Last night, I hosted my first room in the new social media app, Clubhouse. If you’re not familiar with Clubhouse, this article in PC Mag has a great explanation of what it is and why it’s currently one of the fastest growing social networks of 2021. If you’re interested in hosting your own Room, I have put together a list of my Key Clubhouse Takeaways.
I teamed up with two friends and fellow communication experts – Michael Ambrozewicz and Robin McCasland, SCMP – to moderate a Room we called Small Biz Tips from PR Pros to Grow Your Biz. We had a great time sharing our experiences and best practices with the small businesses owners in our Room to help them understand how strategic communication can help them grow their businesses.
My Key Clubhouse Takeaways
- Promote it in advance to your network – I posted on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook as well as in other Clubhouse Rooms where the moderators encouraged sharing. It’s nice to have familiar faces pop up in the audience. Especially for your first time as a host.
- Find other experts on the topic you’re speaking about to co-moderate with you. Multiple moderators help keep the conversation flowing and brings different perspectives to your conversation. It’s also helpful if one of the moderators has technical difficulties. The other moderators can keep the room running.
- Create an Event in Clubhouse a few days in advance with descriptive keywords so it starts showing up in other users’ feeds. Clubhouse curates your feed with topics they think would interest you. Your audience can add your event to their calendars and share the event with others they think might be interested in your topic.
- Create a short description about your topic that you can include in the Event you set up and and to share on social media to promote the Room.
- Make sure your Clubhouse profile is up-to-date and tells your potential audience who you are and what you do. Don’t leave them guessing!
- Connect your profile to a Twitter or Instagram account so people can send you private messages if they want to learn more about you and what you offer.
- Once you go live, hit the + (plus) button at the bottom of the app to invite your connections to join the conversation. Encourage everyone in the Room to do the same.
- Have a plan for the conversation, but be prepared to go off script based on the questions from your audience.
- Make sure you’re encouraging your audience to participate. We kept reminding them to raise their hand and come up on stage to participate. Audience participation leads to the best discussions.
- Recap what you have discussed at regular intervals because people are coming and going – it will help keep your audience from feeling lost and help newcomers start engaging quickly.
- If you are using Clubhouse to grow your business, have a call to action and don’t wait until the end to promote it. Talk about it throughout the conversation – don’t be afraid to repeat it!
- Make it clear when you are done speaking. It’s also a good idea to remind your audience who is speaking by saying your name when you’re finished (example – I’m Lynn and I’ll turn it back over to Michael). The app highlights the person speaking, but I know that when I’m in the audience, I’m not looking at my app while I’m listening.
- Encourage your audience to follow the speakers so they can get reminders about upcoming Events.
- Make your Room a regular event and tell your audience when they join you next (we’re on Clubhouse every Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time).
- Take notes! The information you and your co-moderators share and the questions your audience ask can make great content for newsletters, blog posts and social media posts, as well as additional content for future Clubhouse Rooms.
Have you given Clubhouse a try? I hope you’ll join me on the app!
Connect with me on Clubhouse and join me, Michael and Robin on Clubhouse every Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET.
Interested in learning more about how Swing Strategic Communication can help your business grow? Schedule a free 20-minute discovery call with me.