Best Practices For Creating The Right Content For Your Website
Unlock the secrets of successful membership content! Explore best practices to captivate and retain your audience effectively.
Unlock the secrets to successful membership content in our latest video! We delve into essential best practices that will help you create engaging and valuable material for your audience. From understanding member needs to leveraging feedback, we cover it all! Learn how to build a thriving community with content that resonates.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:03.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine show. This is episode 99. Well, we have one episode and get to our 100th show. What an achievement. In this show, we’re going to be talking about a vital subject, but it’s something that I think sometimes doesn’t get the attention that it should. And that’s the best practice for creating the right membership content, not, you know, for your courses, front pages, and marketing pages. We’re going to be looking at it all. I’ve got my regular co-host, Kurt, with me. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to new listeners and viewers quickly? Yeah.
[00:01:01.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan. Kurt Von Ahnen. We own an agency called MananaNoMas. We focus primarily on membership and learning websites and provide some learning products. I also work directly with Jonathan at WP-Tonic and the good folks at Lifter LMS.
[00:01:14.780] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. I can say in this episode, we’re going to be looking at all the different types of content that you need for your membership website and hope, hopefully, we will be giving you some insights into best practices about some things that you might forget and just put a ton of information that hopefully you’re going to find useful. But before we go into the meat and potatoes for this great episode, I’ve got a message from our major sponsor. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I also want to point out that we’ve got a great list of the best WordPress plugins and services and a great course by Kirk himself that shows how you can build a membership website on WordPress using the best technology and the best practices. In 204 205, you can get this course, this created list of plugins and services, and all these free goodies by going to wp-tonic.com deals wp-tonic.com. Deals, you find all the goodies there. What more could you ask for? So, let’s go into the intro before we go into my list.
[00:02:45.640] – Jonathan Denwood
So, based on your experience, Kurt, what are some of the biggest mistakes or things people misunderstand when it comes to content for their membership website that you regularly see when you’re consulting, working with Lift, and working with WP-Tonic?
[00:03:06.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan, I think it’s essential first because we’ll discuss techniques, what to make, and how to make things. But it’s pivotal, crucial, all these fancy words. AI sticks out at people. Imperative. You have to think about your audience and their perspective. 90% of the people that I help have a great idea and have some foundation of what they want to share, but they start creating the content from a look at what I’m offering, look at what I’m offering, look at what I’m offering instead of the perspective of this is how I’m going to fill your need. And.
[00:03:49.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s significantly linked to what we’ve discussed previously. Yeah, you know, about the, the painkiller, the. Rather than the vitamin. We’ve discussed this quite a lot, haven’t we?
[00:04:02.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
And, but, but then that causes you to. When you start looking at it from the proper perspective. And I’m. And I. And we say it over and over again. Why? Because 90% of the people we help are coming at their content from a wrong position. If you’re, if you’re trying to get people to see the value of your ideas or the value of your whatever by bragging about how awesome or what school you went to or the plaque on your wall, it’s it that’s not answering the pain point. And so what happens is you end up having to curve your content. You end up going, okay, well then maybe this, maybe this, maybe this. And you have to be willing to kind of hunt and peck around a little bit and sample some things to see what gets the likes, the shares, the momentum, and then double down in that direction and then you can create all these cool assets.
[00:04:51.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think it’s linked to. I’ve discussed this with you quite a bit. This War and Peace syndrome people, they have all this knowledge that they want to share with people and build a great business around it, and it’s totally fantastic. But they’ve got all this knowledge and they think we, we need to get it into this course. We need to get all this knowledge into this first course, which, which is wrong anyway. Just putting so much pressure on themselves. And secondly, they’re not focused on outcome, they’re focused on putting all this knowledge digitally into. And it becomes this bloated and beast.
[00:05:37.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yes.
[00:05:37.740] – Jonathan Denwood
That becomes. Rather than helping them move on and build a real business becomes a burden in a way, becomes a albatross around their neck.
[00:05:50.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
What do you reckon about that bloated thing? One thing that’s very common with experts, with subject matter experts is you begin to take your knowledge level for granted and you forget where other people were when they started the journey. And so as a working example, I have a retail training product that teaches motorcycle dealerships how to increase their sales. Jonathan One of the number one courses that we have in our six course offering is how to use the phone as a successful sales tool. Because in today’s marketplace, people don’t know how to use the dang phone. And it sounds ridiculous. So from, from an expert’s position, someone in sales, someone that, someone that works in this industry, you know, power sports, it sounds ridiculous. And I’m going to have a course that teaches people how to answer the phone properly. But in practice, just think about your experience. If you call the car dealership to get an oil change, what are the chances that that person answering the phone answers it in a way that you, as a, as a customer, expects to be treated? It’s not frequent. And so a very basic course ends up being one of our most popular courses.
