Creating new marketing content for your membership site is hard work. Finding the time to create new marketing content for your site is even harder.
If you’re like most business owners with no time to spare, you understand how difficult it can be to create content for marketing your membership site. Even so, you also know that it’s one of the most important marketing activities you can engage in to grow your site.
In this article, we’ll introduce you to the hub and spoke strategy and walk you through a quick exercise you can follow to generate more top of funnel traffic for your membership site. The best part is we’ll show you how you can do this by using existing content that you already have!
This exercise and approach makes creating content that you can use to promote your membership site really easy.
Let’s begin…
What’s the Hub and Spoke Content Marketing Strategy? Here’s How it Works and How to Use It To Promote Your Membership Site
The hub and spoke model consists of three core elements:
- The Content Hub – This is an existing piece (or specific section) of content from your membership site. For example, the main topic that a course, module or lesson from your membership site focuses on.
- Primary Content Spokes – Pieces of content that are related to the topic of your “content hub”. Each primary content spoke addresses sub-topics, keywords, ideas, and concepts that you cover in your content hub. Essentially your chunking down the topic that your content hub focuses on. For example, this could be a blog post, video, ebook, etc., related to that section from your membership site.
- Secondary Content Spokes – These are things you can publish to drive traffic to your ‘primary content spokes’. For example, if you have a blog post, what else can you publish to drive traffic to it? You can send out emails, publish social media posts, short videos on Youtube, ads or anything else you can do to promote your ‘primary content’ spoke.
Bottom line is, there are lots of people on the internet who are interested in the topic that your membership site focuses on. They won’t be able to find out about your site unless you promote it. Going through this exercise will help you come up with new ideas you can use to promote your site and ultimately attract more paying members.
The Content Hub
If you already have a membership site or online course, your content hub is already created. As we just mentioned, there are lots of people out there interested in the topic that your membership site focuses on.
To pick a content hub to focus on first, take a specific course, module or lesson from your membership site (or course).
The specific topic that section focuses on will serve as your “content hub”.
Simply put, a content hub is one of the main topics that your membership program addresses. The primary content spokes from that hub, are pieces of content that chunk that topic down.
The topic that you pick as your “content hub” will help drive more people to your site who are interested in that topic.
Primary Content Spokes
Each ‘primary content spoke’ should address sub-topics, keywords, ideas, and concepts that are related to your content hub.
These “primary content spokes” can be blog posts, lead magnets, presentations, pages, videos or any other piece of content that you’re publishing on your own site.
You can then use these content pieces to drive traffic to your website and promote your content hub. Which means your promoting the topic that your membership site focuses on. Which ultimately helps you increase the awareness of your membership site, along with helping you generate more qualified leads and traffic to your site.
Once you have some primary content spokes in place, you’ll want to make sure each of them helps drive people further through your funnel. At the end of each content piece, make sure there’s a link or call to action leading them to the next step in your funnel.
If it’s a free blog post, place a call to action at the end for them to opt in for something relevant so you can get their email address.
If it’s a lead magnet, place a call to action at the end for them to join your membership or include an offer to join for free through a trial, or low priced trial membership.
Pro tip: For maximum impact, optimize your primary content spokes for the keywords you want to rank for!
Here are some ideas that you can use to create ‘Primary Content Spokes’:
- Blog Posts
- Video or webinar
- A new page on your site
- Lead magnets
- E-books
- Case studies and reports
- A cheat sheet, checklist, or worksheet
- Downloadable resources and guides
Creating primary content spokes like this helps you…
- Educate your visitors and helping them solve problems.
- Drive awareness about your membership program.
- Develop a closer relationship with your prospects.
Or in other words, you’re driving awareness about your membership program and are gently nudging them towards becoming paid members.
Secondary Content Spokes
After you’ve created primary content spokes, the next step is to create your secondary content spokes. In simple words, their main purpose is to promote your primary content spokes and drive traffic.
Typically, secondary content spokes take the form of social media posts, email messages, videos, ads, push notifications, Quora posts, guest blog posts, affiliates, google slides, etc. These are pieces of content published outside of your own site on other platforms or websites other than your own.
For example, you can promote your primary content spokes across the web on other relevant websites to your business. This drives traffic back to your primary content spokes (like blog posts or videos) which helps you bring in more top of funnel traffic to your site.
Important Questions to Ask Yourself
The hub and spoke model makes it easy for digital marketers to plan, manage, and create marketing content that generates leads and, ultimately, converts them into paying members for your membership program.
- What pressing topics does your target audience care about the most?You want to make sure you’re addressing the topics that your target personas, buyers, and customers are most interested in. You also want to only pick the topics that your membership site focuses on.
- What keywords would you like to be found for?You can optimize your content hubs for the keywords or phrases you want to rank for.
- At what stage are they in the buying process?If they’re at the top of the funnel, you want to engage them with blog posts and videos to introduce them to your membership program and illustrate how they can benefit by joining. However, if they’re at the decision-making stage, you’d want to instead share case studies with them to help them make a buying decision.
- What questions are your topics going to answer?You should answer all of the questions that relate to the content in your content hub. Think of questions your target audience would like to have answered.
This allows you to develop a content marketing strategy that helps you generate more traffic and leads visitors to a point where they can become qualified leads or join your membership program.
Generate Ideas to Promote Your Membership Site [Guided Exercise]
Now that you have a clear understanding of the hub and spoke strategy, let’s create a custom hub and spoke model for your business. We’ll start by filling in the hub and spoke worksheet to come up with ideas for content that you can use to promote your site!
No opt-in is required. You’ll be sent directly to the worksheet that’s saved as a google presentation that you can copy.
The doc is a fill-in-the-blanks style worksheet you can follow you along with to quickly generate a list of new content ideas that you can use to promote your membership site.
This worksheet and guided exercise can help you:
- Generate more marketing content to promote your membership site.
- Develop a content marketing strategy for your business that engages visitors and helps keeps them on your website longer.
- Convert more visitors into qualified leads for your business and/or more paying members for your membership site.
Conclusion
If you haven’t done so already, click here to download a copy of the Hub and Spoke Worksheet and go through this exercise yourself to come up with some ideas you can use to promote your membership site!
This exercise also doesn’t just apply to membership sites or online courses. This same exercise can be used to promote any type of business.
