Why I'm NOT Using Clubhouse to Grow My Business in 2021
I love Clubhouse as a consumer, but it's not the right app for me to create content on.
In this video, I'll show you the reasons why.
We'll take a tour of the app and explain how it works, and I'll also help you to determine whether or not you should use Clubhouse to grow your business in 2021.
Prefer to read? Here is an (imperfect) transcript:
Hey everybody, Maria Wendt here. And today, I'm going to be talking about Clubhouse.
If you don't know what Clubhouse is, it's a social media platform that's audio-based, where you can join a room, listen to the conversation that's going on, participate in the conversations.
And right now, this app is gaining a lot of traction.
Today, we're going to be looking at the app itself, and I'm going to be sharing with you why you may or may not want to use it to grow your business in 2021.
It seems like everybody is talking about Clubhouse right now, but why is it so popular?
Well, it's pretty innovative and there's a couple reasons why.
The most important one is that with a lot of social medias, it's a little bit more, somebody makes a post and a day later, or a year later, or an hour later, you see that post.
But with Clubhouse, you're listening to live conversations, right there as the person is sharing it. It's almost like a live podcast or a live stream, but without the video.
And so, you're getting a lot of live interaction, where with other social medias, they may or may not reply to your comment that you leave, but with Clubhouse, if you're participating in a conversation, they'll reply to you right away.So, it's live and it's low effort.
That's one of the big things that I read on the website of the platform itself, was that it's intended to have conversations without needing to look a certain way or have a big production value.
It's just, here's the conversation. Here's the content. Here's the meat of it.
So in that way, it's very innovative. People love it for that reason.
I'm a visual learner. I'm a visual teacher, and I think the easiest way to really understand and get a feel for the app, is for us to take a look at it.
We're going to do a tour of Clubhouse now.
But, if you've already seen the app, if you're already using it, you can just skip to the next section.
All right. Let's do a quick demo of the app. First thing I'm going to do, is obviously click the app.
Now, the cool thing about Clubhouse right now, I think is one of the reasons why people are talking so much about it, is right now it's invite only.
And that's such a smart marketing idea for the creators of the app. It creates exclusivity, which everybody wants. Everybody wants to be on the invite list.
Everybody wants to have an invite. It gets a lot of people talking about the app in a way that they might not normally if it wasn't invite only.
Assuming you've got an invitation, then what you're going to do is you're going to click on the app, and you're going to see here, the first thing that you see is a lot of different rooms.
These are called rooms, and it's basically a room is a conversation around a topic.
And so you would go into that room.
We'll go into, let's just go into this one, INSTAGRAM Q&A's: Action Blocks, Shadowbans & Stories.
You can see here, if you look on the little bottom part, there's 28 people and seven people commenting.
One of the things about Clubhouse that we have to be careful about, want to be respectful of, is that you're not allowed to record the conversations. I
t's against the terms and conditions of use.
It's important that we're not recording the audio here.
I'm just literally sharing my screen to give a demonstration of the app.
You can see here, as I scroll down, at the top here these are the moderators. They have the little green stars. And then, these are other speakers.
And then, there's people in the room. Those are the people that are listening. And people will talk about the topic. You can listen. You can request to be part of the conversation. It's pretty simple. And then, when you want to leave, you would just click the button that says leave quietly.
Now, if I go over here on the right, which I can do by clicking on my profile, you'll see my bio. I've a very simple bio right now that I just put in there.
Somehow I already have 240 followers. I don't know how, because I haven't created any content on it, but it's probably because a lot of people know me.
And then over here, when I click on the bottom right-hand corner, you see a couple of different things.
The clubs that I'm active in. I'm in two active clubs. You can see that here. And then also, people who are available to chat right now. Some of my friends would be available for us to chat, and what you can do is start a private room of your own.
As we scroll down here, you can just see that there are lots of conversations that are happening right now, whether it's Are You an Intuitive Leader?, Women and Work Life Balance is a Myth, Daily Affirmations.
The topics that I'm seeing here, I'm seeing them because they are topics in the club that I'm in. So, to remind you, I'm in two clubs: Women in Business, and The Club Pod. And so, I'm seeing these topics.
They're curated to me simply because those are the clubs that I've joined. If you're a sports guy, or you want to learn about health, or whatever it might be, you can join different clubs.
Most of you guys who are watching this video will have already downloaded the app Clubhouse, but that's a quick walkthrough of what it looks like and how it works.
Now, I want to talk a little bit about Clubhouse, and who's it for, who's it not for?
Should you be using it to grow your business? These are the things I've been asked a lot about, and I wanted to talk about it because I think it's really important. It's an important conversation to have.
I think I want to start out by saying the app, Clubhouse, is amazing. It's a phenomenal app.
One of the things I really loved about it, is it let me get into rooms where I never normally would be.
I really got to listen to conversations that I normally would never get to listen to it. It was just amazing. I felt like fly on the wall in these really cool rooms. And a lot of people feel that way. That's why it's so addictive.
People are really, really loving it, because as a consumer it gives us access to rooms, and conversations, and topics that maybe we would never get to have access to, and I really found it fascinating.
So, as a consumer, I love the app.
I love the app. It's very addictive.
