Get your straw hats and combine!
Just kidding.
I actually first learned this when building a membership site for Michael Hyatt. This is an author who'd already written several bestselling books, a former CEO of a book publishing company, and a prolific blogger. I just assumed he was going to slam his membership with content.
But, he didn't.
To his credit, he was ahead of the game when it came to understanding memberships. His Content Strategy was simple: one core piece of content per week. That's it. There were community-oriented pieces each week (like a forum focus and member spotlight, and so on), but actual produced, core training-type content… just one per week.
And, each week was a different “silo” of content.
This was years ago and his silos were public knowledge, so I'm not giving away any trade secrets here, but this is how he siloed his content:
- Master Class
- Backstage Pass
- Member Makeover
- Live Q&A
Week 1 of every month was a master class on the main topic for that month. The Backstage Pass took members behind the scenes of Michael's own business and showed them how he created his content, marketed his products, built his team, and so on. Week 3 he'd review a member's website and give tips on how they could improve and he'd finish out the month with a live Q&A call to answer any questions.
And, that was it.
To date, over 20,000 people have been through the membership and it currently has over 5,000 active members (at $47/month).
Oh, but he still does have to work an hour or two each week on it. 🙂
I don't know about you, but I'm not a big fan of reinventing the wheel. If something works, I typically stick with it. So, you absolutely can (and probably should) model this approach. To abstract from his branded names a bit, here's what this would look like:
- Week 1: A core training on the major topic for the month
- Week 2: A sneak peek into YOUR life/business and how you do what you do
- Week 3: Review an individual member
- Week 4: Live Q&A
Of course, a couple things here:
- I do recommend branding your silos. It gives your members something to latch onto. Give each silo a name that fits with the overall theme of your membership (example: Grind Session, Conversion Class, Business Brainstorm, etc).
- Along with your silos, decide what type of content each silo will contain. Is it a video or audio recording? Or maybe a blog post. Will it have an accompanying PDF? Will it be download able? And, so on.
When you're done, you should have something that looks like this:
- Week 1: Business Bootcamp (Video. Interview with prominent business leader. No downloads)
- Week 2: Over the Shoulder (Screencast video. Behind-the-scenes look at my business. Includes a checklist).
- Week 3: Hot Seat (Video. Review of a member's website. PDF checklist for the reviewed member only).
- Week 4: Live Q&A (Live Zoom call. Replay available. No downloads).
If you look at that, you now know what you're doing each month. You have a target and all you have to do is hit it. Even more important, it's a doable plan that won't overwhelm your members. Frankly, you've just done 90% of the work in figuring out your Content Strategy. Now, all you need to do is fill this plan with details and knock out the content.
