[📕 Guide] Build and launch your Hub

 

🔖 Be sure to bookmark this guide to refer back to these instructions as you’re implementing this guide!

Guide Purpose

Looking to build your first Hub? Not even sure what a Hub is and how many you'll need? This guide will walk you through the basics of getting your first Hub up and running for your members.

➡️ Feel free to click on any link to dive deeper into what’s being mentioned.

How to build your first Hub

1. Activate and prepare your Membership.io account 
2. Upload your video and audio content into your Library
3. Organize your Content Library
4. Create your Hub and your Playlists
5. Finish designing and customizing your Hub
6. Finalize your payment process
7. Share your Hub with your members
8. Take it further

Part 1 - Activate and prepare your Membership.io account

Activate the right subscription to support your migration needs.

Before you dive in, you’ll need to make sure you have activated a paid subscription that matches your business needs. You can select from four subscription plans depending on what you need:

• Start Plan - $49 monthly or $490 annual
  Includes up to 50 hours of video/audio storage and 1 Hub.

• Grow Plan - $119 monthly or $1190 annual
  Includes up to 250 hours of video/audio storage and 3 Hubs.
• Scale Plan - $219 monthly or $2190 annual
  Includes up to 500 hours of video/audio storage and 10 Hubs.

• Enterprise Plan - starts at $5000 annual
  Unlimited hours of video/audio storage and unlimited Hubs.

Once your account has been activated, watch this quick account tour to get more familiar with the backend of Membership.io. You’ll be spending lots of time here, so we don’t recommend skipping this step.

Part 2 - Upload your video and audio content into your Library

Move any video or audio content into your Membership.io Library.

There are two ways to upload content into your Membership.io account. The process you’ll need to take to get your content into your account depends on where your content is currently hosted:

• Importing from a supported media application
  If you have existing video or audio content stored in a supported media application, you can bring your existing content into your Membership.io account in a few simple clicks by connecting your media application(s) to your Membership account. You will connect your App in the Apps tab and control which files you import in the Library tab.
  
• Uploading content from other sources and your computer
  If your content is not stored on a supported media application, you can upload it from your content. If your content isn’t currently on your computer, you’ll want to download your files from your current video hosting platform so that it lives on your computer. From there, your files can be uploaded into Membership.io from your computer.

📂 Content uploaded will be sorted in Folders. Folders are used to help you internally sort and manage your files. Content imported from a supported media source will appear in Folders created by your media app. Your members will not see your Folders. We recommend sorting your content into folders based on the type of deliverable or content type each file belongs to.

Each file will be placed in a maximum of one Folder.

See our image on the right for an example of how you could organize your Folders in your Library.

You can also see that we've numbered our Folders to bypass the alphabetical naming convention that is normally used to sort Folders.

You can create as many Folders as you need to keep your content organized. 👍 

 

Part 3 - Organize your Content Library

Upload thumbnails, adjust descriptions and attach supporting documents and resources.

Creating and maintaining a centralized content library is one of the easiest ways to take total control of your existing and future content. 💪

Once all your video and audio content has been imported, you’ll want to take the time to organize your content, tag files based on what topics they fall under, update descriptions, and upload any supporting documents and attachments.

📑 Add file descriptions, attachments and video thumbnails

You can customize each file’s description, chapters, thumbnail and attachments inside the File Manager. You can also use Copilot to generate file summaries with a little help from AI.

📝 Review your transcripts

Each video and audio file uploaded into your account is automatically transcribed and captioned by AI. You can use the transcript editor to make any necessary changes.

🏷️ Tag your content for granular organization

While Membership.io does not have subfolder capabilities, you can utilize content tags as a more granular form of content organization for further organization. 

🎞️ Setup content automations

Membership.io can automatically send any video files to the right destination(s) using content automations. Any content currently in a folder or with a specific tag can be auto-delivered to your members inside your Hub. This allows you to get content like your Zoom recordings straight to your audience as soon as your call is uploaded. 🤯You can automate your Playlists based on Folders or Content Tags.

Part 4 - Create your Hub and your Playlists

With your content organized, it's time to create your Hub.

🖥️ Create your Hub

Head to the Hubs tab of your Membership.io account to create a new Hub. You have the option to build a Hub from scratch or to use a Hub template. 

NOTE: Once you select a template, you won't be able to swap to another template.

🚪Open your Hub editor

Once you create your Hub, you’ll be taken to your Hub dashboard. You’ll want to click Customize to open the Hub Editor where you will be building your Hub.

Inside your Hub editor you’ll find the following tabs on the left side:

• 📄 Pages: This is where you can open your default and custom Hub pages. You can create and link as many custom Hub pages as you need. 

• 🎞️ Content: This is where you'll group your video and audio content into Playlists. 

• 📝 Attributes: Audience Attributes allow you to collect and use information about your members.
• 🎨 Appearance: The Appearance menu allows you to make changes to your Hub's logos, colours, fonts and more.
• 🤖 Wisdom: The AI Chat Plugin or Wisdom allows you to create an AI chat trained on your content. 

📼 Create your Playlists

You can use Playlists to group your content together. Open the Content Tab inside the Hub editor to create Playlists for your video and audio content.

You can also add any resources or downloads to your Playlists or files (non-video/audio deliverables) as attachments inside your Hub Content.

