Clubhouse: What Is It and Why Should Agencies Care About It?

Clubhouse, Clubhouse, Clubhouse. Everyone’s mentioning the new social platform. Here’s the scoop on what it is, why it matters for agencies, and best practices for the Clubhouse app.

It’s undeniable. Clubhouse is the latest social platform that’s exploding in 2021. 

Since March 2020, Clubhouse has grown to have a very diverse user base of 6 million members. For many users, Clubhouse is an exciting opportunity to be on the ground floor of a new social platform.

What Is Clubhouse?

Clubhouse is an app on your iOS phone or iPad that serves as a real-time audio chat platform with amazing organic conversations happening 24 hours a day.

For many users, Clubhouse is an exciting opportunity to be on the ground floor of a new social platform. (Some people, such as technology industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang, refer to Clubhouse as part of social audio.)

Invitation, please

At this moment, Clubhouse is invite-only for iOS users.

Getting invited has caused a bit of FOMO for lots of want-to-be users. For those of you Android users who are envious that you can’t have access yet, don’t worry … The Clubhouse team is expanding and it’s coming for Android.

Meanwhile, the Clubhouse culture is growing. People are figuring out all the ins and outs of Clubhouse and developing strong business usage strategies.

How to Navigate Through Clubhouse

As you enter the Clubhouse app, you’ll see a list of “rooms” with a variety of topics.

Some rooms are business- and marketing-based, but you’ll also find motivational rooms and special event rooms in which a big name person will come in and be interviewed. At one point, there was even a Broadway production!

Clubhouse is filled with lots of cool things. So, get ready to listen and interact with your voice!

Once you’ve chosen a room, jump in and get the vibe of the room.

If you have a question or want to share some knowledge, feel free to raise your hand. You may be invited up to the stage to chat with the moderators and speakers.

On Clubhouse, you’ll find lots of people sharing their knowledge and expertise with others.

Check out our step-by-step best practices checklist for getting up and running on Clubhouse.

Why Should an Agency Care About Clubhouse?

There are three main opportunities for agencies on Clubhouse:

1. Connections and conversations
2. Collaborations
3. Clients

1. Connections and conversations

The Clubhouse app is all about making connections for both your agency and you personally.

Clubhouse success isn’t about immediate sales. It’s about giving value, dropping knowledge, and developing relationships.

Find a topic you know well

As an agency, look for rooms that have a topic where you can add knowledge or insights, value, and answer questions. Perhaps it’s a room about branding or how to grow your Instagram engagement.

Start engaging

Go into that room, and gauge the room vibe.  If you feel comfortable, raise your hand within the Clubhouse app and ask to be invited on the stage.

Once you are invited up to the stage by a moderator, share your knowledge or ask a question that could benefit the room.

Connect on Instagram or Twitter

While you are talking, people will check out your bio and look at your connected Instagram or Twitter links. If people like what you are sharing and what they see in your profile, you’ll start to grow your following.

Before you know it, people will be connecting with DMs. Spend time nurturing those relationships!

Open a room on Clubhouse

One of the amazing things about Clubhouse is that anyone can open a room on any topic that you want.

All you need to do is create an inviting and intriguing room title and push the open the room button. Then you have the opportunity to start a conversation on anything you want.

People who follow you will get a notification that you have started a room and can quickly join you!

Once people start joining your room the conversation follows. You can choose to speak yourself, interview others, or even treat it like a Q&A session. People love rooms with creativity and interactivity.

Rooms can be pre-planned or occur spur of the moment, and that’s part of the Clubhouse networking magic.

People are looking for connections and amazing conversations, and Clubhouse is the perfect spot to get exposed to people around the world with interests similar to you. It’s those Clubhouse conversations that can help you grow your audience and ultimately presents an opportunity to gain new clients.

Understand the role of the moderator

One of the main components of an amazing Clubhouse room is the moderator. It starts with the person who opens the room, and the person can add additional moderators as they wish. The moderator’s role is key to developing the vibe and the flow of the room.

Moderators control the entire experience.

