| You’ve probably heard the buzz about Clubhouse, a new social media app. And you’ve probably heard people saying something along the lines of, “What exactly is Clubhouse and who is it for?” Clubhouse is an audio-first social media app that allows users to host virtual clubs and facilitate discussions around a variety of topics. It’s also an invite-only platform limited to iPhone users at the moment – adding to its current appeal. Clubhouse has 10.1 million users as of February (it had 600,000 in December 2020). Instagram has roughly 1 billion users. So here’s the answer to that first question: What is Clubhouse? Clubhouse is a new audio-first platform meeting social media users where they are and giving them a new way to connect. The beauty of the platform, much like Twitter in its early days, is that you can take a passive approach for now – listening in and learning. Or, you can take the next step and run your own rooms. Each of these rooms is run by a host, or set of hosts, who have the capacity to decide who can speak and when. Visually, a room will show a list of participants with their names and photos lined up in rows. The guest list, of sorts, separated by speakers and those who are just listening. |
Rooms are organized by topic, with everything ranging from tech and marketing chats, to talks with celebrity figures, to health and wellness.
According to The New York Times, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance on the app caused such a buzz that the platform nearly crashed).
Either way, it is telling us three things about where consumer attention is headed.
Clubhouse lets people drop in and participate in what are essentially audio-only virtual events, but it does so without the pressure of video. It’s like the creators heard everyone’s complaints about the awkwardness of being on Zoom cameras all the time, and decided, “Oh, we can fix that.”
1) People want to connect on their own terms. What’s interesting though is that the app lets you be a part of social media without any obligation. You can pop in and out of rooms without anyone noticing, and you can be as engaged or disengaged as you want to be – no one will know.
2) Audio continues to be a growing trend. Whether it is podcasting or Alexa briefings or quick audio snippets, we are consuming audio based content at a rapid rate, and that’s not slowing down anytime soon. An audio strategy needs to be part of your overall digital strategy.
3) It proves that thought leadership wins big in 2021. People are coming to Clubhouse to learn from others in their industry, or in the industries they want to be a part of. Most events on the platform center around someone successful teaching others about how they gained that success.
If you didn’t believe it before, you should believe it now: you need to position yourself a thought leader if you want to stand out in your industry.
Thought leadership relies on consistent messaging that offers something educational to viewers, followers, readers and subscribers.
People don’t care about fluffy content (the stuff that’s just made for the sake of posting), they want something they can take with them. It’s a whole new social media world out there, and you should invest in it from the get-go.
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