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This blog post is part the series, and is based off the book 'Top 21 Marketing methods for membership websites', written 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 where your target audience lives and where you have a lot of fun interaction. Be active on these channels five seven days per week. 80% of what you share should be beneficial, useful, and/or fun for your viewers, with less than 20% of it being for marketing. So, 1 out of 5 social media actions must be "salesy," that's it. No more, no less.

Your social strategy should tie in seamlessly with the content marketing plan. For example, if you're releasing a monthly theme or theme for your membership, your content marketing (remember that you require the free vs. paid content strategy in order to achieve this) must also be in line with that monthly theme. It's not surprising that the social media strategy you choose to implement will promote and tie in with your free content during the month. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Streamline your content marketing and social media strategies by piggybacking on what you're doing behind the paywall for your members who are paying.

Facebook is the best option to advertise on paid for membership sites as there are 2.3 billion users and infinite customizations are allowed, but it's not necessarily the best site for your social efforts unless you have an established Facebook Group.

I won't take a deep dive into the pros and cons of every medium since that's beyond the boundaries of this guide. But, we do suggest Instagram, Pinterest, and/or YouTube when your group's activities revolve on highly visual instructions, and both Twitter as well as LinkedIn if your membership is B2B (business to business). A social media scheduling tool, like Buffer or Edgar can help you batch your social shares and ease the pressure of being present on the social media platform each day. In reality, you should show up frequently and interact with people who are interested, but it's unlikely to be practical to include daily social engagement with everything else you have you have to do as a site's owner.

Your once-weekly promotional, more salesy, and engaging on social media should contain a call-to-action (CTA) that is the same as the step your audience on each platform might be ready to take towards joining your group. This could include participating in an exciting contest, taking a quiz or registering for a webinar, going to your site or landing page, or download your Lead Magnet.

If you need an email address for an article the piece serves as what's called lead magnet. A lead magnet is a piece of content that is of great value and importance you give to your prospective customer to get their email address. Anyone who enters their email address will be able to immediately get the content promised by email, and also be included in your email list. Don't allow them to be on your email address to get an occasional newsletter or similar. Make sure you have a method to convert the new customer into a paying member of your web site! This is accomplished through preloading a lead-generation email sequence which automatically starts into action when the person downloads your lead magnet. And yes, this is labor-intensive, but it is the best set-and-forget sales tool at your disposal. Do it once, and check your nurture sequence each six months.

The primary objective of your Social CTAs is to get the email address of your prospect so they can begin receiving your automatic nurture email sequence. Similar to all forms of marketing actions, social interactions must be planned as well as contextually relevant and measurable. If you aren't armed with the right information about click-throughs, conversions, likes, shares and retweets as well as lead captures, etc. It's possible that you're in the wrong place. Are you?

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

Organic influencer marketing

Partnering with those who have the attention of a critical majority of your group is the most efficient route to increase the number of members on a site. You can try to orchestrate the process yourself, or go straight to paying 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. People love being around their company. Engagement is the primary measure to be looking for when searching for influential people in your field. Some people have several thousand or more followers. However, it doesn't matter for those who overwhelmingly do not follow and don't engage with 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. Entrepreneurs and bootstrappers have taken that concept and applied it to niche market.

Chances are that there are influencers in your industry. Who has written the book on your topic for membership? Who hosts conferences for your target audience? What are the top three blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels your audience pays attention to? They are your influencers. They are the ones you must identify the ones you can find and then begin to be helpful to them. Here's how to be the best you can so that, over time, you'll build genuine relationships with influencers and work towards positive, mutually beneficial projects.

Giving value to your industry's influencers by being kind and helpful is the best method to be on their notice. Your overarching goal with this channel of marketing is to begin by establishing genuine relationships (to make a friend, be a friend) with said influencers - then, as time passes, work towards creating mutually beneficial methods to connect with their audiences. Take care to treat these relationships like kid gloves. Take care, be aware, and be cognizant the fact that they often have the power to influence purchasing decisions of their followers. It is important to have this working to your advantage and not in your favor.

Start to be a positive individual by doing what you can such as Engaging with them via social media (retweets and likes, or comments, etc. ) and reviewing your book(s) on Amazon and leaving a positive review of the podcast on iTunes, consistently leaving useful comments on blog postings, sharing their posts to your followers and tag the author on different social media channels with a quick thank you as well as other such actions. Include these activities added to your calendar as recurring event so your organic influencer strategy stays in line.

When you write an email or make an initial contact via social media platforms to announce yourself, it's smart to have a quote from the influencer from a blog post or podcast interview. You can also send them a message from a recently held speaking engagement, along with an insightful comment from you on how their advice/expertise helped you, and/or to ask them a follow up inquiry. This shows you've done research and aren't coming in out of the blue with a goal to achieve.

Then say you've been a long-time admirer of their work (because you've been following their work and helping them for some time now isn't it? ), you've published their work to your audience multiple times, and you're working in the same field and think it would be useful to connect. In the next step, ask them the opportunity to introduce them to any within your circle who could be beneficial to their business (great to have specific people in mind who you're sure they're buddies with). It's key that you don't solicit anything from them in your initial outreach. If they respond favorably proceed slowly but slowly and continue to provide the value they need to that person. Take your time however do not be afraid to inquire for collaborations if you think it makes sense.

If you are working together, it should be natural to collaborate on material when appropriate, participate on each other's podcasts and cross-promote services. bundle your services to get special deals as well as explore other innovative collaborations for audience sharing.

If your organic influencer efforts aren't working or aren't on time, don't fret and try the option of paid influencer marketing!

Marketing with influencers paid

As with the organic marketing of influencers, you'll initially need to identify the influencers in your industry, but you can short circuit the entire process by reaching out to them with paid promotion opportunities.

The most well-known influencers may have a media kit of some kind available on their site when they've conducted paid influencer marketing for others previously. If you're unsure if they've been paid for collaborations or exposure to their followers previously, you might need to determine whether they'd even think about 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.

Opportunities for paid influencers might include: sending a paid mailer to their email list or a blog post that is sponsored or a guest appearance on their podcast or paying them to be an invited participant on a webinar or to be interviewed, paying them to speak at your conference or event or any other thing you can think of that is beneficial to your area.

Borrowing someone else's audience is often the fastest and least expensive path to growth. Don't overlook the power influencer marketing could have on your marketing and acquisition strategy.