Why are members good for growing my site?

Joe — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:43:00 +0100

Members are people that have a relationship with your site, including their own login. They are users who have taken the step from being a visitor to signing up and creating their own account with you. Members can be advocates of your site and your services, along with helping you grow your site by telling other people about you (although they can also be detractors, so make sure you treat them nice!).

Your challenge is turning members into advocates. Members need to feel special and valued, so there should be good reasons why joining your site creates additional benefits for them. This might be access to members-only pages containing unique content, editing privileges allowing members to edit part of your site or being able to join in on certain discussions. It might be regular newsletters that offer them interesting or useful information on the same subject as your site.

To turn members into advocates you need to excite them and arm them with useful information. For most websites that do this well it will be about their content or services. If your site can offer them something they cannot get elsewhere, they will tell others about it. Remember you cannot force people to be advocates and trying too hard may annoy or alienate your members.

The simple rules are:

Focus on content and give your members things that they cannot get elsewhere
Make sure there is something extra for members, e.g. members-only content, discounts or communities
Communicate with your members via newsletters, Facebook/Twitter, etc.
Listen to them and give them a forum for their feedback. This helps them feel valued.

Some Moonfruit sites have already created large and successful membership bases, which support their site and business. Check out some of these.

http://extraicingonthecake.com/
1800+ members

http://extremekidrock.moonfruit.com
6500+ members

http://whitleybridge.moonfruit.com/
800+ members

http://simsgogogo.moonfruit.com/
2000+ members

Moonfruit Lounge - Facebook

Why are members good for growing my site?