[00:07:02.950] – Kurt von Ahnen
And that’s what a lot of course creators miss. They want to be the person that brings, you know, the new version of the wheel to the market. They want, they want to be new and flashy and smart and make themselves look like they are the expert. But as an expert, you have to focus on basics as well. And a lot of times the basics is how you break the market and then you increase with your audience.
[00:07:26.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that’s a fantastic observation there, Kurt. So let’s go in to some of the basics. You know, I think obviously the written word is important, but I think because of the medium, because we’re talking about a course that’s digitally available, that it’s video, that apart from the written word, it’s video that’s the second biggest element. What’s your observations about utilizing video in courses and membership websites? Kurt?
[00:08:11.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, there, there’s two things. One, if it’s not done well, it can really lower the value of your product, and that’s bad audio. You know, distraction in the viewing areas, things like that. But done well, decent audio doesn’t have to be perfect, but decent audio, clear imagery, man, it just really brings it home. Even if you have the kind of content where you’re having, like, pardon me, almost a, almost an exact duplicate of what’s said on video and what’s said in print, it helps people to kind of track along with the reading while you’re talking in the video. It just really helps with content retention and student engagement. I think video is a linchpin if done well.
[00:09:05.600] – Jonathan Denwood
I also think it be can also become a enormous Albatross a secondary. Got a lot of albatrosses flying around, don’t we there? They normally don’t fly impaired, I think occasionally. All right. But I found, I found it can become enormous albatross. People, they, they spend too much money or they spend too much time on getting it perfect and they need to get the fundamentals right. Or funny enough, audio is so important when it comes to video. It’s counter into intuitive. But if you haven’t got decent audio, nobody’s going to watch your video.
[00:09:53.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
And I want to break in for just a sec. I mean I literally just consulted with a customer this week who is, wants to make a 12 week training program, have it launched by February. And they want to use scorm built in articulate storyline. And I’m like okay, I’m tracking you, I’m tracking you. And then she says but I really don’t have the facility for making the videos. I don’t have the studio and the space and the lights and the camera. And I’m like whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, slow down. I understand this is a corporate project, but you don’t have to have all that to make to get a product good enough to launch. You don’t need all that. If it was so popular and so good that six months later you wanted to come up with budget and remake some videos in a studio, you could. But get something done done is better than perfect.
[00:10:45.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, no, especially with you. Basically you’re just going to need a screen sharing functionality, a good mic and most training videos. Depending on the subject, either you’re going to be utilizing graphics or you’re going to be sharing your screen. The idea that you really need a topic, professional studio, I’m not really following that, but I hear it really regular when it comes to the actual lengths of videos. I suppose it’s dependent on the subject and the particular topic, but I do think I, I think there’s. If you go above a certain length of video and, and also the amount of different. And I’m terrible at this because as people have observed if they’re regular listeners to this podcast, I can put about five different concepts in one sentence and I think that’s pragmatic when you’re in training videos because really one concept for each video. And have you found this as there’s a sweet length, you know, a time limp or am I. Or is that really totally dependent on the cons? And I, I think there’s certain, certain ideas and concepts that are well suited for video. But I do think there’s more complex where you need, it needs a lot of thought and you need.
[00:12:24.150] – Jonathan Denwood
And it becomes a bit more trickier. What, what’s your thoughts around this?
[00:12:28.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think there’s a ton of research out there, Jonathan, and I think there’s a lot of people trying to portray themselves as smarter than they are on this topic. There’s a resounding thought that microlearning is the only way to go. And that microlearning is where we break things into small chunks, small pieces, three to five minutes each, each broken into separate lessons, separate videos. And the ideology there is, we have dumbed down students and society so much that like social media hits. Like someone liked my post, It’s a dopamine hit. It’s a dopamine hit to finish a lesson, right? So it’s like I completed one, I go to the next one, I completed one, I go to the next one. And that dopamine hit gives them the, that chemical drive to get to the next lesson, the next lesson, the next lesson. But every time I catch myself really focusing on from a microlearning chunking perspective, I drive back to products like the Joe Rogan podcast at three hours an episode. And I said, wait a minute, people do have an appetite for long form content as long as they have interest or they’re driven in that piece of content.
[00:13:35.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
So to your point, I think content has a lot to do with it. And I think as long as the topic can be focused on and not, you know, waffled about and hit five different things, as long as the topic has focus, I believe it can drive for, you know, 45 minutes is kind of like, I don’t like to really go over 45 or 50 minutes in a single lesson, but I don’t really hold myself to the 10 minute ideology unless the subject matter kind of dictates shorter micro chunking subjects.
