Have you heard of the latest rage in social media Clubhouse? Have you received an invite on your smartphone and unsure as to whether or not you should join? Are you on Clubhouse and still trying to figure out how to glean value from it? Let me share with you my own experiences with Clubhouse, describe its functionality in further details, and provide you with my advice on how to best maximize your social influence on Clubhouse.
Episodes Mentioned:
Key Highlights
[01:30] How I Got Into Clubhouse
[03:51] Clubhouse in the Analogy of Google Plus
[06:35] How Can I Keep My Clubhouse Connection Back to My Network
[08:26] How Invites Work
[08:55] The Utilitarian Use of Social Media Network
[11:42] Creating Room in Clubhouse
[12:43] The Viral and Discoverability Aspect of Clubhouse
[13:03] What is a Club?
[14:20] Why People Like Clubhouse
[16:11] How and Who to Follow On Clubhouse?
[17:03] Radio Approach
[18:08] The Cor of Clubhouse
[19:53] What Happens When I Join A Room
[21:25] The Approach to Clubhouse from A Marketing Perspective
[22:06] How to Generate Income from Social Media Network
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
Have you heard of the latest rage in social media Clubhouse? Have you received an invite on your smartphone and unsure as to whether or not you should join? Are you on Clubhouse and still trying to figure out how to glean value from it? Let me share with you my own experiences with Clubhouse, describe its functionality in further details, and provide you with my advice on how to best maximize your social influence on Clubhouse.
Episodes Mentioned:
Key Highlights
[01:30] How I Got Into Clubhouse
[03:51] Clubhouse in the Analogy of Google Plus
[06:35] How Can I Keep My Clubhouse Connection Back to My Network
[08:26] How Invites Work
[08:55] The Utilitarian Use of Social Media Network
[11:42] Creating Room in Clubhouse
[12:43] The Viral and Discoverability Aspect of Clubhouse
[13:03] What is a Club?
[14:20] Why People Like Clubhouse
[16:11] How and Who to Follow On Clubhouse?
[17:03] Radio Approach
[18:08] The Cor of Clubhouse
[19:53] What Happens When I Join A Room
[21:25] The Approach to Clubhouse from A Marketing Perspective
[22:06] How to Generate Income from Social Media Network
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
Have you heard of the new social media app clubhouse? Are you trying to figure out what it is? If it's right for you? Should you spend time there? Should you ask for invites? Well, I just got started in clubhouse. Let me give you my advice. And hint. If you're already listening to this podcast, you might be interested in clubhouse as a way to help you maximize your social influence. Tune in for the next episode. Welcome to the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners grow their businesses using innovative marketing techniques, leveraging the concept of digital influence throughout digital and social media. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode number 196 of the maximize your social influence podcast, we are off to hopefully you're also off to a great start in the year. And as is normally the case, if we are involved in social media professionally. Sometimes we get into a groove where it's like, Okay, I understand how the site's work, I'm doing well. And then boom, another new social network appears. So we've seen this in the past with, I suppose Instagram. I distinctly remember Google Plus being very similar to the sort of rage that we hear today about this app called clubhouse. So maybe you've heard about it, if you're involved in marketing, you probably have heard about it at some point. So I had received a few invites. So the first invite I got was from Mike gingrich. Mike gingrich is a former blogger of mine over at Neal Schaffer calm and mic, believe it or not, for those of you that don't know him, he's a great guy. He is the founder and CEO of tabs site, but he also does a lot of coaching and he's written a book on lead generation. I think Mike is the only person outside of Jay Baer that has actually been on this podcast twice, Episode Number 110. how to generate leads from Facebook with tab site. And then episode number 48. How to maximize your Facebook marketing. So give a shout out to Mike. If you're interested in Facebook, and Facebook marketing, Facebook lead generation, you'll definitely want to listen to those two episodes. So I got an invite from Mike. And then I got an invite just a few days ago from a gentleman named Ingo Stoll. Ingo is a great guy. I met him in Germany, when I spoke at CES in Hanover, many moons ago. Ingo has his own agency, and he was doing a lot of work with German enterprises in employee advocacy, invited me over to his house, just a great guy. And so I got texting to him over the weekend. Hey, what do you think about it? And he goes, you know, Neil, I'm an audio guy. I listen to a lot of podcasts. So it seemed like a natural for me. I go, Hmm, interesting. So I was really thinking a lot about clubhouse. And then boom, I got my third invite, just like two days ago, Jason ball gonna give a shout out to him. One of my good buddies from Tokyo, an Aussie they're in it, but he is an amazing networker runs a group called good people, Japan, and he literally will bring together good people and network. And from that just gain a lot of, you know, business and professional growth