Have you thought about getting guest experts involved in your membership site?

Inviting other people to create content and contribute to your membership can expand the amount of information and expertise you’re able to offer.

Yes, your audience wants access to you and your knowledge on the topic of interest, but they can also benefit from hearing other people’s experiences and niche expertise.

This provides a far richer learning experience and a larger number of resources for your membership audience.

If you attract well-known authorities, you can gain credibility by association.

Being able to use these prominent faces as a stamp of approval can promote loyalty within your membership and attract new people to your stuff.

Not only do guest experts bring great value, they can also lighten your workload.

If you’re running a number of live workshops, your guests can takeover and provide the slides and research.

Having regular guests in your membership can really decrease the amount of content production you do personally.

When you’re the single source of content, your members can get demanding.

Move away from this and the dynamic of your membership might change in a positive way.

How do you go about bringing guest experts into your membership site?

Here are a few of our top tips:

1. Tap into Your Existing Networks

Who do you have connections with?

Who are they connected to?

If you draw up your wish list of guest experts, don’t just think about the big names.

Those people might create content for you, but they won’t necessarily do your marketing and promotion.

Credibility by association is great, but you shouldn’t bring someone into your membership unless you know why you’d bring them in.

• Which subject would they talk about?
• What content would they create?
• What value would they provide to your members?

Don’t get sucked into the trap of only going for big names.

Someone who’s lesser known but very experienced in a specific area could be far more useful to your members.

2. Start a Relationship in Public

If you’re running a podcast or blog, consider starting the relationship with a larger influencer by first inviting them to contribute to your public content.

When someone creates content for your membership, they’re not getting much of a promotional reach.

They’re only tapping into your members and that’s far less exposure for them than if they were on a podcast or blog.

A good first step might be to have them on your podcast for an interview or a guest blog.

This is an entry point for working with these guys, so that you can later ask them to come into your membership.

Don’t send over a begging email for a podcast interview, article, and live training.

Respect their time and remember that they have a lot of people asking a lot of them.

Asking for just a few paragraphs for your blog post will start off the relationship.

3. Talk to Other Membership Site Owners

We’ve talked before about how it’s a lot easier to get podcast guests when you target people who already have their own podcast – because they:

• Don’t need to be convinced that a podcast is a good thing to be on.
• Already have the equipment and systems to create a quality interview.
• Know how the game is played because they’re doing it themselves.

The exact same thing is true for people with memberships.

If you want to get a guest in to present live content, you’ll have a far easier time if you approach people who have memberships of their own.

They’ll know what a membership is and they’ll understand how training typically works.

These guests will use tools that you might want them to use to create the content.

Plus, they’ll appreciate the fact that the live audience for a training might be smaller than the number of people who will eventually watch it.

4. Just Ask

To land the guest experts you want, just ask.

People fear reaching out to experts and influencers and asking them to contribute, but the worst case scenario is ‘no’.

Nobody dies if that happens. Your business doesn’t crumble if someone turns down your request.

You don’t need to be fearful.

The key is to ask and make it as easy as possible for them to say yes.

If you’re requesting someone to come in, explain why you think they’d be a good fit and what they could provide to your audience.

Have a process and make it clear just how easy it will be for them to come into your membership.

You have to work hard to accommodate them and make it easy for them to jump in.

5. Make Compromises

You must appreciate the fact that your guest experts will have a lot of demands on their time.

That means that you need to be willing to compromise.

Live training is the most common way that you’ll have guest experts contribute, but that won’t always work well for your high profile guest experts.

If your potential guest isn’t available for a live training, you could compromise with a pre-recorded session.

You could even create a live element with a live Q&A with you based on the material a week after you published it into your membership.

The value added by having a guest expert create material for your site is worth a little compromise.

Don’t ruin your chance of getting someone in just because you insist they show up live.

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