[00:14:06.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that’s fantastic. I personally think there’s two drivers around the micro learning train, but I, I want to point out I think microlearning is totally appropriate in the right circumstance. I’m not bashing the whole concept, but I think it’s become also a bit of a train and a bit of a cliche. And I think it’s driven by two factors. Number one factor is the rise of mobile devices, especially smart mobile phones, to some extent tablets, but mostly driven by mobile phones. And because micro learning is very a medium that is naturally aligned to being consumed on mobile devices, it’s self serving in a way. And secondly, I think when you delve into this folks, if you ever do into the whole science of learning. I’m no expert on it, but I’ve done a bit of a dive on it over the years. And there is a lot of pseudoscience in the science of learning. We have models, we do have some credible statistical and using brain scans and other techniques, and we have got some models that most of science or scientists involved in the science of learning agree to. But there’s also a enormous, and I mean a enormous degree of papers, books, information that’s based on pseudoscience around the learning area.
[00:16:13.610] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s just it. When you delve into some of the most popular concepts around learning and then you find out the actual science that was the basis of these movements and that you just start to cry because it’s pretty grim stuff, folks.
[00:16:38.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
You know, they just said Fruit loops were healthier than steak and eggs last year. So I don’t believe a lot of science that comes out.
[00:16:44.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I believe in the principles of enlightenment and science and that and facts and statistics. I, I don’t. That’s my bread and butter. I have. There’s another side of me that’s more wacko, more spiritual, more religious, but I treat that as philosophy, which I equally think is important. But I believe in the real world of real facts, real statistics, real, real enlightenment principles, not basic. Basing my basic concept of the world based on magic, that’s problematic. And people that do that are problematic. For me, they’ve got every right. If they want to base their knowledge on magic, that’s their business. But I have a problem with that. So that’s enough of mine dribble. Let’s go on to the next thing. Yep, we’ve got enough for 10 minutes before we go for our break, folks. This is Finn that I think a lot of people don’t, don’t utilize. And I think it can be really great. And you can also use it as lead magnets as well. It’s workbooks and action plans. What’s your thoughts over this?
[00:18:11.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have a lot of painful discussions over the workbook topic because I don’t know what’s going on in this, especially this last 60 days. Workbooks seem to be the coveted thing, right? So there’s a couple of third party applications out there that actually let you make a formatted workbook with fillable lines and it’s online and it’s a subscription account. Each user has their own thing and there’s a place for that. There is, however, there are in the terms of running a learning management system or a membership site. There are plenty of ways to use a fillable PDF worksheet. There are ways to use the assignment function in your LMS to get people to submit something or write something or you know, submit a short video. There are like for action plans, there’s ways to use assignments and quizzes to like drive survey results through your students. So there’s ways to do these things. But when you say I want to have a 75 page workbook that I give to all of my students, that, this, that and the other thing, for something you’re trying to teach online, you are splitting the attention of your student between two mediums and you run the risk of really inhibiting their ability to succeed.
[00:19:30.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
And remember course completion. So course sales is like your number one concern. You want to drive revenue after course sales. Course completion gets to be the next big thing. And if you create too many obstacles to completion, you interfere with your own level of success.
[00:19:47.720] – Jonathan Denwood
I think you. Well put that. I think it’s driven. The enthusiasm for this is understandable and I agree with it. But it’s also driven by AI because there’s some AI platforms and some of the leading SAS learning management systems that have introduced this as well. And it’s like all. It’s like the trend around gamification. It was I in the right circumstance, in the right membership model. It’s a great thing, gamification. It’s a bit like what I said about video being driven to some extent by mobile game authorization was. And there is a great. In the right course, in the right circumstance. But it was totally abused. It was utterly abused as a concept game of versation. In the end I became sick and tired of hearing about it in the E learning space because it was, it was totally abused. Would you agree about that?
[00:21:06.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
I struggle with that topic, Jonathan, because I never understood gamification. I thought that was the dumbest thing you could possibly do.
[00:21:13.430] – Jonathan Denwood
And then I’ll share your strong views.
[00:21:16.210] – Kurt von Ahnen
I was really against it. I thought, what a pain in the butt. I gotta build it, I gotta track it. I make these people jump through hoops. But here’s what happened. I ran Ducati North America’s training program and someone said, you should gamify this, you should gamify. I said, that’s stupid. I’m not going to do that. And then finally I said, okay, if you complete this course, you get to be a Ducati monster. If you complete this course, you get to be a Ducati street fighter. And if you complete all the courses you get to be a Ducati Panigale. Right.
[00:21:41.900] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll do the course just, just to get a title.
[00:21:45.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
It was a. It was a stupid little picture of a motorcycle with the title Ducati Panagali next to your username.
[00:21:53.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, definitely. I’ll do the whole course for that.
[00:21:55.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
The completion rate and the consumption of the courses went through the roof. Everybody loved it when I did the live in person trainings, the practicums to make sure I could search this one.
[00:22:05.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Did you ever.
[00:22:05.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
I didn’t dress as one. No. But they would come to class and be like, I’m a Panigale. And I’m like, this is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. But that, that was my real life example.
[00:22:18.340] – Jonathan Denwood
So American folks. I’m English.
