Eric Siu explains how Clubhouse's audio rooms help marketers build followers fast. He gained 800 Instagram followers from a single session and connected with bestselling author Shaka. The platform has backing from Andreessen Horowitz and faces competition from Twitter Spaces.
All right, so today I want to talk about why Clubhouse is the next big thing. So if you go to joinclubhouse.com, it basically is a voice social app where you can hang out with people. There can be different rooms where you're chatting about maybe podcasts, maybe you're chatting about social media, maybe you're chatting about environmental issues and things like that. And yesterday I was actually hanging out on Clubhouse and a bestselling author came in. His name's Shaka. And I just heard him talking and then you can just Listening to someone's voice, listening to other people talk and engage with each other, you kind of get a sense for who they are. And basically what I did afterwards was I went to him on Twitter, reached out and said, hey, let's get you on the podcast, because I know he's on a book tour right now as well. And so that's a really easy way to build relationships. But what really caught my eye was I'm in this WhatsApp group and someone said that they went on Clubhouse and they gained 800 followers on Instagram. Wow. just by hanging out on Clubhouse, right? And I think, look, if you got something to say, Clubhouse seems like a very viable place to hang out because Shaka, he's got 20,000 followers on Twitter, which is not bad, but on Clubhouse, he's got 100,000, right? So I think it gives you a chance to engage with your fans and also meet other people, right? Because I did my first chat maybe 2 weeks ago, and I actually enjoyed it. And after seeing that, that post where it's like, oh, this thing's actually pretty viral and it might be the next big thing. Maybe I should check it out. And by the way, Twitter's doing something very similar called Twitter Spaces because they probably see, and it looks very similar to Clubhouse. So you might have these social platforms try to kind of just jump in before Clubhouse can do something, right? So, you know, same way how Facebook slowed down Snapchat Stories or Snap Stories. So I think it's a big deal because when someone says that and you see the engagement and people are, I would go into a room and I would come back in maybe an hour or so, the same people are hanging out in that room, the people that are listening. So when you have a very engaged audience like that where it's actually people are listening to a conversation, I think that's pretty special, right? So I want to bring you to my screen over here and you can see this is what it looks like. So, you know, Clubhouse has different rooms, so I might see this one on virtual coworking and, you know, there's people hanging out here. You can see 15 people, 12 are actually talking and You know, oftentimes when you log in, you can pick the group that's interesting to you and just click and join. And then you can also hit explore as well if you're looking for different rooms. And then also, you know, what happens when you enter a room, right? So these are moderators with the little green icon, and then these are other people that are speaking in the room, right? But the idea here is you're sharing a space— a stage— sharing a space— sharing a stage. Kind of like when you— if you have ever spoken at any type of event before, like a panel where you're kind of, you know, you're letting each person speak and you're kind of going back and forth. And letting the dialogue flow, right? And then what happens is people that are following that room, they're gonna end up following you because they, they like what you have to say, right? And that's how you build your audience on Clubhouse. So, you know, this is— I mean, if you're interested in learning more, you can go to, uh, I think it's clubhouseguide.com, and it shows you a lot about how to, how to, you know, create or start rooms. But what I find interesting too is if you look at Clubhouse, what's happening is You know, in the last couple weeks, it's starting to ramp up. You can see it was kind of flat, but now it's starting to ramp up, right? And the people that have backed the company are A-list investors. You got Andrew Chen from Andreessen Horowitz, so they're an A-list investor. And then never heard of this company before, but they've raised $10 million so far. And, you know, I'm encouraged by what I'm seeing, and I think this is, this is, you know, it's always good to get in at the ground floor. When it comes to these new social platforms. I think audio is, you know, the fact that Twitter is jumping in on this, audio is big, right? We have, we're talking about Spotify, you know, really competing in the podcast world. Apple continues to kind of hold, you know, where they're at. And then you have companies like Chartable raising a bunch of money, or raising a good amount of money to bring more transparency for podcast analytics. So, you know, even though people are like, oh, you know, video is higher than audio, I think audio still has a long way to go. You know, the fact that Twitter's taking this seriously and then Andreessen Horowitz put money into this company, it says a lot. And I have so far enjoyed my experience just listening to, you know, authors such as Shaka. I'll have him on the Leveling Up podcast. But again, he's got 100,000. He's got 5 times more people on Clubhouse than he does with Twitter. Very humble guy. Talks about how, you know, how he dealt with life in prison and things like that. So, and then what he did afterwards. So look, And I think yesterday I saw— I think I saw Wiz Khalifa. I think that's how you pronounce it. He was hanging out in one of the rooms too. But they're just having normal conversations. Nobody's trying to, you know, the standard here is not to try to fanboy or fangirl when you see someone or you see a celebrity in there. Just go out there, hang out, treat them like normal people. It's a lot better. So, I would recommend go to joinclubhouse.com and it's invite only right now but I see a lot more people coming through and Yeah, check it out and feel free to add me @EricOSIU, just like I am on Twitter and Instagram. And I hope to see you inside. And final thing is go to levelingup.com to learn more about my book Leveling Up, and we'll catch you later.
