Have You Considered... Clubhouse?
In the last installation of
Have You Considered, we expounded the benefits of Spotify in helping a business standout amongst an oversaturated social media market. Adding an audio component to your marketing strategy, alongside face-to-face outreach and video, creates a multisensory campaign which helps engage different customer segments.
Spotify helps humanise a brand and introduces creativity to your marketing plan. If you’re operating as a Business to Business (B2B) however, there is a more business-focused platform you could use to accomplish this: Clubhouse.
Clubhouse had its fifteen minutes of fame in 2020 when it first launched amidst a changing business landscape. It spiked in popularity and, while it may have fallen slightly off the radar since, Clubhouse remains an innovative platform. It offers businesses an opportunity to not only engage customers but also conduct valuable market research.
What is Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is like an always-on dinner party where you can hang out with friends, meet new ones and talk about anything. When you're on Clubhouse, it's not about posting content, but joining a community of friends-of-friends who come together to meet, talk, and share ideas. We built Clubhouse for people who value rich friendships and conversation, care about experiences, memories and being in the moment.
Clubhouse has been described as a hybrid of conference calls, talkback radio and a house party. Originally run as an invite-only platform, Clubhouse is now freely available to anyone who downloads the app. When you sign up, you’ll be prompted to follow people or choose topics of interest. The app then recommends ‘rooms’. Rooms are topic-orientated spaces, where Clubhouse members can go to talk to other members or listen to discourse.
Clubhouse grew from over 3.5 million global downloads to 8.1 million in February 2021, at the peak of its popularity. This explosion in followers was attributed to high-profile celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerburg joining the app.
While the rate of new membership has dropped since the height of its hype, in 2022 Clubhouse maintained around 10 million users from around the world.
How Can Clubhouse Help Businesses?
Clubhouse is ideal for B2Bs and small businesses. With a relatively small userbase when compared to major platforms like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, it’s easier to be heard (figuratively and literally) above the noise.
1. Learn From Others
There is a significant number of business owners and leaders on Clubhouse, who are in rooms and clubs ready to have a conversation. Search for events and rooms that are relevant to your industry to forge useful connections. Once you find people who have succeeded in something similar to what you are doing, take the opportunity of Clubhouse’s format to ask them questions and listen to what they’re willing to share.
2. Find Investors
Focus on creating a digital space for your business, promoting what you’re doing, and forging connections by joining lots of different rooms. If you spend time on the Clubhouse app, there is an opportunity to make valuable connections with potential investors. Keep an eye open for relevant networking events, rooms and clubs.
3. Host Virtual Events
Clubhouse members don’t only join rooms, they can also create them. These rooms are a great way to gain followers and engage with connections and potential customers. Attract new members to your room by hosting a virtual event, perhaps to celebrate the launch of a new product or for fundraising.
4. Gain Followers
To get the followers you need to make your Clubhouse account a success, invest time in the app and join plenty of rooms and clubs. Finding a following on Clubhouse can boost your following on other social media platforms as people want to learn more about your business after talking to you or hearing you speak.
5. Research the Market
Clubhouse doesn’t only link you to an audience, it also allows you to have meaningful conversations with them. By engaging with your market on this intimate scale, you can find out what your customers want, identify areas for development in your business and marketing plans, and improve customer service and aftercare.
You can also test marketing strategies before implementing them on larger social media platforms, like new branding or perhaps sharing an amazing explainer video…
How to Utilise Clubhouse
One of the best ways to utilise Clubhouse is to host rooms and clubs. To do this, you need to build your room around a topic. This can be as generalised or niche as you want. There are five types of rooms you can create or participate in on Clubhouse:
- Welcome Rooms. Welcome Rooms are created when new users sign up. If someone in your phone contacts joins Clubhouse, you may get a notification to join a Welcome Room—a private room where you and other contacts of the new user can help orient them to Clubhouse. You can also open the room to the public. If you see Welcome Rooms in your feed, feel free to jump in and say hello. Clubhouse promotes an informal environment, and you never know what useful contacts you might end up making!
- Open Rooms. Anyone can join an Open Room. They're popular for hosting public conversations, shows, or meeting lots of new people. This is the default setting for rooms on Clubhouse.
- Social Rooms. Social Rooms are only for the people in your Clubhouse circle. So that's your followers and the followers of any of the speakers. To expand the list of people who can be invited, add one of your followers as a moderator, and they'll be able to invite the people in their circles to the room.
- Club Rooms. A new function added by Clubhouse in 2022, you can now open a room within a Club so members can join you to discuss relevant topics. You can always open the room to anyone on Clubhouse, which is a great way to expand club membership.
- Closed Rooms. Also called Private Rooms, these are only for people you invite. We hope that Closed Rooms will be helpful when you are looking to have more private conversations, or want to talk with a smaller group but haven't yet set up a club for it. When you start a Closed Room, you can always ping in more people or open it up to either a Social or Open Room.
As well as rooms, there are also events. These are scheduled conversations with optional co-hosts to help with moderation. Once an event is created, it’s added to Clubhouse’s bulletin to attract followers. The bulletin displays upcoming scheduled events and allows users to set notifications to remind them when it’s coming up.
Get Started with Video Marketing Today!
Hopefully, you found this installation of Have You Considered useful. Stay tuned over the next two months while we explore other underutilised platforms and find ways to make your brand stand out.
Speaking of standing out, check out our portfolio! And, if you want to discuss how animated explainer videos can benefit your business, get in touch with the Squideo team today.
