All about the Clubhouse App

Before we start this episode of the podcast, I just want to give a special shout out to our sponsors, Hostfully.

Now a lot of you will know.

About Hostfully as being the digital guidebook leaders for hospitality business, but they are also an award winning PMS property management software. Right now you can go to hostfully.com and you can get a two month free trial by putting in Boostly in the promo code when you join.

And everybody who joins get a free.

Digital guidebook but you can also use that code to get two free months on their PMS software. Award winning software, award winning customer service and most of all just top, top people working there. Please do go say hi. H O S T F u l l y.com if you want to go find out how to set up your digital guidebook, I've done a very special video. Boostly.co.uk forward/hostfully. Right, let's get on with this week's episode.

Hello and welcome to the Boost Hospitality podcast. We're in season 10, episode nine and in this episode and we're talking about a new app that is taking the world by storm and that is called Clubhouse. This is a freestyle going off the dumb.

Ready for my close up. Good looking let me tell you. Get more bookings. Oh that'd be nice. Giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah, you're gonna get em hun. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson. Whoa, having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tee is loose leaf Making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you're better but direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

All right, welcome one and all to another episode of the Boostly podcast. My name is Mark Simpson and if it's the first time you have tuned into one of these, I give hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, but most importantly, the confidence to go and get your own booking so you're not relying on booking.com and Airbnb and Expedie to do so for you. So in this episode I wanted to talk about a new app, a new social media channel that a lot of people are talking about right now and that's called Clubhouse. Now if you haven't heard of Clubhouse, it was created back in 2020. It's been live for about six months now, but only in the last six to 12 weeks has it got really popular. And you may have noticed a lot of People maybe in your circles talking about it, because they'll have been talking about it mostly on Instagram or on Twitter or just in WhatsApp groups. And what it is is that at the moment, at the time of recording this, which is the start of January, start of 2021, it is an app that is only available to Apple users. So Android users, I'm sorry, you're not allowed on it at present moment in time, but they are announcing that they are going to be opening up to everybody very shortly. So when you come back and listen, back and listen in the future, whenever that may be, it may be a case that is open up. And the reason why it's proven to be addictive, the reason why it's proven to be so popular is that it is just audio. So there's no algorithms, there's no direct messaging, there's no video, there's no typing, there's no posting, there's no copy. There's none of that is literally an audio app that is not recorded. And you can't even record on your device. You will get banned if you do do so. So the reason why audio is such a powerful form of content to create, it's very similar to podcasts. So for those of you that are listening to the audio version of this on your phone or on your Alexa device or wherever it may be, the reason why audio is so popular, and this is the reason why I personally love podcasts and audiobooks, is because with audio, unlike any other form of content, it is not disruptive. So right now, if you're watching this live with me, I am most probably disrupting your. Your evening or day or whatever, whatever you're doing. So you have to stop to pay attention to what I am doing. And again, when you read a piece of content, you have to stop what you are doing to read it. So whether you're reading a blog post or a social media post, or even an email, you have to stop. But with audio, you can do it while doing other things. That is walking the dog, in the car, in the gym, going for a run, cleaning beds, making breakfast, doing all those things. You can. You can do two things. You can listen to audio, and I do. So, so when I'm driving in my car, I, you know, I'm not really listening to the radio or music. I'll have a podcast on or I'll have Clubhouse on. And this is why Clubhouse is really addictive, and this is why people are paying a lot of attention to it right now. Is that because it's not recorded because you can't catch up on it. People are spending time in there. And let me just show you a very quick screen grab. And this is a screen grab of a couple of the rooms that I've been a part of and hosted myself over the course of the last couple of weeks. So this is what it looks like and this is what a room looks like. So if you're listening to this on the audio version of the boosted podcast on Spotify or wherever, you'll have to go find the video and you YouTube to see what I'm talking about here. But what you'll notice is that with the video, this is what a room looks like and there are rooms and topics about everything. Now, I was obviously part of an Airbnb room here, like a hospitality marketing discussion, but there's loads of different types of discussions that you can have on there. It doesn't have to be just Airbnb related. It can be entrepreneurs, business, got people talking about mindset. What I love about it is that there are people all over the world that are