opportunities. I had a chance to see Jason last time I was out there in Japan, right after quarantine ended. So I was really good to catch up with them. So So there we go, I get three invites in the course of a week or two. It's like, okay, and just literally two days ago, I flipped the switch, and I joined it. Now, what's interesting about any new social network is that when you join it, all the conversations inside that social network are usually about that social network. So I, you know, I'm gonna go back to when Google Plus started. And everybody was just talking about Google Plus. And it was all about advice about Google Plus, I distinctly remember Chris Brogan, doing like a $49 webinar about Google Plus like one week after it launched right? And now everyone was like, Well, how do you I mean, it's only been around for a week. So number one, that that is something you need to understand because people are trying to figure it out and other people are trying to really trying to build expertise and say I'm the expert at clubhouse that I do not recommend you go that far. But because remember, these are tools they don't you know, do they help you reach your final marketing objective, which is probably not to become a clubhouse expert it might be to generate revenue from clubhouse or to increase your influence there which can help you to reach your marketing objectives but we don't want to go the route of you know, I'm a clubhouse expert. I don't think that that's a good play right now. I think that there's a lot more value to it, as I'm going to go through in this podcast. So that's the first thing about clubhouse is that analogy with Google Plus is that it's all about clubhouse. The second analogy is when you go in there and see the people in there, especially if you're involved in marketing or social media, it's the same people that you can get access to all the other social media. And I thought this in Google Plus, it's like, it's just the same people different network, right? What's the value? Now, Google pluses value is that it was Google. And if you are if you understood what was happening in the world of SEO, with personal Google Authorship, and just a lot of things going around with Google Plus, and at a certain point of time, it really was affecting search engine rankings for people that were connected with you on that network. Now, those days are long gone. But there was a reason why a lot of marketers kept going and Google Plus even as it started to fade, because there was still that ROI. Now clubhouse is very different. In fact, clubhouse really doesn't compete, head to head, you know, Google came out and said, we're gonna compete with Facebook, clubhouse, very different, it doesn't compete head to head. So if you were going to create a new social media app, and you might have gotten invited to a bunch of different new, quote unquote, air quotes, social media apps over the years, that never went anywhere, because they were pretty much similar to every other social media app, why would I join a new network, when everybody else is already on the other network, right? So if you're a new social media player, you need to do things a little bit differently. So what clubhouse has done, they've been very, very smart at developing something that keeps bringing you back in to its network. Now, how do you do that? Well, first of all, clubhouse is mobile only so far. So because it's mobile only. It can play on notifications. Now normally, I turn off notifications for every social network, they might stay on. And then when I get too much, I turn them off. clubhouse has given you the ability to actually customize how frequent you receive these notifications. So I'm just going to go into the app right now while I talk with you. Let's go into the settings here. And it's a very simple, easy to understand and use App, it has frequency of very frequent, frequent, normal, infrequent or very infrequent. So if you feel like you're getting too many notifications, you can tone it down. But the notifications really play a key role and they provide value to the subscriber or to the member of the app. And it's almost a I'm not gonna say a text marketing or SMS marketing, or Facebook Messenger marketing aspect in which it appears in your notification. And therefore, it's a prime way to market to get your name in the notifications of people, but it does provide that functionality. Now I think, the one thing you need to remember when we talk about a new social network, the way that clubhouse especially has structured itself is its invite only at the beginning. For those either remember Pinterest was also invite only in fact, Gmail was invite only. And I'm definitely aging myself here as a Gen XOR. So with all that in mind, clubhouse is invite only if you don't get an invite, you're not going to be able to participate. And once you join right now, as of when I joined two days ago, you get five invites. And sorry, don't ask me for an invite. I've already sent them out to people. But as you become more active, my friend Jason ball, just said, Hey, you know, I just got new invites. And basically the more active you are on the platform, the more invites come your way. Okay, so there's a lot to unroll here. But the first thing is when deciding whether to join a social network doesn't have enough momentum that it's going to be sticking