Part 2 - The Essence Of A Great Membership

The first two (commitment and authority) are on a scale. (Well get back to this more later) 

In simple words: The more committed your audience is to your cause the better. The higher your perceived authority on the subject the better.

Ideally both should start high from the first impression and increase all along the way. You should keep this in mind as you craft your ads in the future.

Now with single-payment courses, the commitment is the highest at the start and then naturally decreases over time.
After 10 years as consultant in this field, working around 100s of courses, I’d say it drops usually 3 weeks in. (There are best practices to prolong this, but that’s a topic for another time) 

On the other hand, with a community driven membership commitment can increase over time, if you establish engagement and raise belonging.

There is usually a shy 'testing-the-water' phase for new members, then as they get positive responses, their engagement increases.

By alone, fun interactions and a sense of fellowship doesn't justify payment. This is still a realm of free communities. They could go to Discord or to a free FB group.

Apart from attracting high-value members, you have to provide a continuous route for improvement.

This brings us to a very clear conclusion:

Fusing courses into a community -

- by combining the best aspects of a course (online learning program) with the best aspects of a supportive tribe (online community).

The course in this case is more freeform than in a learning management platform, where it's all cut up to modules, chapters and lessons. You control the progres by A) dripping the content or B) adding assignments.

I. You need a very strong entry with great awe content that welcomes the new members. This is vitally important so I repeat: You need to give a strong upfront value. (I like to send this by email or publish on a separate page so the experience is undisrupted.)

II: Entering the community your new member is welcomed by a streamlined indoctrination section - welcome say hi, answer a fun question, where to ask, where to look etc.

It should never feel like a busy playhouse from outside the window.

III: The progress on the course is a progress of tangible benefits not of info learned. Tangible benefits such as acquired skill, something achieved, a step made towards the goal. These milestones connect fellow students who are at the same milestone.

The next key element is the presence of ‘superusers’ (aka. sups). This will also bring light the No#1 tactic of launching the community. 

Raising Superusers

Superusers (or Power Users) are users who drive the engagement in the community. They are opening new topics, and are the first to respond to others.

The standard dynamics in an established community is that:

• 10-20% doesn’t visit just pays.
• 60% checks in weekly, reading the posts, but don’t get involved
• 15% open posts every now and then, asking questions from time to time
• 5% are sups, firing beams from their eyes, writing daily

This is fine, but of course the core of your work is to aim better than fine. The more Group 'Read Only' wonders into Group 'Post here & there' the better.

And this brings us to the starting point that most community builders mess up. 

You have your platform set. (more on this in detail in the next part)

You have your killer welcome section, your content is all stacked up ready to be published. You run your ads, inviting beta testers, new paying members start to pour in…

And then. Not much. The activity is low.

Your number one tactic for the early stage of building a thriving tribe is to become the 1st Superuser! And the 2^nd and 3^rd too. (the what? - I'll explain)

It’s like lighting up a campfire, putting on some meat to roast, getting your guitar and starting playing and singing. People will see the light from afar. Hear the music. They get closer. Smell the food. Ask to sit in. Then they join. And a tribe forms. With the slight twist that you are singing together with your twins to begin with. 

What attracts people to follow along on a thread is discussion of opposing thoughts, questions to answers and ideas of value.
Spiced with a slight bit of ambiguity and disagreement. 

Think of Reddit. Or a real campfire with friends changing the world at one slip of a glass of wine at a time.

• A question or confession on a difficulty
• An expert answer
• A supporting opinion with doubt
• A critique (opposing opinion) with a supporting question
• An expert answer reflecting with a promise (expanding the subject on a new post / course)
• Useful links
• Lines of gratitude

This can start the campfire singing. And it's done all by you…more accurately by 3-4 “avatar” accounts you created and control. You can use these avatars as an embodiment of the different characteristics, life-situations, XP levels of your audience.

Each with their own email address. You don’t have to overplay it or build 10 years of fake backgrounds like a CIA agent. Just create a gmail account, write a paragraph of avatar bio and invite the lucky one to your membership. (not all of them from the same time)

Their role is to join the music until others do. Another analogy I can think of is inviting people to an empty club. The music is on and the lights are on. But until one group starts to dance everyone will just wait idle on the side. You provide that first group. And then when the floor is packed you no longer need the dummy avatars to dance.

Wait, isn’t this shady business?

If you were thinking about this question, it is a good sign. Your heart is in the right place. 

Through these conversations you convey value. You frame what you teach (expert answer) within the dynamics of the staged discussion. You do not use these to tap your own back or to manipulate anyone. (eg. “Joe, this place is amazing” - written by yourself. Or "Buy all his sh*t, best stuff ever." That stinks from a mile away...not ot mention being unethical.)

The use of these avatars is to benefit your newcomers. These conversations invite them to start new ones with confidence and to share their thoughts on ongoing discussions.

How to structure your courses through a community

Introduction to the Group coaching mindset

Instead of posting a course the same way as you would in Teachable or Kajabi (or in any other Learning Management platform)  you basically create a freeform learning hub with guided execution. 

You don’t put out a 100 posts for the hundred lessons, sectioned into Modules. It's not a 1 on 1 transfer. People would tune out. 

With a Community Course do it differently. You add the pavement to walk on and set the goal to the group where to arrive. 

The community posts are about the key deliverables, traps and best tips. The comments are the questions or the completed work shared. (the latter can be in separate posts optionally)

The core learning material can be sent in email, on a static page (like this), in a pdf downloadable, or in a pre-recorded video/webinar.

Members are free to just loosely follow along or participate following the pace being held accountable to deliver.

But it is periodic. The discussions and supporting material are constant - usually sooner or later the most of that is added by the 5% super users.

You mark where you will - together - arrive in 4/6/8 weeks (whatever your timeframe or niche is.) This is the part where I can’t give you all the exacts,  much depends on your specific field and the theme of the membership.

Remember, this is not a template to copy but a framework to build upon.

I'm pulling out a few examples from thin air, let's review them as practice session for your creativity:

• Seasonal FB ads
• Tax advisory
• Real estate staging
• Publishing
• Small garden heaven building
• Dog training
• Starting a band
• Earning from blogging
• Building/modifying a van into a motorhome

As a quick workout for your smart imagine how you would run a group coaching style community membership on these subjects.

• Imagine the starting discussions,
• the milestones,
• the content,
• the live seminars.

Completing this exercise brings us to Part 3 which you will appreciate a lot if you have followed along his far. Now that we know how to do it right, it is time to define the criteria we need for the platform we run our power community.

I’m very specific about the tool to use for this, and we will go into the details of setting up things for success right at the get go. The ideal structure and the 4 key forces that will drive the growth and success of the membership.

I will also disclose two critical elements if you go with the tool I recommend: pricing and positioning. Missing on this might very well break the model. 

I decided to divide the next unit a bit, having some parts "semi-locked" for those who move forward and actually do this thing. These only get relevant in that case anyway.

Without further ado, let's go to Part 3: Selecting and setting up your Community platform