[00:22:20.830] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. This, it was my real life example of sometimes. Sometimes the things that you feel as a creator are completely off base. And that’s why it’s so important to get the feedback from your users.
[00:22:34.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s what, that’s the other principle that before we go for a break, I kind of push in this podcast is don’t build your warm piece. Because some of the, some of the things you think are gospel, that you think that the students are going to love, they don’t care damn about. And the things that you think they won’t rave about, they go potty. And I’ve learned that in building my online businesses, the things that I think my customers are going to really want, they’re not. They totally indifferent to it. It doesn’t. And then the things that I think they are not going to really rave about, they are really important to them. So you really. And the example you just made is a superb one of them, isn’t it?
[00:23:23.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, it’s. It’s like buying your toddlers amazing Christmas presents and when they unwrap them, they just play with the boxes.
[00:23:30.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it? Or a dog, you know, or pets. Yeah. Buy them a really expensive pet toy and they’re indifferent. And then some crummy elephant. They’re fascinated by it.
[00:23:44.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, you suck.
[00:23:47.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, maybe not that, but there we go. Don’t go that personal. So we’re gonna go for our break, folks. Got a ton of stuff. Hopefully we get through the list a little bit quicker. We might not get through it all. We just have to see. But I think we’ve covered some great stuff in this first half and get. Hopefully giving you some great signposts and things to think about. I think we’ve achieved that. We’re going to go for Our break, folks. And we will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast of knowledge around content in the first half. Before we go into the second half of this show, I just want to point out we’ve got a great free resource for you. The person looking to build their membership community website in the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. And that’s the membership machine Facebook group. It’s totally free. It’s a mixture of WordPress junkies and people like you trying to build a membership website. Why don’t you go over to Facebook, put in the membership machine Facebook group and you’ll find us and join for free.
[00:25:02.660] – Jonathan Denwood
You find it a great resource. So live webinars, that’s live webinars groups. They are two, you know, they, they’re kind of two different beasts. But there’s a lot also in my mind, I just want to see if you what your own thoughts on this. There’s a lot of cross fertilization between groups, group coaching, group discussion and webinar. There’s a lot of cross fertilization and it can really offer, especially if you have a basic level and then you grow the course out and you have different levels of membership with more group, some individual coaching, mentorship, whatever terms that you want to utilize. And there’s a lot, a lot of. Once again, I’m going to my third time cross fertilization here. What’s your own faults?
[00:26:10.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, for me, in today’s tech world, there’s no replacement for virtual live meetings. There’s no replacement. The engagement, the, the personal touch. I mean, short of driving to somebody’s office and shaking their hand over a conference table, you’re not going to do much better than hopping on one of these products like Streamyard, Zoom, Jitsi, all these things we’re going to mention. I will say that I consider there to be three levels of video interaction with students and clients. The first one is the webinar. The next level up would be the group sessions, like the masterminds, right, for group coaching. And then the highest level is the one on one live coaching because each one is dependent upon a different level of your personal involvement and brain power. So a webinar, you’re in control of it and they’re just an audience. The masterminds, the group conversations where everyone’s on the same screen. That’s peer to peer training. But you’re exhausting yourself because you’re moderating that training and Guiding the conversation. That’s a lot of work. And then the last thing, the one on one coaching, well, that’s. You’re giving all of your energy, all of your abilities to one person at a time.
[00:27:25.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
So that’s. That to me is the highest level of video induced communication.
[00:27:31.660] – Jonathan Denwood
And it might have been the last week or the week before that. It’s all merging into one week basically, folks. But we did a dive about the technology around this. You know, we discussed zoom, where, whereby. And discord. Well, discord is a strange thing because. Yeah, and jitsu, they’re kind of for. Discord is a kind of community. But you can use it for group discussion as well. But I think it was last week or the week before that we did a dive. So have a look at some of our previous discussions, folks, if this is your first sample of the membership machine show, because like I say, we did a big dive into that. Case studies, what’s your thought? I think people can learn about and learn a lot. So like they’re like mini biographies, aren’t they? Case studies people. People can learn a lot from a case study, can’t they?
[00:28:40.250] – Kurt von Ahnen
I look at case studies from a different perspective. Can we learn? Absolutely, we can learn. But to me, there’s the gift of third party edification that comes with a case study. So if I’m the course creator and I’m constantly beating my drum about how important X, Y and Z is to find success as my student, I can only say that so many times in so many ways before I sound like all I’m doing is putting the spotlight on myself. But if I put the spotlight on a successful client, on a successful user or student through a case study, it’s that third party edification. That person’s success is a mirror of what the program creates. And it adds such a deeper dimension to commitment and, you know, proof of concept.
[00:29:28.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s huge.
[00:29:29.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s huge.