around. I do believe with the people that I've seen on clubhouse for now. It has enough momentum that you should join it and check it out and experiment with it. The second point is well, what is the utilitarian use for the social network, I was lost on Pinterest until I said you know what, I'm going to create a board and I often give a lot of data and statistics when I speak so it's like at the end of my speech if you want to get the exact URLs to any one of the stats that I provided here, just go to this Pinterest board and they're all on there. And then my light bulb went on and I realized that there was a utilitarian way that I could use Pinterest right and and I've been very successful I believe I mean it drives the second most traffic to my website get more traffic from Pinterest and LinkedIn and Facebook many days combined. So once you find the utilitarian purpose you're not asking yourself the ROI there's there's a personal use of the platform for you. I think that's really, really important. And in fact I'm going to recommend the same with clubhouse is that you start to use it personally before you think about the marketing aspects of it. And I think once you begin to look at it personally, you will discover the aspects that can help you maximize your social influence. So we begin with the fact that you know I grew up in a household where My mom always listened to talk radio. Well, for those of you from Los Angeles, K, ABC 790. And that was her thing. It's funny because our dog got so used to listening to talk radio always being together with his favorite person, which was my mom who always gave him handouts. Whenever we went away, we would always keep talk radio on hope, you know, I think my mom thought, you know, it was keeping my company. I think the kids thought it was sort of a safety thing, so that if someone was going to try to rob our house, they think someone's home. But nevertheless, talk radio, something I'm very used to even in the car, my father would often listen to talk radio, sometimes news as well. So since you're listening to podcasts, right, you're used to consuming content in an audio fashion, and so am I. And that's what clubhouse is, it is audio only. It's basically, you know, I go back to the America online chat rooms, once again, I am aging myself here. It's sort of a mix of America on AOL chat rooms and radio, basically, there, everybody's creating little radio stations, right. And it's not like you're broadcasting 24 seven. But basically, you're launching a and I want to get the correct clubhouse functionality down here, what you're doing is you are launching a room. And a room is basically something with a title, right? you're launching a room and I'm going to talk about maximize your social influence. We're just going to talk about influencer marketing, social media marketing. And that becomes your title. Let's talk about influencer marketing, social media marketing. And you begin a room, when you begin a room, you have the microphone, your radio station is being broadcast, and you have the ability to ping people that follow you and say, Hey, I just launched a room Do you want to come in the room, and those pings will go out as notifications. Right. And that I think, is a really powerful thing. And why clubhouse has developed itself so intelligently, is because the notifications keep you coming in. So some people may have already, you know, minify, the notifications, but nevertheless, you have the ability to ping everyone following you starting a room come in, if they're following you. And let's say you joined a room, they're gonna see a notification that someone they follow joined a room as well or started a room. So you can start one, wait a few minutes, if no one comes start to ping people, or when people follow you, they will get pinged and join as well then, right, when one of them joins, their followers get a notification that that person joined my room, and they may want to check it out. So there is a viral aspect to this, and a discoverability aspect to it, which I really like, which is what I really hated about Snapchat, it was all sort of private conversations didn't allow you to be discovered. This platform definitely allows you to be discovered. People can do searches for people. And you can do searches for groups, or I should say clubs. A club is a application only process right now, where you sort of commit and this is clubhouse, this is sort of their strategy, commit to doing a once a week, one hour radio broadcast, and then we'll approve your club, you know, one or two clubs per person. Because when you start a club, people that don't follow, you can join the club. They may not have heard of Neal Schaffer. But if they're interested in influencer marketing and social media marketing, they can follow the club. And once again, this whole process of they get the notification when I start when I schedule a club, date and time when I'm going to start the broadcast, they get the notification of that as well. So you can see how it relies on notifications. But notifications, you almost need to keep on if you want to get value from this, because now I'm telling you from sort of my perspective, from your perspective, and the perspective, which I recommend you join clubhouse is that you begin as a way to tap in to other people's thoughts and ideas. If you listen