My number one favorite way to get members participating in a community but does not involve anything boring like homework is to create a membership challenge. After you teach your members something, simply give them an easy 4-step task to complete that includes a deadline and let them do and report back on when it is completed. It might take a little bit of training at first, but once a few of your members start completing the challenges over and over, the social proof factor will kick in and you will have more testimonials, then you will know what to do with.
So, how do we set up this challenge? It’s very easy. Create in your blog post a new membership area that directly relates to what you just taught them and ask them four questions that will help them complete this task. For example, let’s say you’re teaching a class on how to get joint ventures. Your challenge post would explain to them why they’re going to get joint ventures and then ask them to answer a few questions. The questions you could ask could be for example, “Name the four people you’re going to contact.” That’s question one. And then question two could be, “Tell me the exact offer you’re going to offer them.” For example, you could tell them to do an ad swap, you could do a joint webinar together, you could do a guess blog post – that could be just choose one of the three things. Then answer number three could then be, “What time and date will this be done by.” And then at the end, say before a certain deadline. So for example, “Before June 1st at 4:30 p.m.” Then ask people to simply leave a comment under that post answering the three questions.
If you’re having trouble getting people to fill out the challenge, follow up with them. Keep mailing about it and even, impose a deadline where they have to answer the challenge within 48 hours. After 48 hours, disable comments on that particular post, so they can only participate by posting their intentions first. This has the weird commitment and consistency effect of making them follow through and actually complete what they have promised. After they have promised that and completed the task, and most of them will, you now have a set of easy testimonials. You now have some reviews you’re going to add to your sales letter. You’ll also have some measurable results you can show the person how they progress from the beginning of your course to the end, you can measure their progress along the way, and after the course is completed, you have a very simple before and after picture for that particular person.
If you have trouble getting people to participate, there’s a very simple solution – offer them some kind of a bribe. Purchase re-sell rights, make a bonus video, or hold a live Q&A call and only make that available in a protected post that a certain level, for example challenge one, can access. Then if your members complete the challenge, add them to that challenge one membership level and they can view the reward post. However, after a few of the challenges, it turns out you don’t even have to bribe your users, they will just do it out of habit.
So, when you’re putting together some kind of a training course, strongly consider having a membership challenge instead of homework. It’s a great way to make your people take action on what you teach immediately and you can measure the results and they’ll give you some case studies to use when marketing your site.
Now, here’s your challenge. Find out exactly how to set up your own membership site with built-in challenges. Go ahead and do it right now.