[00:29:31.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:29:32.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
And I’m gonna go on record, I’m gonna add to this again. I’m gonna go. I’m gonna use a big number. 90% of the clients that I have are too scared and too timid and too everything else to ask previous successful clients for testimonials and case study information. You could have the best successes in the world, but if you don’t share those successes with others, nobody knows about it. And it’s actually helping the other. It’s helping the subject of the case study grow, whatever they’re growing to share their successes anyway.
[00:30:05.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Fantastic. I’ve put down con concepts from existing content. Actually worded that incorrectly. Really what I really meant to ask you is got any insights about using, you know, most people, not always a lot of people got existing content and it’s utilizing in the best way or not. Normally not. They don’t. That’s why they act. They’re best to hire WP Tonic or hire yourself. Got any, Got any insights about the woes of you or the opportunities of using existing content for your membership course?
[00:30:53.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think if you and I are going to be transparent in this show and really tell people what it’s like, I think you and I are both kind of experiencing a little of this right now.
[00:31:02.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Jonathan, yeah, he’s doing a big job at WP Tonic and we get in there, but it’s been a bit of over time.
[00:31:12.290] – Kurt von Ahnen
So much content, so many ideas, so much information is shared and we work ourselves to death trying to come up with the new information or the new take. And a lot of this content is 2 years old in the back of our posts. And so recycling, repurposing existing content is a huge tool, but it’s also a huge lift. My personal site is more than 15 years old now and I have hundreds of blog posts and I just very recently, maybe inspired by some of the work at Lifter and some of the work with WP Tonic, said, hey, I should probably look at some of these old posts and see what’s valuable in here. And then you go, oh my goodness. Or you listen to an old video that you made, you know, two, three years ago, and you go, how come I didn’t share this 50 more times? There is an unbelievable amount of content that you can recycle, repurpose and reuse. And it’s almost like you need to have another, you know, headcount around to help you with it because it can be a big project if you’ve been around for a while.
[00:32:17.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the science of image and infographics, it’s not. It looks pretty. It’s about how the human mind works, folks. And we absorb visual information. We can process visual information at a much higher rate than the written word. What I mean by that, you know, a concept, a complicated idea can be. That’s why cartoons, political cartoons or certain visual art can be so powerful because they get to the crux of a complicated political concept or, or a truth, a social truth, almost instantaneously. The power of a photograph can be enormously powerful. And you find that that’s what we’re talking about, infographics, when it comes to trying to get Concepts, knowledge to your students. Am I on. Do you think I’m on the right track here, Kurt?
[00:33:43.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree. I also warn people not to lean too heavy on it like a crowd.
[00:33:48.960] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s totally abused as well.
[00:33:50.570] – Kurt von Ahnen
Totally abused. You know, not every lesson needs its own infographic. You know, like in a. In a course with five or six lessons, you know, one infographic to cover those six lessons or six stair steps to success or however you envision your graphic is sufficient. So I tell people it’s. They’re awesome, you know, well done. They’re. They’re really awesome, but not to overuse it.
[00:34:15.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they’re going to be flogged to death because of AI, aren’t they?
[00:34:18.030] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Yeah, because it’s. It’s. It’s every. It’s everywhere. But really great tool. And the way that Jonathan described being able to make a lot of concepts really succinct into one image. Once something. Something visually that someone can identify with is super, super important. Your art, using all of somebody’s senses is. Is a really great way to make sure you bring home the learning and the retention.
[00:34:42.260] – Jonathan Denwood
It depends. It depends because. Because I’m not trying to be. It’s really a difficult area because until AI, you know, to hire a graphic person and then that person to work with you, there were people. Kurt, we got resources. Kurt’s got resources. Individuals that got the experience that might be able to produce a graph infographic. But it’s expensive. It’s expensive to hire those type of individuals with that experience and skill level. What hopefully AI might offer is. That depends on the AI, doesn’t it? It just depends. But there is also going to be a lot of junkyard there that’s going to produce a lot of junkie infographics.
[00:35:37.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
And as you’re speaking, there are probably a high percentage of people going, why don’t they just talk about Canva? Canva’s so easy. It’s the easy button. Canva is highly abused by mediocre artists. We’re putting out a ton of crud off of Canva. Just because they give you the template for the infographic doesn’t mean you’re the infographic expert. A lot of times what you’re putting out is really something.
[00:36:03.360] – Jonathan Denwood
I disagree. I know, exactly. And I do agree with the. I will push back a little bit because a lot of these people just didn’t have the money to hire.
[00:36:12.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah.