As a creator, I'm choosing to not use it to create content in 2021 to grow my business. I'm not choosing to create content on Clubhouse in 2021. And I want to talk about why, and I think it's important to note that this is my opinion.
We'll go into this in more detail, but it's really important that you don't walk away and say, Clubhouse is a bad app, or people shouldn't use Clubhouse. That's not the point that I'm trying to make.
The reasons why I'm not using Clubhouse are as follows:
#1: As an introvert, it's draining to me.
To create content on there, live, is very draining to me.
For me as a content creator, as somebody that's creating content to grow my business, it's just very tiring.
I have been in business long enough and worked a lot of platforms to know that if you have resistance towards something if you're drained by something, you will struggle so hard to build traction simply because you aren't aligned with it, simply because it doesn't light you up, simply because you not vibing with them.
And I think that the big takeaway that we're going to have from this video, is that you don't have to do something because everybody else is.
If everybody else is growing on a platform, just because they are doesn't mean that you should be. I think it's really important that we consciously and intentionally evaluate where we're spending our time as business owners.
And if something isn't lighting you up, if something isn't making you happy, you can switch it.
You officially have my permission to switch it up and only do the things that you love, because what I've learned over the last eight years is that when we get entrepreneurs, creating content on platforms they love, doing activities to grow their business that feel really good to them, they thrive.
I know that for me, as an extreme introvert, it's hard to believe, I know, but I'm an extreme introvert.
I really need a lot of alone time.
I get easily drained by people.
And so knowing myself, that's the first reason why I know that, that's not going to be a good platform for me to grow my business on.
If you're an extrovert, or you're loving creating content on Clubhouse, do it.
That's the main thing, do it, because it's not a bad business strategy at all.
But, I think that what I'm trying to communicate with this video, is that if you aren't feeling it, you don't need to have FOMO.
Don't make business decisions because you have a fear of missing out.
#2: Clubhouse doesn't play to my strengths.
I think I do really, really well in video.
I have a very warm personality. I love video.
I was a communication major. We did a lot of stuff with TV.
And so, I'm very comfortable on camera, and that's a strength of mine.
And so, I want to choose business strategies that play to my strengths, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.
These are things that play to my strength because video, because you can see my face and my personality.
But, a lot of people prefer audio. They like podcasts. Clubhouse is perfect for you. If that's the case, then do that.
I think the big takeaway here with every point, and the thing that we're going to keep honing in over and over again, is that if you're loving it, if it works for you, do it. But if you're not, that's okay.
That's what I want you to know, is that it's okay.
You can still be successful and not be on Clubhouse. Let's bring some intentionality into our strategy.
For me, the second reason why I'm choosing to not use Clubhouse, is that audio doesn't play to my strength the way video does.
Video is a bigger asset for me personally, and so I want to keep doing video.
#3: Everybody's rushing to Clubhouse right now.
They're in just absolute masses. Everybody's rushing the Clubhouse, and it's an addictive app. I get why, and you have a little bit of FOMO. I get why. It's a great app.
Don't get me wrong. It's an awesome app with a lot of amazing people on there.
But, I've been a slow mover, because when I put my energy into things, I pour my energy into it.
And I don't want to do that when I'm unsure of the foundation.
For example, I'm just getting into TikTok now. TikTok has been popular amongst business owners for about a year. But, I wanted to see the staying power of TikTok, because I'm going to pour all my energy into something, I don't do things half-ass, I do them full assed.
And so, if I'm going to pour all my energy into a platform, I want to make sure it's going to stay.
And those of you who've been in business long enough will know what I'm talking about.
Remember the Periscope days from a long, long time ago?
People poured their energy into Periscope, and then the platform went away because a bigger platform bought it out and added new features.
I don't know that, that will happen.
I don't know. We'll see. I kind of will like, I have a personality trait where I like to observe where something is going, and make sure that whatever I'm building is on a really, really solid foundation.
If a bigger player incorporates Clubhouse and as now, it's a feature, to me, there's a lot more established platforms where I could have been pouring in my effort. So we'll just see.
The good thing about being a fast mover, if you do decide to do Clubhouse, is you can gain a lot of traction really quickly as a fast mover.
That's something I give up by being a slow mover. The pro is, when I build something, it's really established and it's built on a very firm foundation. So, it's an opinion.
Again, the thing with Clubhouse is, there's no right or wrong answer. This video is about you deciding what's right for you, and making a conscious decision based on what feels appropriate and what feels aligned for you.
So, if you are feeling like doing Clubhouse to promote your business, do it.
There's tons of resources out there. People are doing great with Clubhouse.
But, if you aren't feeling like it's the right time for you, or you don't feel like you have the right attention, or you feel like you're trying to do a million things at once and you just need somebody to say, hey, it's okay if you aren't using Clubhouse to grow your business right now, that's what this video is about.
Hopefully you loved this video. I really liked creating it. I'm so excited to be back in the swing of things with my YouTube videos.
If you want to, we're going to be posting videos, what is it, twice a week? Two to three times a week, and they're going to be awesome.
I'm really pouring my energy into videos and YouTube, TikTok, all things video this year in 2021. '
So, hit the subscribe button. I'll see you in the next video.
Thank you for joining me.