using it. And you can literally have discussions with people about any topic, whether it's parent in football, you name it. There's discussions going on all the time. And because this is a new app and because marketers haven't gone in and spoiled it, it's really unique. And the access that you have right now to some of the biggest names in business is crazy. For example, just yesterday evening, I was in a very small room that got very, very big very quickly with Gary Vaynerchuk. And, you know, for those of you who don't know who Gary Vaynerchuk is, he's a very popular entrepreneur. And to be in a small room with him for that amount of time is very, very rare. You've got people on there like Tim Ferriss and you've got Eric Weinstein, and you've got loads of very important people from the world of business that are spending their time on there. And I've been thinking over the course of the last month that I've been testing this platform. How can hospitality owners use it? How is the benefit that you can get on it? Well, this is a platform that is either going to go one of two ways in six to 12 months. Either it's going to get really, really popular, grow and grow and grow, and more and more people are going to use and it's going to be around here. It's going to be, you know, like Instagram and TikTok, for example. That's Just continually here or it's going to be a platform in six months that people decide that it's not for them. But I believe it's going to go the former. I think it's going to be something that's going to be around because audio is so powerful and so popular and podcasts are, are just getting more and more and more popular. I think this is going to be a real nice addition to the social media networks that are out there. So how can hospitality owners, how can you use this platform to spread the awareness of your business? Well, number one, if you can join so and again at the moment it's invite only. You have to be invited by somebody who is using the platform to join the app, which is a really cool idea. Invite only. If your name's not on the list, you're not getting in and you only. So me personally, I only had two invites when I first joined and I used them and I now have to wait for more invites to let people in. And it's the same for everybody else that's using it. You only get allocated a certain amount of invites to let new people in. And again you have to be an Apple user at the present moment in time. So it's really exclusive that exclusivity feel. And again, because not many people are on there and people are talking about it, this just means that more people want to get in. It's a very clever marketing idea. If you step back and look at what they're doing, the founders, it's a really clever idea and this is why it's getting more and more popular now. How can a host when you, and if you do get on there, how can you use it to your benefit? Well, what I would be personally looking to do is I would be looking to become the local or niche based person of influence. So as I'm always saying, relationships, relationships, relationships. This is how you build your business, this is how you build your online brand from a local level, go and create the relationships with local businesses similar ish to you. And even go and create relationships with, you know, the local delivery drive, drivers with the restaurants, local restaurants, days out, things to do nearer by you, you build those relationships, you build those networks where you can recommend their services and they can recommend yours. And it just makes your life a whole lot easier trying to get direct bookings and people coming for your free or door. You'll just have literally have people always messaging you or saying, listen, I've been recommended to you by a local person and you can do the same Thing on Clubhouse, you can create local rooms. You can create, you know, if, for example, Scarborough based, you would create a Scarborough or a Yorkshire based room and again, you would just start to join in these conversations. You will start to join in the discussions and if nobody's creating these discussions, then what you will do is you can start to create them yourself. So what I'm personally doing on clubhouse from a, from a booster point of view is that I am joining any discussion in and around property. There's not really any hospitality conversations on there. There's not really accommodation marketing conversations, but there are a ton of Airbnb discussions. So what I'm going is I'm joining these room and I'm sharing the tactics on. Listen, you don't just have to rely on Airbnb. I'm giving marketing advice when it comes to Airbnb, but I'm also leaving them with Food for four and just talking about other tactics and tips on how to increase their own bookings, their direct bookings and telling them about PMSS and digital guidebooks. And that's what I'm doing. And I'm also creating rooms and drawing people in with the keyword that's Airbnb and booking.com and Expedia, because people recognize that. But I'm always then given loads of value and loads of tips about saying, well, this is what else you can be doing. So then that's, that's how I'm doing it. But if I, if I was going to put my host hat on, then I would be looking to create either that local niche or, sorry, that local room or that niche room. So again, if, if you're a property that focuses on vegans, or if you are solopreneurs, or if you have got a, a resort where people come away to meditate and all those sort of things, whatever your niche is, I'd be creating rooms around that and creating that discussion. And again, because it's your house, because