[00:36:13.270] – Jonathan Denwood
And if you saw the type of graphics that were being utilized before Canva became. It was a, in some ways, even worse situation. But they were never going to hire experience because they just don’t have the budget. So I mean the kind of middle ground. But I do see where you come. Because there’s also people that can afford to hire people or they utilizing it in they basically a graphic challenged. Basically folks, you still got to have eye for it to some level. Well, I say that it’s the same thing when it comes to utilizing website themes, starter themes. Basically you want to choose a theme and then change the colors and change maybe some imaging and maybe one or two layout. But you get people that are visually challenged, to say the least. They take a starter theme and then they hack away, hack away, hack away and they end up with a real dog because they’ve got no eye for it. You can’t hack away at one of these themes, folks. Well, you can a little bit, but that’s. But you really want to do the minimum and then get your business and then hire somebody that has got the eye for it and understands information before the fall fold calls for action.
[00:37:48.010] – Jonathan Denwood
Lead magnets, all the fins that are that around conversion that you probably don’t understand, but you don’t need to when you’re starting off. Anyway. I was waffling there a little bit, but I don’t think it was too bad, was it, Kurt? All right, on we go. Interviews. I put that on the list. What do you think? I think, yeah, people in the industry having a. Bringing them in, sharing their knowledge as part of a certain subscription level. I think that can be quite useful, can’t it?
[00:38:26.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think about my experience at my first Word camp and you know, I had had the Manana no Mas podcast for a few years, but I didn’t think anybody was listening. And then I’m walking through WordCamp and some lady goes, you’re the Manana no mask guy. And. And then you get to realize because I stopped and I had a conversation and then I talked to someone else that knew me from. From being on these screens. There is a very tangible value to doing interviews, sharing space with people, having conversations and displaying yourself as an intelligent, you know, communicative person. Absolutely.
[00:39:09.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s right. I think it can be really useful. Content archives. Yeah. Another really interesting concept. I think it encourages people to keep their membership renewed if they have access to library of content and info that’s pre. Not constantly up that well, I suppose. Constantly. Yeah. Constantly updated or periodically updated with new content. I think that can be a great reason for people to keep their membership going. What do you reckon?
[00:39:48.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree. I think of Content archives as being more like a library of existing. I think about all the content I’ve made with Manana no mas over 15 years and it’s a pretty impressive library of stuff. And so for certain members or certain people that participate at a high level, I give them access to, you know, kind of an archive of resources and there’s a lot of value in that. People see like, oh my, you know, I might not take every new course that the guy makes, but he’s got this library of stuff that I can refer to and there’s value in that.
[00:40:26.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Community. Community Forum a bit like gamer I It’s a powerful tool. It’s build. Could build it Community building community online. It’s. It’s gonna be in the next two years, in the next couple of years. It’s already the catchphrase of membership really. It’s taken the spot, the space of gamification and just like game of gamer vision, there’s a lot to it. But it’s also going to be brutally abused, I believe already is in some ways. So what’s your feelings and the things that you want to put in front of the our listeners and viewers around Community Forum and community in general?
[00:41:17.550] – Kurt von Ahnen
Kurt, this is a hard one to be honest with because creating Community is a big product for WP Tonic, right? It’s part of the hosting package.
[00:41:26.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, it’s really, it’s really important. But people, it is really important. They just don’t understand what they’re getting involved with, do they?
[00:41:33.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
I, I personally think when I talk to my clients, I have real, real life conversations and I say community last, community last. Get your content done. Do you have any paying customers? Do you have any paying members yet? Have you begun to create any reven you have any momentum? Because if you launch community with no members, no momentum and no revenue, you’ve created yourself a lot of extra work and moderation and maintenance and promotion for something that may not get traction. I always say that if you create community too early, and we’ve said this on earlier shows, so I don’t think I’m competing with an earlier message. But if you create the, the community too early in your project, it’s like having a really cool nightclub where no one shows up to dance. Like there’s, you know, when you go to a nightclub to have a couple of drinks with your friends and you walk in and that club sucks. And you know when you walk into a club and you go, this place is popping. And I think there’s a certain energy that comes from a website that has traffic and has use and then when you have that energy, you launch the community as a new feature and then you’ve got something you can really run with.
[00:42:45.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
So I think timing is really important with community. How you launch it and then how you maintain it and moderate it. Jonathan did mention extra work and running a community in addition to learning and e commerce and social media planning and all these things. When you add community it’s not just one extra task on the list. It’s like doubling all the tasks on your list. There’s a lot to running one.
[00:43:10.390] – Jonathan Denwood
I understand why they are attractive why people are so attracted to this because it. It seems to solve a lot of problems. They think it will become. They get everything back to front folks.
[00:43:23.480] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah.
[00:43:24.650] – Jonathan Denwood
They think it’s a reason why people will join the membership. No where community is it reduces churn. That’s where why community. But it will. But it is something you want my opinion folks, if unless you’ve got a community on some platform that is really engaged in your content to a very high level, you are wasting your time going down this path big ways and it will result in probably your membership failing to some extent and you getting very discounted very quickly. But it can be if done in the right way. But it cannot be the re the main reason why people sign up for your membership. There’s example in the WordPress space there’s a. There’s a gentleman called Kevin Carly Keeley called Kevin. Kevin.