Here’s an example of what Playlists a course creator building a 4 module course on gardening would create:

• Module 1 - Priming & Designing Your Garden

• Module 2 - Buying Your Plants

• Module 3 - Planting

• Module 4 - Maintaining Your Garden

• Q&A Call Replays

• Garden Masterclasses

• Bonus Resources

🔥 Hot Tip! Keep in mind the difference between a Hub Playlist and a Library Playlist when building your Hub. You want to build Hub Playlists, not Library Playlists.

🏠 Build your Hub homepage

Once your Playlists and content are ready, we can turn our attention to your Hub pages. There are two types of pages: default pages and custom Hub pages. It’s a good idea to take the time before you start building your Hub to read through and understand the different types of pages.

Hub pages - including your Homepage - are built using Sections. 

Sections are containers of content that can include any element such as one video, several videos, an image, a block of text, or a combination of different elements.

• The ⚙️Settings menu next to any Section allows you to configure what elements that Section has.
• The 🖌️Styling menu next to any Section allows you to customize how that Section appears.

There are two different categories of Sections. Content sections are best for Playlists and individual files. Layout sections are best for things like a welcome message, a body of text, or a mix and mix of different elements.

Start with your Homepage. The Homepage is the first page your members will land out once they login to your Hub. Homepages can link out to other pages in your Hub, so don’t worry about cramming all of our content into your Homepage. We recommend keeping your Homepage straightforward so your members are clear on what is included in the Hub.

Here’s an example and description of how you can layout your Homepage:

Hero (welcome) banner that welcomes your members to the Hub.

• • Use a Layout section for this. 
• A resource bar right under your Hero that includes quick links to your Pages, Playlists and any important links.
  • Use a Custom Scroll section for this.
• A highlighted resource that points members to the most important thing in your Hub. Maybe that’s a video, a Playlist, or another Hub page with your course curriculum.
  • Use a Featured section for this.

📄 Build additional Hub pages

Once your Homepage is done, you can build custom Hub pages to organize your content as you see fit. 

Here’s an example of other Hub pages you can build:

• 📚 Resource Library page that includes a Grid Section with links to different PDFs.

• 🎞️ Call Replays page that includes several Playlists organized as Scroll Sections for deliverables such as Q&A Calls, Guest Workshops, and Masterclasses.

• 🎁 Bonuses page that includes gifts that you’ve offered specific cohorts of students/members.

• 📍 Start Here page that includes content geared towards beginners.

📑 Customize your default Hub pages

Once your custom Hub pages have been created, open the Pages tab inside of your Hub editor to review and customize the following default pages that are included with every private Hub:

• Register: The first page your audience will see when registering for a Hub. It collects your member's email field.
• Login: What your audience will first see when they land on a private Hub. The information provided on this page is linked to the permissions granted within your Audiences. 
• Onboarding: Your members must complete this page before they land on your Homepage for the first time.
• Discussions: Your own private community forum. 💬 
• Audience Directory: This directory is built using your Audience Attributes as filters. 
• Playlist: Default view once someone clicks into a Playlist.
• Media: Default view once someone clicks to watch/listen to a media file.

Part 5 - Finish designing and customizing your Hub

Once your Hub shell and content have been set up, you’ll want to turn your attention to the overall Hub appearance and settings.

🎨 Appearance Menu

Access the Appearance Menu to make changes to the fonts, primary colours, button styles and logos used inside your Hub. These are the big site-wide appearance changes. You can also click on the Styling menu inside of every Section to control the appearance of individual elements.

🔒💰🏆 Hub Settings

Exit the Hub editor to configure your Hub settings. Your Hub dashboard gives you the option to control your Hub’s custom domain, member payments, transactional emails, privacy settings and badges. At minimum you’ll want to make sure your Hub is set to private. Most creators opt to also connect a custom domain.

Part 6 - Finalize your payment process

The payment process is one of the most important elements of migrating your existing business over to Membership.io. 💸

You have three options for collecting payments:

• Collect payments with Stripe
  Membership.io has an integration with Stripe that you can use to automate create collect payments and create accounts for anyone who wants to sign up for your Hub. The Stripe integration also allows members to automatically cancel their subscriptions through the Customer Portal.
• Collect payments with Kit
  Membership.io has built-in Kit automations that you can use to add someone to a Hub once they are added to a specific list (or get a specific tag) inside of Kit.
  
• Use Zapier to connect an external cart to collect payments
  If you're not using Stripe or Kit, don't worry! Lots of members keep their payment systems separate from their Membership Hubs. You can use Zapier to set up any automations to grant and remove Hub access using another shopping cart. 

Part 7 - Share your Hub with your members 🚀 

There are two ways your audience can access a Hub set to Private:

1. Add members to your Audiences: You can add members to the Audiences tab of your Membership.io and grant them Hub access.
2. Have members sign up: You can have your members sign up through your Registration page. Be sure Registration is toggled on. Otherwise, your members will not be able to create an account.

You can find your Hub's link inside the Hub editor by heading to the ↗ arrow and clicking on the 🔗 button as pictured below:

Take It Further …

Congratulations! 👏You’ve successfully launched your Hub. Way to go! Here are some next steps you can take:

• 👋 Customize your Onboarding page with Attributes and videos
  To dive further into adding custom onboarding and audience segmentation into your Hub, check out our Custom Onboarding Guide for a step-by-step walkthrough.
  
  ➡️See the Onboarding Guide for more information.
  
  
• 🎁 Show your members individualized content recommendations.
  Membership.io allows you to control who sees what inside of your private Hub. You can show members content that is specific to either their preferences or their purchases - or both!
  
  ➡️See the Personalization Guide for more information.