it's your room, because it's your party that people are coming in on, then you will become the go to. And I talk about this a lot, the go to becoming the go to guy or the go to girl. So the exact same thing about building those relationships. If you can be the person when someone's coming into these rooms and they're inviting you up to speak, or you're speaking about the niche and talking about these topics. And again, it's not overselling yourself. You're not going in just to talk about you and your property and how good it is but if you go in and talking about a topic that you are excited about that is based around, you know, maybe your farm, stay property or whatever you may do, then you will naturally then start. People will start inviting you into the rooms to talk or they'll start joining your rooms when you start to join this discussion. And just the way that the app works because there isn't any links to your website or anything that's built into it, the only two places that you can send people to, one is your Instagram account, two is your Twitter account. So for me, everybody's just going into the boostly Instagram and my Instagram account more and more and more and more people every single day, every single day that I use this app and I speak in a room, more people are following me and reaching out to me on Instagram and then that's where discussions are starting. So again, that's what people will be doing for you. And it's really interesting that they're not sending people to a Facebook page, they're sending people to an Instagram account over sending people to Twitter. Then this is really, really interesting. So again, I think for a lot of people it's re getting them interested in using Instagram or Twitter. So again, Clubhouse is a, is a brand new app for some of you. You may never have heard of this, but what I recommend that everybody starts to do is to look into it and if you are an Android user and when you do get the ability to go on, do go and check it out. If you're an iPhone user, go and download the app and try and get somebo that you know to invite you in and start to use it. I know that there's a couple of people, Liam Carolan, who's been in a lot of same rooms as I have, Kim Willis again, Shop stay accommodation owner down in Devon was spoken. The same room that I hosted yesterday and many more hospitality owners and service accommodation owners and property people are starting to use this. Michael Sorgen, part of STR Secrets, he's using it daily and he's doing fantastic work on it. So again, it's a great platform, one that I recommend and it'd be really interesting to see how this goes over the sort of the next six to 12 months and just to see how hospitality owners can use it. So thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Boost hospitality podcast. We're in season 10, I've got one more episode left in this season and then we're going to close it off. 10 episodes for season 10. Next week is going to be the final one. And in the last episode of the Boost Hospitality podcast, I want to talk about something that is really close to my heart, something that I believe is a really powerful marketing tool that so many people don't do. And we're talking about influencer marketing. So I'll be back next week talking about this for the final episode of season 10. If this is the first time that you are checking out a Boostly podcast, then all you need to do to go and see the whole back catalog. We've got over 100 episodes. Go to boostly.co.uk so b O-O-S-T-L y.co.uk podcast from there you can see everything. A massive thank you to the podcast sponsors which is hostfully also as well. Boostly content creator is now just five pounds a month. Go to boostlycontent creator.com to go find out more. And if you would like to be one of the first people that is going to get the latest news, the latest information about my brand new book that is going to be coming this year, the book Direct Blueprint, then all you need to do is go to boostly.co.uk book B-O-O-S-T-L y.co.uk book. You will be put onto the special pre release audience. You're going to be part of an exclusive group that's going to help me create this book. It's going to be packed full of 100 tips for book direct tips I've been sharing all the way over these past four to five years of running Boostly. Boostly is coming up to its five years of being around and I want to create a book. I want to get it published this year. It's going to be launched properly in Q4 so around about November of 2021 and I would love for you to be a part of it when you join the pre release exclusive group. I've got to get a better name for it. You will get access to all of the behind the scenes details. You will get access to the very special rate that no one else that the special price, the launch price that no one else will get before it goes live on Amazon or wherever else goes live. And also as well you'll be invited into a very special zoom call just for this exclusive group of people. A zoom call where I will go through all of the tips with you on a very special group call that I will do just before the book gets released roundabout November time So it'd be amazing to see as many of you as possible. Boostly.co.uk Book to join the pre release to join the special exclusive group for the pre launch, pre release, whatever I'm going to call it. It's only 99p. 99p to come and join that and you will get special behind the scenes as we go along. Okay, thank you very much for tuning in to episode 9 of season 10. I will be back next week for the final episode of season 10. But for now, have a great day wherever you are in the world.