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This article is part of an ongoing series, which is based on the book 'Top 21 Marketing ways for membership sites published by The Subscription Coach Amanda Northcutt.

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The 6 major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn. Select one or two channels that your intended viewers are and with whom you enjoy engaging. Be active on these channels five seven days per week. The majority of the content you post should be useful or useful to your followers, and only 20% being marketing. So, 1 out of 5 social media actions must have the quality of "salesy," that's it. No more, no less.

Social strategy must tie in seamlessly with your strategy for content marketing. In other words, if you're releasing a monthly theme or theme for the membership you have, your content marketing (remember that you require an unpaid vs. paid strategy for content to achieve this) should be aligned with that monthly theme. Not surprisingly, your social media strategies will promote and tie in with the free content you're releasing during the month. Do not reinvent the wheel. Make your content marketing more efficient and social strategy through leveraging what you're doing behind your paywall for your members who are paying.

Facebook is a slam dunk in terms of paid advertisements for the majority of websites that are members, as it has 2.3 billion users and infinite customizations are allowed, but it's not the ideal place for your free social efforts unless you have an existing Facebook Group.

We won't do a thorough dive into the benefits and drawbacks of each platform, since it's not within what's covered in this document. We do recommend Instagram, Pinterest, and/or YouTube when your group's activities revolve around an emphasis on visuals, and both Twitter and LinkedIn for memberships that are B2B (business to business). Utilizing a scheduler for social media, like Buffer or Edgar which can assist you to organize your social media shares and ease the pressure of being present on the same social network each day. That being said, you should show up regularly and connect with the people who are interested, but it's unlikely to be practical to include daily social engagement in addition to the other tasks on your plate as a membership site owner.

Your once-weekly promotional, more salesy, and engaging on social media should absolutely contain a call-to-action (CTA) which is in line with the step your audience across all platforms might be willing to complete in order to join your membership. This could include participating in an engaging contest, taking a quiz or signing up for a webinar, visiting your website or landing page as well as downloading your lead magnet.

If you're in need of an email address in exchange for an article, that piece of content is referred to as an "lead magnet. A lead magnet is something of high relevance and value 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 should immediately receive the promised content by email, and also be included in your email list. Don't allow them to be on your email address to receive the occasional newsletter email or similar. You must have a plan in place for converting that new lead into an active member on your site! This is accomplished by preloading an lead nurturing email sequence that automatically kicks into action when someone downloads the lead magnet. Yes, it's time-consuming work, but this is the most effective set-and-forget selling tool you have available. Start by doing it one time, then examine your nurture emails every six months.

Your primary goal for the social CTAs is to obtain a prospect's email address so they can begin receiving your automatic nurture emails. Like all marketing efforts, social engagement must be planned as well as contextually relevant and easily quantifiable. If you aren't armed with the right information about click-throughs, conversions, shares, likes, retweets, lead captures as well as other such metrics. You could be wasting your time. Are you?

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

Organic influencer marketing

Working with people who hold the attention of a critical mass of your target customers is the most effective route to increase the number of members on a site. It is possible to do this organically or directly 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 around their company. Engagement is the primary measurement to consider when seeking out influencers in your area. Some people have hundreds of thousands or more followers. However, it doesn't matter if the majority of them do not follow and don't engage with the person they follow.

We've all seen cases of paid influencer advertising where celebrities are contracted to be the spokesperson for a certain brand. Bootstrappers and entrepreneurs have taken that concept and put it into specific niche markets.

Odds are, there influencers within your field. What author has published a book about the topic of your membership? Who organizes conferences that appeal to your target audience? What are the top three blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels your audience pays attention to? They are your influencers. You need to identify, find, and start by helping these individuals. Learn how to put your best foot forward to ensure that over time, you'll build real relationships with influential people to work toward positive, mutually beneficial projects.

Offering value to the industry's influential people by being friendly and helpful is the best method to be on their radars. The primary goal of this marketing channel is first to establish authentic relations (to make a friend, be a friend) with the influencers you're targeting. THEN in due time you can work on creating mutually beneficial strategies to get in touch with their audiences. Treat these relationships with kid gloves. Be careful, attentive, and aware that influencers are often able to wield the ability to influence buying decisions of their audiences. It is important to have this working for you, not against you.

You start being a helpful person by consistently doing things such as connecting with them through social media (retweets or likes, remarks or likes. ) Reviewing their book(s) on Amazon and leaving a positive review on the podcast on iTunes, consistently leaving valuable comments on their blog articles, sharing their content with your readers and then tagging their social networks and a short thank you as well as other such actions. Get these kinds of activities on your calendar as a regular event to ensure your organic influencer strategy stays in line.

When you write an email or initiate an appeal on social media to introduce yourself, it's smart to provide a quotation from the influential person from a blog article, podcast interview, or recently held speaking engagement, along with an interesting comments about what they've taught you, and/or to ask them you a follow-up query. This shows you've done research and aren't coming in out of thin air with a goal to achieve.

Say you've been a for a long time a fan of the work they do (because that's what you've followed and helping them for some time now isn't it? ) In addition, you've published their work to your followers on multiple occasions, and you're working in the same field and think it would be beneficial to establish a connection. In the next step, ask them to introduce them to anyone in your network that might benefit the other (great when you've got specific people in mind you're certain they're not already acquaintances with). It's key that you don't ask for anything in this first contact. If they are positive proceed slowly but slowly and continue to provide value to this person. Work at their pace However, do not be afraid to inquire for collaborations as it is logical.

If your working relationship progresses the relationship should naturally to share each other's content when relevant, be on each other's podcasts or cross-promote service, bundle offers for services, and pursue other creative collaborations for audience sharing.

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

Marketing with influencers paid

As with natural influencer marketing you'll initially be able to recognize the influencers in your industry, but you can short circuit this process by contacting the influencers about advertising opportunities.

Some recognized influencers could have a media kit of sorts on their website in the event that they've been paid to do influencer marketing with other companies previously. If you're not certain that they've received a fee for collaborations or exposure to their followers before then you may need to first see whether they'd even think about 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.

Some examples of influencers who can be paid could include: a sponsored email to their subscribers or a blog post that is sponsored and a guest slot on their podcast and paying them to become a guest on a webinar and/or paying them to do an interview and allowing them to speak at your next event or conference, or anything else that makes sense in your space.

The ability to borrow the audience of someone else is often the fastest and the least costly way to increase your reach. Don't overlook the power influencer marketing can have in your acquisition and marketing strategy.