If you had to ask us what one common thread we see across every single one of the most successful shows across the Castos platform it would be Community.
Podcasts do not live in a bubble, they are an avenue for connecting people and deepening relationships.
And there is no better way to do this than to build a network of people with similar interests, passions (and fears) in a community of your own.
But let’s be honest: building a community around your podcast brand is challenging.
It takes not only a bit of tech setup but also a lot of activity and intentionality to foster the kind of engagement you want your podcast brand to be associated with.
When it comes to community one of the most popular approaches is to allow your audience to opt into a membership-style platform of some sort. When a member of your audience signs up for your community they are raising their hands and say “I want more of what you’re putting out into the world”.
This can be as simple as just signing up for a free membership tier, or opting into a paid subscription membership level that offers extended benefits to those audience members.
How to Choose a Membership Tool for Your Website
We’re big tech geeks here at Castos, so we can’t talk about this process without talking about tools a bit.
But first, here there is a big decision that needs to happen before all the others. Will your membership platform be a part of your website or a separate, standalone platform?
Maybe you don’t have a dedicated podcast website for your show, or maybe you just don’t want the membership area to be a part of that website. In these cases, you’d want to create your membership community platform in a separate tool. Some options here would be things like MightyNetworks, Circle, or Podia.
If you’re looking to directly integrate your membership area into your website, then a tool like MemberPress may be a great choice for you.
This website is run on WordPress, and it’s THE industry-leading content management system for a reason. It’s so infinitely customizable and extensible through the community of 3rd party developers, plugins, and themes.
We believe that if you have a more comprehensive brand around your podcast then you should have a dedicated website for your show. This is where you can include all of the functionality you want to deliver to your audience. And that means you should probably use a tool like WordPress for your podcast website.
What is MemberPress?
MemberPress is an industry-leading membership plugin for WordPress. It allows WordPress site owners to easily create either free or paid membership tiers. And within these membership levels, they can offer exclusive content to just those members.
You can deliver a lot of different types of content with MemberPress as well. Just a few include:
- Digital Downloads
- Online Courses
- Corporate or Community Forums
- Integrations with other community tools like Discord and Facebook Groups
With MemberPress, you can connect to the checkout platform of your choice, like Stripe or Paypal, and accept payments in several different currencies.
With these varying membership levels, you can set customized access privileges for members. On higher tiers, someone might have access to all of your content whereas on lower (or free) tiers they may only have access to some additional content.
How Much Does MemberPress Cost?
While many tools within the WordPress ecosystem are free or have free tiers MemberPress is a bit different.
It is only a paid product. MemberPress has a few different pricing tiers depending on what options you need out of the plugin. Prices start from $359/year to $799/year, but there are often sales they run (such as the one as of the writing of this article) which take 30-50% off that list price.
Deliver Exclusive Content To Your Best Fans
Private Podcasting is the future of audio. Share behind the scenes access, connect to your membership site or online course, or directly sell access to your podcast content.
Castos Integration With MemberPress
So at this point you may be convinced that a membership aspect of your brand is something that would be good to add to your podcast. And that enabling this type of community will do wonders for your show’s success.
But how you manage the process of adding and removing new members to your site with MemberPress to a private podcast in Castos?
This is exactly what the integration between Castos and MemberPress does.
You can set up logic such that when a new member is added at membership levels that you define, those members are automagically added to Castos as private subscribers for a private podcast on the platform.
Conversely, when someone leaves your membership area they are removed as private subscribers from your private podcast in Castos.
All on autopilot, all completely done for you. No worry about matching up lists of members on different tiers. Castos and its Seriously Simple Podcasting will talk directly to MemberPress and manage the entire subscriber management process for you.
Enabling Private Podcasting And Connecting Your Castos Account
To connect MemberPress to your Castos account is just a few clicks and you will have automated the entire process of managing private podcast subscribers. Matt from our team walks through the entire process in this video:
Here are the steps to connect your WordPress site with Seriously Simple Podcasting to MemberPress to automate the process of automatically adding and removing members as private subscribers to a private podcast in Castos.
- Connect your WordPress site to Castos with the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin
- Create a membership level in MemberPress
- Create a new podcast in WordPress
- Make that podcast private in Castos
- Match up the membership level in MemberPress that you want to have access to this new private podcast in Castos
That’s it. Just a few steps to set up the membership side of your WordPress site with MemberPress, create a new private podcast that will be only for your members, and connect the two.
Now anytime someone signs up to be a member at those membership levels that you’ve defined they’ll automatically be added to your private podcast in Castos.