As people in the audience raise their hand to come up to the stage and ask their questions, moderators are running the room. They welcome people to the stage, introduce experts, suggest that you follow people on the stage, and orchestrate the entire experience.

Many people want to moderate rooms because of the exposure and visibility it gives them. This is a subtle opportunity for agency exposure! Merely by being on stage with a detailed bio will give interested people the opportunity to connect.

As you build your following, realize that everyone basically started off at zero, so most people are trying to build their connections.

Since the Clubhouse culture is really about sharing knowledge, some rooms have three or four or even as many as 20 to 30 moderators who go around the room and give top tips on the topic.

Rooms generally run from an hour or two, but there have been rooms that have run for days.

After your initial explorations and testing in Clubhouse, from an agency standpoint, you need to develop a strategy that will match your current business goals.

Don’t fall down the Clubhouse rabbit hole and waste time

One of the biggest complaints about Clubhouse is how people get completely sucked in and addicted. Having an intentional plan will make your Clubhouse experiences so much stronger and more valuable. Many people are reporting making incredible connections that are naturally leading to new clients and opportunities.

Clean up your social profiles on Instagram and Twitter

As the app stands now,  the only way to further connect with someone you “meet” on Clubhouse (other than following someone) is a DM via Twitter or Instagram.

That is where another whole layer of networking is happening. People are sending each other DMs and taking the relationship-building to the next level. Of course, that means people are looking at your Twitter and Instagram accounts, so spend some time cleaning up these accounts so they maximize your goals.

Follow with a focus

As you spend time in Clubhouse, you’ll also grow to realize that the rooms you see are based on who you follow.

For Clubhouse newbies (yes, we all know who you are because you wear a ? on your profile photo for your first seven days), go and find a few leaders in your industry and follow them. Then look and see who they’re following and follow some of those people.

In an interesting room? Be sure to look around the room and add some of those people.

Also, spend a bit of time looking at people’s followers, as that will help ensure you are seeing a wide variety of types of people. Doing so will widen the rooms you see in your hallway when you open the app. The algorithm will offer you rooms based on who you are following, so if you see too many “make millions” rooms then you are following too many “make millions” philosophy people.

Don’t worry …  It’s easy to unfollow people if you find your hallway is filled with rooms or people you aren’t interested in anymore.

2. Collaborations

Collaborations are another main reason agencies will find value with Clubhouse!

Clubhouse is truly a networking app. It’s important to realize that people are there to actually network.

People want to connect and learn from each other. As these connections occur, collaborations start to form.

In these early days of Clubhouse, the first visual signs of collaboration are when groups of people form to moderate a room, but as you listen to various rooms you’ll start to hear of deeper collaborations.

Get to know the people in the room where it happens

You’ll quickly find by going into different rooms, you’ll start to see some of the same people in those rooms. One of the coolest things about Clubhouse is that everyone has a bio connected to their profile photo. It’s Clubhouse culture to join a room and start tapping on people’s profile photos to read their bios as you listen to what’s happening in the room.

When you find someone of interest, follow them. Doing so adds them to your Clubhouse world.

You’ll find as you follow someone they may follow you back, which provides an opening for further discussions.

Because you can view everyone’s bio on Clubhouse, collaborations don’t have to happen with just the speakers or moderators on the stage.

Look around when you are in an interesting room. Tap on people’s bios. A Clubhouse bio is NOT a dry Linkedin bio. It is NOT a boring, long-winded PR bio.

The culture of Clubhouse has created the practice of using an emoji-filled list with everything from a brief bullet-style work history to your location and how to text or Venmo you. These detailed lists can include almost anything you want, such as where you went to school, what fraternity or sorority you were, listing your favorite quote, or even non-profit.

You can see people’s interests and hobbies and easily find commonalities and opportunities for collaboration. You’ll see people listing their freebies, products, various courses, and memberships you can purchase from them.

From an agency standpoint here’s the opportunity to craft a message designed to attract your potential clients.

Offer something of value in your bio and be sure to connect your Twitter or Instagram account and use something like link.tree to direct potential clients and collaborators to your agency.