[00:44:38.030] – Kurt von Ahnen
Kevin Geary.
[00:44:38.910] – Jonathan Denwood
Geary. Sorry. Yeah, I mean Kevin Geary. He has a tremendous community. I am empress but I’ve utilized podcasting. The problem with podcasting is you don’t get a lot of feedback. We love by the way, I love to get feedback from you folks. You can go to the WP Tonic YouTube channel or you can outreach join the Facebook group. That’s a great way for you to give us feedback. I love you to join the Facebook group, but podcasting. I love podcasting but the problem is it’s very hard for people to leave comments on an audio podcast. Right. But he’s built a really fantastic community. But he started off developing two fantastic digital products SaaS products for his target community and he also did a lot of education about how to utilize those products in the best way and offered a tremendous load of free high quality YouTube and other content around the area of web design development with emphasis utilizing his tools and built up a community that way. And now his community is rabied about him. I. I know no individual. There’s only one or Two people, Paul from WP Tuts, Adam from WP Crafter, that have more.
[00:46:27.720] – Jonathan Denwood
More rabid followers. But if he just had started a community there, nobody would have been interested. Nobody would have known about him. Nobody would have cared. Can you see where I’m coming from, Kurt?
[00:46:43.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, yeah, Abs.
[00:46:44.210] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s.
[00:46:44.450] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s that momentum that, that energy that comes with it. It’s an intangible that makes itself tangible.
[00:46:50.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Right.
[00:46:51.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
Because it’s in the results.
[00:46:55.200] – Jonathan Denwood
On we go. Exclusive downloads. What do you reckon about this one?
[00:47:02.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m off the reservation on this one a little bit. Jonathan. Some people listen to experts, like a Gary Vaynerchuk kind of person that’s going to say, give away your best stuff for free. Just give it away and they’ll realize their value and pay you all the money anyway. And I’m like, okay, that sounds counterintuitive, but you know, that guy’s making a bazillion dollars with that message. There’s a lot for me in like, okay, exclusive downloads. So your level of exclusivity is completely up to you in your project. It’s very use case specific. So is it just for paying members? Is it for people to exchange an email address to get a free white paper to be marketed to later? When we say exclusive downloads. Exclusive, that exclusivity is a very flexible term and I think implementation. So that, that’s up to a consult with your web person or your marketing, you know, provider or consultant, and see what works best for you. But there’s a lot that you can leverage through offering people exclusivity and content.
[00:48:10.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. How we’re doing for time. Let’s. I’m gonna jump. There’s some overlap with some of the points I’ve got on my list, but let’s go to podcasting. What’s your. What’s your views around podcasting? Around membership and community and blah, blah, blah.
[00:48:31.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
You know, as I said earlier about that WordCamp experience, I had really thought my podcast was failing and then started to run into people. And it happened at a motorcycle dealership. I was meeting with the general manager and the owner called on the speaker phone and he said, oh, is that. Is that guy from. I was working for another company at the time. He goes, is that guy from so and so there? And he goes, oh, yeah, Kurt Von Ahen’s here. He’s in the office with me right now. He’s on speakerphone. And the owner of the dealership goes, is that the Manana? No, mosque. Which I, you know, again, I’m like, this is shocking. And the guy says, I’ve been listening to him for three years. Whatever he recommends, we’ll write the check. Don’t worry about it. And that sales call was over. It was like, we’re done. We sold the training. We sold the. We sold everything we needed to do based on the confidence they had in my abilities, based on the information I had shared through the show. So I think that podcasting I almost turned it off. And then I hosted through anchor and Spotify and.
[00:49:28.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
And Spotify sent me an email two years ago that said, your listenership is up 300%. Congratulations. And I thought, well, if people are actually listen, I can’t turn this off now. I got to keep going. So I use it. I struggle and make. This is a weakness for me. Maybe it is for you too. I don’t know, Jonathan, but I struggle with weaknesses. I really struggle with what is it really doing because it gets distributed to so many different channels. And then I don’t see numbers that are very impress impressive. I don’t see a lot of listeners. I don’t see a lot of revenue share. I don’t see things that, you know, you would think would be signs of success. But then when I am marketing myself or networking or doing things, people bring it up. So then I’m like, it must be doing better than the numbers. Tell me it is because I’m constantly seeing real life examples of it creating notoriety. I think it’s a really good tool.
