How to Attract Guest Experts for Your Membership Content

Are you thinking about hosting Guest Experts on your membership site? Well, in our time and day, it’s challenging to attract traffic to even the highest quality content. While you’re definitely diligent about blogging, guest posting, and outreach emails, these efforts often feel routine and may sometimes even be ineffective for getting your course or membership website more visible.

But there is one promo tactic that particularly stands out – influencer marketing, sometimes referred to as authority or thought leader marketing. These people are the guest experts who can provide your membership site with a much-needed boost in visibility and engagement.

They bring high-quality expertise and credibility, enriching the content and experience for your members. Now, the dilemma is how to attract those experts to your site. We’re breaking that down in our killer tips for making an offer to guest experts!

Why Onboard Guests on Your Membership Website? 

• Exclusive High Value: With the help of experts, you provide a higher value to your members. This expert benefit is available exclusively for your paying members and thus, they feel gratified. You can even introduce guest content for a higher tier membership to make that specific membership tier aspirational and motivate upsells.
• Expert Advice: You might be an expert in the field. However, nobody knows it all. By collaborating with an expert, you get an opportunity to tap into their knowledge. It helps you fill the gaps in your awareness and provide a wholesome experience to your members. 
• Access to a Wider Audience: When you onboard a guest, even they would market their involvement with your membership. This brings in a wider audience market for you. People loyal to the guest might join the session or access the resource made with them. This is the perfect opportunity for you to show them how your membership is valuable and works within the same niche. It’s a new market that can be converted.
• Delegate Content Creation: With an increasing number of members, it gets tough to manage it all on your own. The demand for fresh content would keep rising and with other tasks, it’s going to be tough to put up with it. When you onboard a guest, some of the burden of creating content would be delegated. Thus, fresh content with lesser load. 

• Networking and Partnership: To sustain your membership for years, you must network and partner up with others in the industry. This would build your professional network for engaging and peer learning. It would also lay a foundation of helping each other that would in turn help you build a strong membership community. 

Understanding Experts’ Motivations

So what should you know about guest experts’ motivation? In other words, when can they say ‘yes’ to you?

Hack into the psychology of guest experts to better understand what offers might be really lucrative for them. These are the top things to remember.

• Recognition

Guest Experts look for opportunities that are genuine and do not tarnish their recognition. If they feel you have a genuine offer and a strong membership base, they will likely accept your offer. Quality has become of utmost importance to a lot of influencers and thus, they would expect that from you. Only then, you and the expert both can have positive recognition. 

• Networking

Create a stage where multiple guest experts can collaborate. Host a panel discussion, FAQ, or a debate that would spike interest in your experts. This will be an opportunity to network for them as well with other experts in the field. So, it’s hared for them to deny you. 

• Personal Branding

Guest experts need to create their backlink network. They need to establish their personal brand to strengthen their authority in the field. Reflect on how your membership site has good traffic and genuine members. Show them the benefit of amping up their personal brand by collaborating with you. 

Creating an Attractive Offer for Guest Experts

Well, knowing what triggers experts’ motivations, you should think of how to make your offer truly compelling, beneficial, and, of course, meet your needs. 

Offer Mutual Benefit Partnerships

Consider your membership platform a huge media resource with its own community and target audience.

Offer experts to promote their website or social media channels in exchange for their contribution as a tutor, webinar co-author, or article writer.

Here is what can also sound attractive to experts – in exchange for media coverage by your side.

• Offer to collaborate on webinars or ebooks.
• Propose co-authoring articles or blog posts on relevant topics.
• Offer them to write public feedback on your course or membership education and training program.

To increase your chances of success, it’s essential to understand their motivations and create an irresistible offer.

Suggest Content Creation Opportunities

For a deeper level of contribution and recognition of their experience in return, think of what methods can be particularly suitable to your current courses or membership.

Can you invite experts to record lessons or tutorials that can be added to your membership site or blog?

Do you have a lively blog, where experts can share their expertise on topics relevant to your membership community?

Promise them that their full bio and links to their website or social media will be prominently featured.

Here are a few content contribution ways you can think of:

• Contributor lessons
• Blog posts
• Live sessions
• Curated expert video course
• Guest podcast features
• Live case studies
• Interviews.

Help Them Become Thought Leaders through Event Participation

Give them a real chance to boost their visibility and authority.

Guest experts love gaining recognition by educating others. That’s why we highly recommend thinking of organizing events because experts are often drawn to opportunities like workshops, panel discussions, live sessions, and in-person coaching. These formats allow them to share their expertise and at the same time build their professional reputation.

Interactive events, in particular, are valuable because they create a shared experience for both the expert and your members.

Virtual or in-person gatherings, these events can give space for experts to engage directly with your community, positioning themselves as thought leaders and (what truly makes sense to them) helping others grow.

If applicable, offer them opportunities to participate in physical events or conferences. Highlight the networking possibilities that participating in your events can provide.

Create Dedicated Author/Expert Pages on Your Website

Well, who wouldn’t want a special page dedicated to their work and contributions to the industry? If your website has good traffic, highlight the numbers and suggest creating an exclusive page for the guest. Show how this will add to their portfolio and help them build a strong online presence. 

Give Them Data Access for Research Opportunities 

If you need more pragmatic ideas, we recommend offering access to your (non-sensitive) membership data for research purposes, for whatever studies they are working on.

In your offer, explain that your customer base represents a well-defined group of individuals interested in a specific niche or topic. Guest experts can use this data to gather valuable insights, conduct surveys, and test hypotheses that are directly relevant to their field of research. This can give them huge opportunities, including:

1. Firsthand information and tailored research.
2. The data gathered can be repurposed into papers, case studies, and articles.
3. More opportunities to create an image of a thought leader for themselves.

In return, you might ask for feedback, lessons, or one-to-one coaching within your membership.

Craft Brand Ambassador Programs for Them

Offer them to become your brand ambassador! That means offering to position the expert as a featured face of your membership site.

That can be implemented in various ways, from highlighting them on landing pages, in email marketing campaigns, and across social media channels, to allowing them to have personal courses or lessons on your website.

If they are looking for exclusive financial benefits, for any content they create or promote, offer a revenue-sharing arrangement, for example, profit-sharing on premium content like paid webinars or courses they host.

How to Prepare Before Reaching Out to Guests

• Do proper research on the guest. Their knowledge and quality are more important than their following. These guests usually take up opportunities that add value to the field. 
• Create a proposal template in advance. This can be customized and reused every time reaching out to a guest. 
• Showcase transparency in your offer and how you plan to reimburse them for their time and efforts. Better yet, ask them what they would expect in return to understand their expectations. 
• Do not just think about one blog, a single live-session, or a podcast. Think of how you can lay down a strong, long-term relationship with the expert. Think about how can this relation be mutually beneficial in the long run.  

Let’s Solidify Our Research: Why Attract Guest Experts to Your Membership Content?

We subscribe very strongly to the idea that the power of personality and influencer marketing can turn all your membership business in a whole new direction.

It’s especially effective in the context of online education and membership sites that provide quality content, and coaching. The personality, charisma, and expertise of a guest expert matter a lot.

Michael Bungay Stanier in his The Coaching Habit says “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” What if it’s time for you to pause your traditional membership promotion routines and try something absolutely new by sending offers to guest experts?

Find more tips in these articles:

• 9 Key Membership Metrics to Track for Business Growth
• How to Upsell Your New Courses to Existing Learners
• Why You Should Offer Multiple Tiers for Membership Site