to podcasts, you're gonna see a lot of familiar voices. You're gonna see a lot of familiar names and be able to listen to a lot of familiar voices on clubhouse. I was on one yesterday, boom, john Lee Dumas. Right? So you know a lot of people like clubhouse because a lot of quote unquote famous people are on there. I don't know how many famous people I don't know how active they are on there. I think people were saying the same thing about Google Plus at the beginning, but over time, that sort of went away, but if you are listening to podcasts, at a minimum, you can follow the people whose podcasts you listen to, because a lot of them are on. I was really surprised. See how many people I knew that were already on clubhouse, okay. Why don't you score me with an event dude. But anyway, that's beside the point. But the fact of the matter is that there's a lot of voices on there that you can tap into because a podcast, my podcast when I do a solo podcast episode like this is ad libbed. I'm not reading Got the script here, as I don't need to tell you that you probably already know. But when you go to some other podcasts, they're very well scripted. But on clubhouse, nothing is scripted, it's a live conversation, people bring people up on stage. And I'm going to get to that in a second. But you can really tap into the latest thoughts. And you can ask questions to the people that you love to listen to. And that's where the value is. So if you wanted to learn about something, you can go into a LinkedIn group on the subject, you can go into a Facebook group on the subject, or you can turn on your radio, which is clubhouse and do a search. And probably it's any time of the day, there's going to be something on the air that you can listen to make sense. So you know, maybe instead of listening to it, well keep listening to my podcast, obviously. But maybe you experiment. Once you get accepted. Once you get an invite. Well, once you have an invite you're in, there's no application process, but you need the invite. But once you're on the platform, just spend 15 minutes a day, just listening, right? So when when you join, obviously, it asks you to fill out a profile, it asks you to connect your Twitter and Instagram. And those are the only ways that people can vet you. So I highly recommend you connect to both of those. And it's going to recommend people that you follow or maybe that follow you or that are in your contacts, I forgot which one that are already on. I think it went through my contact database on my phone as well. That's going to help you find people that are already on clubhouse that you know, and obviously that's where you want to start to follow people, it's going to recommend all of these people, you've never heard of the follow it the same with Twitter and every other network, I highly recommend you don't do that. only follow the people that you know that you really want to listen to. But you can do a search for other people, right? And it's going to recommend people and if there are people whose blogs you read, whose videos you see who you would love to see speak at a conference, I was on one yesterday, you know, Pat Flynn was on here. I didn't get to hear him speak. I wasn't on long enough. But that's the sort of environment it is today will it change probably. But I think if you're a podcaster, it's almost a natural place to be because you're probably a consumer of podcasts. And therefore, I use this radio approach where, you know, literally this morning, I was listening to a meeting. And it was with Sue B Zimmerman, who is one of the Instagram experts worldwide. And she was talking and she saw me pop in and she goes, Hey, Neil, I feel free to raise your hand and join me on stage. And I was literally literally changing into my work clothes for the day to get ready for a zoom call. So So for me, it was like, Hey, I just want to listen in. And the thing is, you don't even have a chance to tell people that unless you raise your hand you go on stage and you say, so I just stayed silent. I sent sue a Facebook message afterwards, let her know that I wasn't ignoring her. But that sort of thing it is. You can tune in for five minutes Tennant, you tune in, you tune out. If you're not getting the ROI, just leave and come back at another day, another time. And trust me, you'll begin to get notifications when other things you might be interested in, are going live or when someone you follow. And the more people you follow, the more notifications you get of all the interesting things you can take part in. So you can get lost in there, you could spend a lot of time in there. But if you take the approach that this is my personal ROI, of learning on a specific subject and or tapping, being able to listen in an intimate setting, and perhaps ask questions in an intimate setting of experts that I would love to tap into. That is really the core of clubhouse. So we're not talking about hey, you need to start your own club, you could start your own club and compete with everyone else. We're not talking about hey, you need to do a room, which is your own radio broadcast every day or once a week, you don't have to do any of that. Just take it organically. start following some some key people I hope you'll hope I'd be honored by your follow as well. And listen in, you know, see where the people you follow see when they start