Tonight, on behalf of the Guerrilla Marketing Association, I’m inviting my membership site owner friends to attend a special teleseminar interview I’m conducting with Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth and Awakening the Entrepreneur Within. Michael’s “systems-based” messages have profound relevance for membership site owners interested in maximizing their site’s potential.

On tonight’s call, Michael and I will be discussing the story behind his latest book, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within. Michael’s latest projects, described at AwakeningtheEntrepreneur.com, have particular relevance to membership site owners looking for new content, directions, and marketing ideas.

The call takes place Wednesday evening, May 14th, between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM EST. Contact Roger C. Parker for call-in instructions. And bring your questions about “dreams” and “systems.” There will be several opportunities to ask them.

Technorati Tags awakening the entrepreneur, E-Myth, membership site owners, Michael Gerber

Many membership site owners conduct teleseminar interviews of experts in their field. These interviews not only provide great content for your members, but you can use these calls to introduce your site to your guests’ prospects and clients.

One of the best ways you can promote upcoming interviews and increase the perceived value of your interviews is to profile your guests in advance of the call. A short article stressing the background of your upcoming guest provides you with an opportunity to promote the relevance of the upcoming call to your member’s.

Another way you can build anticipation and–hence–attendance at your live teleseminar interviews is to invite guests to submit a previously-written article or two in advance of your interview. Nowhere is it written that all of your site’s content has to be written by you. Consider creating a “Guest” or “Other Voices” category and invite upcoming guests to submit previously-written articles or content to your site.

It’s a “win-win” situation for all when you build anticipation for your upcoming teleseminar interviews. Your site gains valuable content and more of your members and prospects will attend your teleseminars. The result will be more dynamic and informative interviews and better recordings.

Technorati Tags Content, promoting interview guests, teleseminar promotion

I’m impressed with my first experiences with Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out, (HARO),  www.helpareporterout.com. Sign up as a resource and receive a few “compendium” e-mails a day containing the names and e-mail addresses of journalists looking for subject area experts for upcoming articles.

HARO works both ways, of course. As a membership site owner, you might consider registering yourself as a “media reporter” for your membership site, allowing you to locate subject area experts for upcoming membership site content and case studies. Register as a media reporter at www.helpareporter.com/press.

Technorati Tags help a reporter, Media and press, membership site promotion, Peter Shankman, subject area experts

I always wait before upgrading anything.

If Windows comes out with updates, I always wait and see if they are working correctly. Sometimes, you just never know if all the kinks have been worked out.

Well, I recently upgraded to WordPress 2.5 and absolutely loved it.

A short time later, I saw that WordPress 2.5.1 became available available. Says “Please update now” on the dashboard, right where you can’t avoid it! Without thinking about it, I upgraded my blog and 2 clients as well. 

I found it very strange that I needed to upgrade my database yet again, but figured it was par for the course.

I really wish I hadn’t upgraded.

Today, I noticed that when I look at my RSS feeds, it says that I have no articles. 

I didn’t even think of checking my RSS feeds once I upgraded!

Everything worked perfectly. My blog posts were all there and WordPress worked like before. So, I figured all was well.

So, back to the story. I immediately thought it was something I did wrong. I decided to check out all my other WordPress blogs.

When I checked out this blog (which hadn’t yet been upgraded to 2.5.1), the RSS feeds worked properly.

I thought it was some kind of settings or permissions to the files.

I checked those and they were all identical. In fact, this blog is hosted by the same company as my www.thrivingdesigner.com blog. This one worked and Thriving Designer didn’t.

So, what was my next step?

I downgraded it back to 2.5 and my RSS were back.

I tried re-upgrading, and they disappeared again.

C O N C L U S I O N :

I’m waiting for the next version. And one more thing to check and make sure it works!

And, before I upgrade all my blogs, I will check that one works perfectly before diving in and upgrading all of them.

