Invitation exclusively via membership, only for owners of hardware with iOS software. Visual and text elements kept to a minimum. Voice as the main means of communication. What are we talking about? Of course, it’s the Clubhouse application that has recently exploded in popularity. How does it work and what should you know about it? You’ll find the answers in this article.
What is Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is a young social network that was founded in March 2020. It is based on live voice calls, and all activities on this platform take place around them. App owners describe it as a new type of voice-based social product that allows people to chat, tell stories, develop ideas, deepen friendships, and meet interesting people from around the World. Messages, pictures, and videos can’t be sent in the app, however you can create your own profile, add a description in the bio, make friends, observe other users, and participate in conversations.
It can be compared to an interactive radio or podcast. Its users also influence the popularity of the platform. Currently, you can find popular journalists, the richest people in the world, as well as the most important names in marketing and Big Tech as users. In addition, you can find A-list stars and celebrities using the app.
How to register for Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is not open to everyone. To register, you must receive an invitation from an active user sent to your phone number. Each user receives a number of invitations to give away – the amount number varies. The quality of new users who are referred influences the algorithm’s perception of the given invitations. Importantly, Clubhouse is currently only available on iPhones.
This exclusive approach to membership is not the first such on the market. In the beginning, Instagram, which was designed only for iPhone users, and Quora, which was only open to invitees, worked similarly. Neither app was perceived negatively, but the exclusivity rather worked to the advantage of their image.
Why is it a great referral marketing case?
Despite only being a year old, Clubhouse has attracted 2,000,000 users. It is applying a strategy called Velvet Rope. Exclusivity is created through a combination of invite-only memberships and strategic hype. A person who wants in must be either a VIP or receive an invitation from someone who is.
Once you’re in, you become a “VIP” too, being an exclusive member. It’s hard to acquire anything behind a velvet rope, and therefore what’s behind it seems more desirable. As Clubhouse’s app is exclusive, more people are likely to want membership due to its invitation-only approach.
Clubhouse is a large topic of conversation on social media. As a result, there is a lot of demand for relatively little supply. In this way, people beg their friends for an invite, while those with invites have to show a lot of kindness and consideration to those without. You might think that limiting access to your service to invite-only would hurt your chances, but it can actually do the opposite.
Those invites take care of any trust issues because a friend has already tested out the service. The enrollment itself is a gladly taken action. Besides finding initial users, it does not require any financial cost. Also, the scales work incredibly well.
A few brands are fortunate enough to have two of their customers refer two of their friends. You can scale in a massive way if you make the process simple (as Clubhouse has done). Clubhouse’s invite-only model also stands to benefit members. The start might be a little low, but when everyone recommends two more then it develops into an exponentially growing machine.
How does Clubhouse work?
After you receive an invitation and create an account, you can join a room where voice calls are held. At the moment there are three types of rooms in Clubhouse:
- Open, which is one that anyone can join,
- Social, a room that is available to people who follow the user that organizes a specific conversation – it works great for building your community,
- Closed, a room available only to those who receive an invitation to it.
When creating a room, you can give it a theme that is displayed in invitations and its description. In addition, you can add regulations to your room.
You can participate in conversations passively and just listen to them like a radio or podcast. The second option is to actively participate in discussions. If you are not the moderator or conversation organizer for a particular room, then you must “raise your hand” to let them know you want to actively join in the conversation. In addition, if you want or need to leave a discussion then you can “leave quietly”. You can also invite people who are not already in the room – ping.
If you want to set up your own conversation, just click Start a room. Anyone can join the room, but it is up to you to decide whether or not to join the discussion as a speaker and if you want to appoint someone else as the moderator.
To look for conversations that interest you, you can use the search option. In addition, you can search for specific people as well as users related to a topic you are interested in. Another useful option is the ability to create a room that is setup in advance. People from your and co-hosts’ networks can see such an event.
You will also see emotes and additional colors on photos when in a room. What do they mean? The moderator of the meeting is marked with an asterisk in a green circle, the crossed out microphone is of course information about muted audio, confetti shows us new users who have been on Clubhouse for less than a week, while the gray pulsating border around a photo indicates the person who is currently speaking.
After setting up your first three rooms, an additional option to apply for the establishment of your own club appears. This is the equivalent of Facebook groups. At this point, you have to wait even several weeks to establish such a club.
Who needs Clubhouse and why?
The main advantage of Clubhouse is the possibility of learning. It gives you direct access to people who are high-level experts that want to share their knowledge. Communication with them is easy and, by participating in discussions with them, you can ask questions that may have been bothering you for a long time.
Another important aspect is that it is a source of acquiring new followers or engaging existing ones. Often, even if someone follows your profile on Facebook or Instagram, they do not see your content as often as they would like to.
Clubhouse is a brilliant way to remind them of your existence. It’s also great for maintaining relationships with people you rarely meet and are not at the stage of your relationship when it’s appropriate to talk on the phone or write on Messenger.
Get ready for Clubhouse
Prepare a good quality profile and bio
Once you have access to Clubhouse, it’s time to complete your profile with your name, photo, and bio. This is the only place where you can write something, so it’s essential. What is worth including in it?
- information about who you are, what you do professionally, and why it is worth contacting you,
- what topics of industry and private talks interest you,
- an email and/or website address,
- information about organized rooms and meetings,
- links to your Instagram and/or Twitter accounts.
Make sure your profile picture properly represents you and is of good quality. Your photo is displayed in all rooms that you join, hence its importance.
Expand your friend network
The networks you build can be divided into two main categories: those with whom you have social interactions (social graph) and those you do not know personally but share our interests (interest graph). The latter category definitely prevails in Clubhouse, as you share common areas of professional and private interests with the members of a given network. Appropriate selection of the people you want to observe shapes the approach of algorithms towards you and impacts upon further suggestions of people to follow.
To add a specific person to your watchlist, just click Follow. And if you want to receive notifications about any rooms organized by them, you should click the bell next to the Follow button (or Following, if you are already doing so).
Cross-promote with other social media
Clubhouse will certainly not dominate Facebook or Twitter, as it is a medium on which a different type of communication is used. However, it is definitely worth investing time in joining activities on Clubhouse. The greatest involvement among an audience is driven by improvised messages aimed at an immersed viewer. This makes Clubhouse generate engaged communication. Therefore, the key to the activities of marketers and other people conducting online activities is to extend their activities to Clubhouse, thanks to which they will have a chance to reach new followers and meet the needs of current users.
On the other hand, Clubhouse allows you to conduct live shows and interviews without the need to prepare an entire studio, lighting, or professional cameras. It allows content that doesn’t really need images to be shared in a format that suits it best. In addition, it allows users to follow in the background just like when listening to podcasts on streaming services or radio.
A few words of summary
A few years ago, the end of the voice era was announced. After podcasting, Clubhouse is further proof that this is not actually the case. It satisfies another area of communication that has not yet been developed by popular platforms like Facebook or other social media. The requirements for using Clubhouse are greater than other platforms due to the need to be invited and have an iPhone, which gives the user a sense of uniqueness. But use of the application itself is very easy, allowing you to join conversations in just a few clicks. We don’t know if Clubhouse will develop further and last for a long time or if it will rather share a similar fate to Snapchat, which shone for a while until it was made obsolete by Instagram. Perhaps one of the big players will want to take it over, but we don’t know about that for sure. However, it’s definitely worth watching Clubhouse and taking action right now, because doing so will allow you to stay one step ahead.