a room, see when they join a room and just listen in and try to find people and follow people that that add value. Try to follow clubs that you think might add value. And Social Media Examiner is one of the media outlets that have gone full in on this. And they started their own club, which I followed and I was honored to because I speak at Social Media Marketing World every year I was honored to become a group member or a Club member, which means and I'm now going to go into some more details here. So clubhouse is based around these rooms, which are, you know, anybody, anybody can start a room and start a broadcast and then clubs, which are more like really formalized radio stations where you tune in at a certain time a day, and listen to what their show is almost like a regular weekly live stream almost like a podcast, right? Except it's live. And it's audio only. So, you know, when you join, you're basically listening mode. The only people that can speak are those that are on stage. So when you go into a room let's say I was able to start a room right on stage would only be me and let's say I say Hey, do you have any questions, then you would basically press on the raise your hand icon. And if I approve of you, I allow you to go on stage, I unmute you, in a line to ask a question, right, and then you show up that you're on stage, your profile now is at the top, and people can check you out and maybe follow you. Make sense. And then there's also another area where it shows me as being on stage, it shows the other people that have raised their hand that I approved of, and that's unless it's like a club, and they're already a Club member in which you always show up on stage if you're on the broadcast. And then below that, it shows all the other members so I can easily see who else has joined, and maybe call you out like Sue B. Zimmerman called me out today. But in the middle, there's also other people in the room that are followed, I believe it's followed that by the people on stage. So for a personal branding aspect, you know, I believe the more people that follow you, like any other social network, the more people that follow you, and the more of these groups that you join and raise your hand on, the greater the ability for you to build out a little bit of influence in the network to build out a little bit of branding a name for yourself. And once you get a lot of followers, you could start a club or do more regular room broadcasts, because you have a greater chance of more people coming. Obviously, gotta have something to say. So I believe the approach to clubhouse from a marketing perspective is like any other social network, what is your objective? How are you going to add value, and take that and work together? Now, I was talking to my friend Kenny Hughes yesterday, She is the founder of social media breakfast, Houston, been very active in social media in Houston, and is one of the top you know, PR experts in the world. And she was saying that I'm going to be speaking at social media breakfast, Houston in April, she said, I believe the person speaking in March, actually has already generated six figures off of clubhouse. I'm like what, and that person is like a professional coach, a life coach, I'm not sure the details. But they're just like with Google Plus, there are ways obviously, because these are people and if they're in your target audience, and you're able to convince them, there are ways of generating income, but it has to come from adding value. And it has to come from building and developing relationships, just like with any other social media. So I don't want to go on there and do hard sells in rooms. That's not by any means what this is about. So I hope that gives you a snapshot into what clubhouse is, who it's most appropriate for. And some of the basic functionality, I'm still learning. But if you're in clubhouse, I would really appreciate your follow. And I'm going to try a little experiment myself, I always say marketing is all about experimentation. So I am going to launch a room just for listeners of the maximize your social influence podcast that happened to be on clubhouse. And I hope that if you're on clubhouse, you'll join me I'm going to schedule this for Monday, January 25, at 9am Pacific. So I choose 9am. On Monday, well, sorry about that. It's a new week of work. So maybe you're not going to be able to join. But it gives a chance for the European listeners and those of you in the Middle East and Africa. I know I have a large number of you folks as well on those continents that our listeners and I want to give you the chance to participate, engage, and really a chance to ask me questions about clubhouse or really about anything that I talked about in this podcast. So we'll give it a try. And maybe no one shows up. Cool, nothing lost. You know, if you're not failing, you're you're not winning. I mean part of this part of everything you do has to be this experimentation, because you'll never know if you don't try. So I'm going to try, maybe it doesn't work. Maybe I try a month later. And I get a lot of people and really, for me, the thing I like about clubhouse is I've never really liked this notion of like a Twitter chat, or a regular live stream. It seems like a lot of work to prepare. And I'm not always in the same place the same time every week. But number one now that we