What is Clubhouse? Should entrepreneurs be on Clubhouse?

If you’re in the online marketing space, then you’ve probably seen tons of people all of a sudden talking about Clubhouse. So let’s dive in: what is Clubhouse, should you join it! Oh yes, and how you can join Clubhouse of course!

What is Clubhouse?

Clubhouse is a social platform, based on audio in realtime. This means, that you communicate by talking, and you consume content by listening. Everything is live. Clubhouse is invitation only, and every member can invite only 1 person, which means that it is still very exclusive. That has turned it into a real hype.

How does Clubhouse work?

Conversations take place inside “rooms“. Each room has a “stage” with speakers, plus an audience. You can compare them to chat rooms. People in the audience can raise their hand if they want to speak. People on the stage can pass a microphone around, so it’s kind of like a panel at a conference.

Then there are “clubs“. Clubs are groups of people that talk about a specific topic. Clubs can have rooms that are only available to club members, where general rooms are public. Every member can launch 1 club, and the launch time for a club is about a week to two weeks.

This article on Social Examiner explains the details of how to use clubs in much more detail.

What are the pros of Clubhouse?

✅ It’s new and different! It’s the shiniest of shiny objects, and who doesn’t love that?

✅ There are quite a few thoughtleaders / celebrities on there and you can connect with them quite easily.

✅ It offers all the chances that a new platform offers, to be able to go viral, to make new connections fast and to build know&like&trust!

✅ It’s audio only, which is awesome if you for example love listening to podcasts.

What are the cons of Clubhouse?

Everyone seems to be raving about Clubhouse, but I personally see a few big disadvantages to Clubhouse, especially for those of us who want to use it to grow our businesses. Here are the drawbacks:

All the content is live. This means that it can be incredibly time consuming. You also cannot go back to conversations, and you cannot catch a replay.
There are quite a few people on there who love to hear themselves talk, and who don’t start conversations. To me, it feels like a bunch of big egos taking the stage, instead of actual conversations. That might however be caused by the fact that I’ve followed people in the online marketing space. If you are following people in other spaces, it might be totally different.
It’s kind of a hit and miss in terms of finding the gems on there. It doesn’t have a structured search.
So far it seems to be 99% American, I haven’t seen many international voices on there yet. Which isn’t a problem per se, but as an international voice, I like a more international vibe on a platform.
This is the biggest drawback IMO: It’s audio. I myself much much prefer reading / writing and watching as my style of learning and communicating, so that means that I don’t enjoy Clubhouse that much.

One thing that isn’t really clear right now, is where Clubhouse is headed once it opens up for the public, and how intimate and relevant the conversations will still be when millions of people join the platform!

Should entrepreneurs join Clubhouse?

It depends. It’s all the rage right now, it has a lot of potential for amazing growth, but it is also a shiny object, that can be incredibly time consuming and distracting. And, the biggest thing standing in between success for MANY online entrepreneurs is shiny objects!!! Clubhouse is probably not the one thing that will propel your business forward in 2021, however exciting it sounds. Also, you need to love audio. So as with all social platforms, I would say, test it out, see if you love it (the vibe, and also the audio format). If not, then don’t jump on there just because it’s the latest hype! And do not go down the rabbit hole of consuming content for hours and hours, if you want to use Clubhouse professionally, then you should take the stage, not just listen. And now for those of you who say: Paulien, I don’t care about all of that, I just want to know…

HOW do I get on Clubhouse?

You need an invitation! Everyone who joins Clubhouse can invite 1 person. Active members can get more invites in the future (the rules are unclear). That means that you need to find that 1 person… You can also try to create a follow train. This worked really well for me and a bunch of my friends! Here’s what you do:

You form a group, and each of you tries to find that 1 person who can invite 1 person
The first person who gets invited then invites the next one in the group and so on. Pay it forward, so to say.

By the way, I’ve seen invites being sold online. That’s not allowed, both the seller and the buyer can be banned off the platform, so don’t do that! As a workaround, you can already download the app on the Clubhouse website. Then, when the app notices that many of your contacts are already on Clubhouse, it might ping them to send you an invite. This only works if your contacts are already on Clubhouse though…

What’s next?

You can read my blog for many more articles about social media and online business
You can join my free & fabulous Facebook Group the Change Maker Collective, all about business strategy & social media
If you need help figuring out a marketing strategy for your business that feels so good and that is so effective, that you will hardly need to sell, then check out my coaching services!

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