliver but it can also overwhelm your members. They won’t be able to keep up and because they aren’t doing it all they will feel like they aren’t getting their money’s worth and will leave.
So, with those top tips under your belt, you can go away and plan a membership site that will give you the flexibility and freedom you desire and provide an invaluable experience for your members. Win-win!
I you are looking to create an amazing membership site you can check out our membership site templates here and book a demo call to see how they work here.