work from home and number two, because this is audio only I don't have to worry about like my video background, right? And I don't have to worry about a Twitter chat of like trying to keep up because sometimes it's it's a lot of work. Let me tell you, I like the notion of clubhouse and that I can show up. I don't have to worry about what I'm, you know where I am or what I'm wearing. And boom, I'm on the air and I'm doing what I naturally do, which is talking and speaking, and podcasting and just in a different environment. But I've always look for a way to engage with my podcast listeners. And I do have the Facebook group maximize your social influence. I have a LinkedIn group as well, which you can join not very active. The Facebook group never really got active either because I'm not in there every day asking questions and trying to gain engagement. I sort of keep it as if you have a question, feel free to ask me. I'm not trying to garner engagement there and I think dropping links every day of my latest podcasts and blog posts isn't really adding value because if you're following me, you're probably consuming that content. So I never found a real sweet spot for the Facebook group, I'm gonna be really, really honest with you. But using clubhouse as a way to engage with podcast listeners might be the best way, which is why I have another interest in it. And maybe the additional ROI for me, in addition to sort of learning is an ability to have your questions answered, to be able to have a conversation, even just get to know each other. That's what social media is all about. And that's a critical missing piece in the way that social media has become today. And yes, you can build communities, but within each community, it always seems like someone's trying to sell something right at the end of the day. And I don't want that for this. And that's why I think having a clubhouse room will be the best way to do it. So make sure you're following me on clubhouse. And then Monday at 9am. I'm going to try to schedule room. So if you follow me, hopefully you'll get notice that that schedule. When you log into clubhouse, you see a schedule of events as well, from people you follow to hopefully it pops up there. And hopefully we'll have a chance to talk and really discover clubhouse together. You know, it's funny, back in the day, I'm not embarrassed to say this. But I actually have a podcast episode about a social network called ello. How many people have heard of ello? If you just started social media last few years, you probably haven't. I did a podcast episode number 81, about ello. What's all this talk about ello. So there have been social networks that have come and gone. And ello is an example of one social network that came and gone. And I did one podcast episode about it. October 10 2014, I have a feeling that clubhouse is going to be around a little bit longer. And I do believe that the biggest competitor to clubhouse are podcasts. And I do believe if you are a podcaster or interested in podcasts, clubhouse might become your number one social network. So I'm going to stop there, I really hate the whole fortune ball fortune teller. Because I like to, I always like to say that everything you do, you should be focused on data. I don't have the data yet to prove any of this. And I also say why you're worried about clubhouse when there's so many other social networks that you haven't maximized your social influence on, and I'll stick to that. But if you're in this niche like I am, I think clubhouse is going to be worth a visit. And let's see how we can grow on that network together. I want to thank you for listening to another episode of maximize your social influence. I'll be back next week with an interview. Please make sure that you're subscribed so that you don't miss any of the awesome interviews. You know, I'll be honest with you, there is a two plus year waiting list to be interviewed on this podcast that is how popular it has become and how attractive it has become as a place and I've been getting more and more into raising the quality of the people not to say to people I've interviewed in the past word of high quality hour, but I'm really searching you know, everywhere to find the best people that not only you can learn from but that I can learn from as well. So that's my commitment to you a no fluff every episode should be bang on learning and insightful and helping turn those light bulbs on to help you with with your sales and marketing and digital and social media marketing. So be on the lookout for that make sure you subscribe. I also want to give a shout out I see that in business podcasts, I'm starting to get more and more traction. So I want to thank you in the US Of course Canada, France, Brazil and India. And I also know a lot of you in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Taiwan and Kuwait. I seem to be gaining a lot of traction in those markets as well. So as always, I don't know who you are. I do hope that you'll join me on clubhouse so I can find out more about who you are and how we can help each other. Alright everybody. That is that's the wraps for another episode of maximize your social influence. Hope you enjoyed this. I hope to see you on clubhouse next Monday, January 25 9am, Pacific. And until next time, make it a great virtual social day. Bye bye everybody and sale nada