 

Have you consider packaging, or re-packaging, your membership site’s information as 2, 4, or 6-page reference sheets? Reference sheets condense complicated information into formats that can be displayed at a glance. Reference sheets can be used to create compelling list-building incentives, as well as high-value membership sign-up incentives.

What are reference sheets?
Membership site owners interested in learning more about reference sheets can visit their local Barnes & Noble and look at the various sheets available from To get an idea of what reference sheets are all about, you can visit Barnes and Noble and check out the various examples from SparkNotes, Quamut and Quickstudy.

Or, you can visit sites where you can download examples, like the SparkNotes sample available here.  Numerous examples are also available for free download at O’Reilly Publishing’s CustomGuide and at the QuickStudy Download Center. The QuickStudy Download Center is especially interesting, as you can explore different color and layout options for your reference sheets.

Note that although reference sheets are often published as plastic laminated 2, 4, or 6-panel index-dividers, they do not have to be plastic laminated and printed in the large quantities necessary to get per-copy prices within reason. You can just as easily distribute your own reference sheets to members and prospects as Adobe Acrobat PDF files.

Invitation
If you’re a membership site owner using reference sheets to build your prospect list or as a member benefits, and you’d like to share samples and your experience with the membership site community, tell us about your experiences as comments, submitted below.

Technorati Tags reference sheets, SparksNotes

Membership site owners need to continually evaluate their site’s public and member pages with regard to best serving each page’s differing goals and visitor needs. The easiest way to do this is to ask yourself: “What is the most desired action I want newcomers to my website to take, and what is do I most want returning members to do?”

In most cases, of course, the primary goal of your membership site’s public page is to obtain your visitor’s e-mail address and the secondary goal is to establish your site’s credibility as a source of information and interest. Once you have obtained your visitor’s e-mail address (and permission to re-contact them), you will be able to continually market to them in the future.

The most desired action of member pages is a bit more difficult to identify. Your basic goals may involve:

• Maintaining member enthusiasm by highlighting new content, reinforcing the value of continued membership
• Up-selling members to premium membership levels or offering optional products and services , i.e., upcoming events, books, coaching, reports, videos, etc.
• Encouraging members referrals to friends and coworkers
• Emphasizing community activities, i.e., encouraging additional participation in forums

Given the differing goals and market needs of visitors to your site’s member and public pages, it makes sense to take a fresh look at your member and public pages each month and evaluate how well they’re satisfying your goals and your visitor’s differing information needs.

Technorati Tags marketing membership sites

A simple, “low-tech” feature built into Microsoft Publisher can help membership site owners better plan and manage their time each month. Time management is of crucial important to membership site owners. Membership site owners have to continually satisfy both long-term and short-term content, marketing, and new product development resources. Short-term goals include planning and completing new site content, weekly tips, and frequent blog posts. Long-term goals include creating new “sell up” information products.

Microsoft Publisher includes a simple, but powerful, Calender Creator located in the Design Gallery Objects. Accessed from the Publisher toolbar, Design Gallery Objects permit you to easily create calendars that you can complete either on-screen or–and this may be of primary importance–or by hand!

To create a calendar, begin with a blank, horizontal–or Landscape–page. Then:

1. Select the Design Gallery Object Tool
2. Select Calendars when the Microsoft Office Design Gallery appears
3. Select a desired format from the Calendars from samples shown to the right
4. Press the Insert Object button

Finishing touches
Resize the calendar so it is as large as possible by dragging one of the corners. By default, Publisher creates a calendar for the current month. To change the calendar for a different month:

• Select the Calendar Wizard tool below the calendar
• Press the Change Date Range… button
• You can now choose the desired month and year for your calendar

You can fill out your calendar on your computer, but many prefer to print out each month’s calendar in advance, and fill it out by hand. Either way, you’ll have a large working area for visually displaying your content creation and marketing tasks.

Technorati Tags Microsoft Publisher, time management