[00:50:23.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Being invisible in 204 and 205 in any shape or form, professionally or definitely trying to build a membership business ain’t gonna work out for you. Be the invisible expert isn’t a strategy folk. I’m sorry, we’re all. I forgot the name of the art. The American artist that said we’re all going to be stars for 15 minutes now. Walpo, I think it was all Poe. They said we’re all. And he was right. We’re all gonna have our fame for 15 minutes. But being invisible online, folks, and then deciding to start a membership business isn’t a great concept, folks. You can still get success. Depends what you mean by success. Because we’ve also done a show a couple of weeks ago where we. I got my math wrong because it was early and I hadn’t had my four cups of coffee. Kirk started scratching the pointed out my math wasn’t well. But you where I think where the real especially people starting on this journey where the real Goldilocks area is the 497 for your course, I think if you get any exposure going on other podcasts, going on other people, you know, forums, Reddit, anywhere, and you got the right verbiage and your clearly identified a pain point, anodyne, aspirin, a relief point, and your verbiage on your landing page and you got a course for 4.$97. There’s a good chance people gonna buy it.
[00:52:37.920] – Jonathan Denwood
And when you look at the math, you don’t need a was amount of cells to gather a sizable amount of money to help you invest into the next stage of your business into, into maybe utilizing paid advertisement, which is the gasoline on the bonfire. And a lot of people, what I hate about this industry, folks, are these vultures that are preying on people saying that you can start a course and people gonna pay you $5,997 or you’re gonna sell a course for $197 straight away. It ain’t gonna happen, folks, it’s garbage. But you probably can from the beginning sell somebody something for 497 and you don’t need thousands of people to get enough resources. So you can then in the next course sell something for two 1997 or $4,997. Right. But that’s. I hate these vultures. Kurt with a passion.
[00:54:01.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, a lot of what you’re talking about with pricing strategy doubles back. It folds over the conversation earlier in the show about, you know, the coaching, live session opportunities. So when we repurpose a course, if someone wants to sign up and take a course on one of my properties with no coaching, no training, just access to the static course material, you know, that might be the 497 exam. And then, you know, the, the, the 997 example is going to be get access to our monthly webinar. And then the 1597 example is going to be join the mastermind group, you know, group peer training example. And it’s still the same static content. And then, you know, when you get into that 39.95 thing, you know, four, $4,000, $5,000, that’s one on one concentrated coaching, you know, with the creator and that same static course material. Because the magic’s in the coaching.
[00:55:03.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you made a fantastic point there. And there are so many opportunities, and there are some influences out there, well-known ones that are taking people to the cleaners. But we’re all adults; we can judge who we’re going to allow in our minds and hearts, and we’re all adults, and we’ve got to take responsibility. Hopefully, the people this podcast is growing are all adults. The audience has grown quite considerably. So I think with Kurt Selp and Milo Regular Haroon and some of the guests I’ve had in the show, we’re building a reputation of giving great advice and insights and being honest with the audience because there are enormous opportunities here. Online education is only going to grow and grow. We can grow, but unfortunately, there’s a subject sector of the market, and they are just vultures. So. But don’t forget there are tremendous opportunities, folks. So, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to learn more about you, your faults, and what you’re up to?
[00:56:31.950] – Kurt von Ahnen
Business-wise, anything Manana Nomas leads back to us mananas.com Manana Nomas on X Manana Nomas on Facebook. But if it’s a personal connection you want to make, jump onto LinkedIn. I’m the only curtain on LinkedIn. I’m easy to find. Connect with me, and we’ll have a conversation.
[00:56:49.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you offer any website resources that give general advice about starting a membership website you want to promote, Kurt?
[00:57:01.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
We have a course about migrating enterprise score-level packages toward the press. That’s a big one because we save companies a ton of money moving their content. But we also have how to grow your LinkedIn audience. You know how to market yourself on LinkedIn. We have learned how to build a WordPress site more from scratch in our WordPress tips and tricks section. But I don’t think it measures up to the course that’s on your own.
[00:57:30.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Site with WP Tonic because of partnership with.
[00:57:33.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that course that we have on WP-Tonic, Jonathan, is perfect for people in your hosting environment because we focused on what WP-Tonic offers in the hosting package, and that’s an ideal jumpstart.
[00:57:46.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but I’d point out you don’t have to host with WP-Tonic to get value from that course. Folks, what we’ve done is at WP-Tonic. We offer great hosting, but we also provide all the leading tools. But you can buy these tools independently if you want to. But what we’ve done with Kirk, and he’s done a great course with us, is we’ve shown you the modern way to build a WordPress membership website and all the leading tools in one place, so you don’t have to waste a ton of time. WordPress is a fantastic medium for building a membership course that gives you maximum business ownership in 2024 and 2025. Digital ownership is essential when investing time and energy in an online business. So, it gives you the maximum ownership flexibility. You won’t want to build something and be unable to do it on a SaaS platform. It’s a fantastic platform to create something, but the problem is you’ve got many choices, which can cause remarkable confusion. But in this course, we show you clearly the best tools and methods to build a membership course from beginning to end.
[00:59:11.540] – Jonathan Denwood
And it’s a fantastic resource. You can find that by going to wptonic.com deals, and you will find all a discount code for that course. What more could you ask for? We’re going to end the show this week. We were back next week with a great subject. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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