As membership owners, we put so much time, energy and resources into creating awesome content…

But how do we make sure members actually consume it?

Ideally, you want members to complete your courses, watch video tutorials, download materials and progress towards achieving their goals.

But sometimes, they need a little dose of inspiration or a reminder of the fantastic content you have to offer.

So how can you give members a little nudge in the right direction to consume your content?

Here are four simple tips and techniques you can adopt:

1. Recognize, reward, and reinforce content consumption and completion

People love to be celebrated… 

They love a pat on the back, especially when it’s done publicly.

So, make sure you’re taking the time to acknowledge members who are getting good results from your content.

There are a few different ways you can do this….

For example, you could do a member spotlight where you pay attention publicly to members who've recently completed a course and got great results from it.

You could also shine a light on members who are currently working through your courses in real-time…

Address any challenges they're having…

Or demonstrate hands-on application of what they're learning as it's being learned.

So you're pulling members into the spotlight as a feature of your membership website…

Where other members can watch videos of you assessing their work or going through a coaching call with them.

This can encourage others to consume your content, because you're reinforcing that as a desired behavior within your site…

And recognizing those members doing the work…

Which can help to inspire others to do the same. 

A great way to reinforce the importance and value of actually using your content is to use gamification.

We have an entire course on gamification as a strategy inside Membership Academy, so check that out if you’re already a member.

In a nutshell, gamification is a way to provide rewards and recognition to those consuming your content….

For example, you could unlock points, badges, and member ranks like you would in a video game… 

It gives the member or user a sense of progression and accomplishment which spurs them into continuing.

If you’re using certain types of forum software, you may already be able to designate levels and ranks to members based on how they participate in the community.

For example, those who post regularly will be ranked higher…

And at this point they unlock new features within your site.

This is highlighting and recognizing those members who are behaving in the way you want them too in terms of their content consumption level and their activity in your community.

You can also showcase member wins, acknowledge people completing your courses and highlight interesting discussions within your community in your weekly round up email.

This will encourage community participation and content consumption from others.

And then there's the option to share member success stories – either in the privacy of your community forum or on your wider public channels…

You could interview members for your blog or feature them as guests on your podcast…

This gives members something to aspire to because they also want that recognition and to be showcased in that way.

2. Provide facilitation for your content

This is where you’re actively involved in the process of a member consuming your content.

One way of doing this is with member challenges.

Where you get everyone on-board to work through a course or set of challenges together within a specified timeframe.

For example, at the start of each month, you could gather members together to embark on a new course.

You could then have regular check-ins each week with the aim to get everyone to complete it by the end of the month.

This gives everyone a target to hit and support of their peers and you along with it.

You might even want to throw in a prize or an incentive to keep people on track.

What’s key is that you get directly involved in motivating people to complete the content.

You’re not just leaving them all to get on with it with zero direction.

If you don’t want have the time or resource to lead this activity…

Hosting discussions, Q&A sessions, course walk throughs and full lessons etc…

You could still help by having a dedicated area on your forum to discuss this content.

For example, if you have a Roadmap or a signature course that’s a big feature in your content library, have a separate section on the forum for people to discuss it there.

Facilitating your content can really give people the added impetus to be more proactive in consuming it.

3. Use reminders and nudges based on member activity

If you can track and monitor member activity using tools like Users Insights, Intercom, or Active Campaign, you'll be able to see what people are consuming within your site…

Or if you're using something like WP Fusion, you can add tags to people based on the specific pages of your website that they've visited.

With tools like these, you’ll be able to see if members have completed a course…

Or if they've started a course and are yet to finish it…

If this happens, you can trigger an automated email reminder to prompt them to pick it back up.

You giving your members a little nudge…

These sort of reminders and helpful nudges can be a great way of guiding people to content to make sure that they're actually consuming it.

You could also send out regular email roundups to summarize new content, new community activity and to shout out members who are doing really well…

Or you could share case studies and testimonials from members who have completed the content before.

It’s such a simple way to remind people that you’re still there…

A lot of the time, people just forget or might not be aware of a particular piece of content…

And a nudge is all they need to work through it.

4. Use multiple content formats

Many memberships these days primarily use video content…

And many of them leave it at that.

They create an awesome video, but that's it…

That's all they upload into their membership.

If you want to appeal to all your members, including more content formats – i.e.repurposing your content– could be just the thing that boosts content consumption.

Think about turning your video content into audio downloads so they can listen to them on the move.

Perhaps include a text transcript of your videos or courses so members can read them if they can’t watch them at that moment.

Or you could try offering a worksheet with quizzes and activities to go along with your courses.

You might even provide a PDF of the slide deck to download.

So, instead of just watching a bunch of videos, your members get a much wider learning experience that’s more interactive and engaging.

Doing this massively levels up your content experience by appealing to those members who prefer not to watch videos…

And appeal to a number of different learning styles.

You also increase the likelihood that someone will actually take action…

And both understand and execute what they've learned.

Which in turn will improve the chance of a positive outcome and encourage them to consume more content within your site.

So, if you've been struggling to get your members to actually consume and complete your content…

Hopefully, some of these techniques will help you up your game…

And get better results for your members…

Which will increase the ‘stickiness' of your membership…

And of course mean better things for your business as a whole.