In addition to potential collaborations with people from around the world, agencies also have the opportunity to connect with potential new team members for your agency. Some people have even held room specifically trying to find the right candidates for a job.

3. Clients

The third reason why an agency would want to use Clubhouse is for their clients. Clubhouse represents a whole new category of services an agency can offer!

Focus on areas of digital marketing that are that easy for an agency to do (you know, the ones where you can practically snap your fingers or wave your wand and it’s done instantly). It’s those things that an expert, business owner, or even an average person doesn’t have the skill to complete.

They may be able to understand what they want, but they simply don’t have the marketing chops and knowledge to easily create these items.

That is where the opportunity lies. These are the services that you could package and offer to potential clients.

First, Clubhouse has not hit the mainstream yet. Heck, Android users aren’t even on the app yet! We know more people are coming.

Since you are already on Clubhouse, you are the early adopter! You should be going to your clients and telling them about Clubhouse because many of them do not know anything about it.

The fact that you are telling your client about Clubhouse so early puts the spotlight on you and your agency. You are on top of things!

Take advantage of your knowledge and as an agency show your clients the possibilities and explain the potential Clubhouse magic.

What an Agency Can Do for Clients via Clubhouse

Clubhouse feels like the early Gold Rush days. Things are happening quickly within the app, and more and more people are on their way to joining!.

Introduce your clients to this new social audio

Now is the time to get your client into Clubhouse, so they can get comfortable with how things work and start growing their audience. Even clients with small audiences are seeing massive success finding their customer niches. While some rooms have hundreds or thousands of people, many rooms have 10-50 people. Some Clubhouse members are reporting extraordinary connections coming from rooms of all sizes!

An agency’s first opportunity is to introduce your clients to how Clubhouse works. Create a personal quick walkthrough video explaining how the app works while giving pointers for individually relevant Clubhouse business strategies.

Help clients start their funnels

Next, it’s time to get your clients started on their Clubhouse funnels! You can start by helping a client craft their bio.

Some clients are natural when talking about themselves and won’t need help in this area. Others will totally need your services to spice up their Linkedin info! Don’t forget the emojis!

Develop a Clubhouse strategy for your clients

Probably the biggest opportunity for an agency is to help your client develop a Clubhouse strategy that matches their goals.

Figure out what your client wants to talk about and then identify resources to offer to the Clubhouse audience. Once your client’s strategy is determined, it’s time to design the funnel and provide the necessary pieces, such as connecting a .club domain name and a creating landing page to gather email addresses.

Make sure clients’ social bios are up to date

Since Clubhouse offers users the option to link their Twitter and Instagram to their bios, most people are connecting their accounts. This makes your client’s Instagram and Twitter strategies very crucial with this influx of new followers.

Upgrading Instagram and Twitter strategies presents yet another opportunity for an agency!

Manage relationships

Agencies can also help clients tackle relationship management by developing systems to help with follow up and nurturing. As your clients start getting a lot more DMs you can provide workflows, systems, and tracking for them to manage their new contacts.

Additionally, someone on your team also could help reach out to book future collaborations and guests.

Your agency can take some of the pressure of juggling the room management by letting your clients focus on showcasing their expertise and knowledge while your agency provides moderation services.

Monitor Clubhouse conversations for opportunities

Another way an agency can help their clients is to monitor conversations happening in Clubhouse where there could be opportunities to bring your client into rooms.

Your staff can easily ping your clients to come into a room of interest and then add their expertise.

In Conclusion

At this point, it is hard to imagine what the Clubhouse ecosystem will look like in a year. But now is the time to go all-in and be agile enough to maximize all opportunities for your clients and agency!

You can find me, Agorapulse’s Community Manager on Clubhouse at @debmitchell.

I also host #AgencyChat. Join our #AgencyChat Twitter Chat on Thursdays at 2PM (Eastern time) immediately followed by our #AgencyChat Clubhouse where we bring the Twitter Chat conversation over to Clubhouse for a more intimate detailed discussion.

Get started on saving time and energy on your own social media management! Check out our free trial of Agorapulse to help you schedule, track, and measure all your social media efforts.