Is Clubhouse Going to Kill Podcasting?

If I had a nickel for every time somebody said, oh, there's this new technology, and podcasting is dead, I'd be a very rich man.

The latest bright and shiny thing is clubhouse. This is an app that's on iOS only on iPhones. Did you know this? About 70 plus percent of the world is on an Android phone. But what they did is they created what I call the velvet rope. Some people call it the fear of missing out. You had to have an invite-only to get on. everybody's like, wait, wait, you have to do? Did you get an invite? How did you get an invite? Oh, my gosh, what's on the inside?

And I have I've been on clubhouse. I use it every Saturday. And I'm hearing people say, Oh, this is it. This is social audio. Well, what it is, it's like a ham radio. And I don't know about you. But if you ever listened to talk radio I true no call screener, talk radio on Well, you know, radio, remember those. It can go either way very quickly. And I'm not here to poopoo on clubhouse, I've been in some very entertaining, some really some great rooms. And what it is, is you fire up the app, you click on it, and literally a giant list of rooms that you can go in. And you can go in and the moderator can pull people up on stage. They say things and then the moderator can move them down. In some cases, you have multiple speakers up there. There's a whole thing to it. And again, some of the rooms are very cool. Some of the rooms are Well, basically people just trying to get you to buy stuff. Now I don't know about you. I have never purposely tuned into an infomercial. It's not like hey, when does the next ShamWow commercial come on? It's not really what I'm going for, for me. And that's what I want to share with you today. How do I use clubhouse? Well, number one, I go over and make sure you filled out your platform. Because if you say something really tasty, and somebody goes, wow, that person, she really seems to know what she's talking about. They're gonna look at your profile. And in your profile, you can put a link to your Twitter, and your Instagram, but I also put a link to my website, because not everybody's on Twitter or Instagram. And I explained that I'm an author, and I run the School of podcasting and you know, basically, you know,

brag about yourself. And I realize many of us are not comfortable doing that. But that's how you grow on that platform is you say something that grabs somebody's attention. And then the actual connection comes later. So that later has to happen by them knowing where to find you. So people are asking me, Well, do you think the clubhouse is going to take over podcasting? And my answer is no.

Because clubhouse is a live event. You have to be there at three o'clock on Tuesday. podcasting, I can record this now at 1210 on March 12. And you can listen to it whenever you want. The other thing about clubhouse is, it's live. And I see people over there that will get asked a question. And instead of saying, I don't know, that's a good question. They will then spew an answer for a good minute and a half and say absolutely nothing rather than admit, you know what? I don't know. That's a good question. So it's not all great over there.

For me how I'm using it is I'm going over and I'm there to serve my potential audience. I'm not there to pitch. I'm not there to I'm just there to answer questions and show that yes, I can be helpful, hoping that they will then look at my profile and follow me over to podcast consultant.com. Another great use of clubhouse could be Hey, today I'm doing this episode. If you want to continue the conversation, join me, and then clubhouse will give you a link and you could use something like pretty link or whatever you want to do to make that a memorable link and you can invite your audience Now be sure to give them like three or four days from the day you release. And I will say any kind of live platform because, for the record, you could do that on zoom. You could do that zoom and actually see your audience.

The advantage of clubhouse over zoom is one night I was actually cooking eating my dinner because I was muted most of the time, while I was walking around my house was zoom, I'm typically in front of my computer and I could use their app and turn off the camera. And it would really be very close to a clubhouse meeting in that aspect.

Now, another thing I want to point out is I'm not pulling a quibi, if you're not familiar with quibi, quibi was this company that spent billions, billions of dollars, and it failed quickly in less than a year. And kwibi was a short video service. And yet they said, we're not in competition with Netflix, er, people watch Netflix and people, you know, you want them to watch your thing. So yeah, I'm not here to say, oh, podcasting isn't a competitor of clubhouse, of course it is. You only have so much time to listen to things during the day. So I'm not worried about clubhouse because I serve a pretty narrow niche. But you do have to deliver value even more than before, you have to deliver value. Because if somebody goes over to clubhouse, and they're getting something that they can't get from you, they're gonna go over there. If somebody goes over to clubhouse, and somebody is organized, and you're not there going to go over there.

When I was a musician growing up, I played in a local blues band, and we were pretty successful. And somebody would start a news blues band, and they would somebody would say, Oh, you have some competition? And I would go watch them. And I would go, you know what, without being too full of myself? No, no, we don't. And the other thing I did, as a musician is I did things that other bands did not. When we took a break, I would go into the audience and make friends with everybody listening, I would write down their name, I would take their picture, put it on our website, all sorts of fun stuff that other bands didn't.

So am I worried about clubhouse? No, I have a pretty good relationship with my audience. I hope I have a great relationship with you. I'm always looking to hear what you want me to talk about. I think clubhouse could be a great addition to a podcast, use it as a place to connect with your audience.

The other thing to keep in mind is right now clubhouse is free. And yet they have I believe, 10 million people using it? Well, it's not free for that company to have 10 million people using their service. And when it's free, and there are a bunch of people on it, you do know that means you're the product (like Facebook). And from what I hear Twitter spaces, which will be on both iOS and Android is getting ready to release. And my guess is Twitter's going to come into this space and just crush them. I could be wrong. We shall see.

I know there are other ones. There's one called quilt. There's one called chalk. Anytime you have something that gets kind of hot, a bunch of knockoffs Come on. But the great thing about podcasting is you can't stop it. If you have an RSS feed, you can syndicate to the world timeshifted conversation that delivers value that makes them know like, and trust you. And then hopefully, they will buy one of your products or they will join your fight and help you spread your message and I would love to help you do that in the most efficient way. headache free.

Come over let's do a strategy session at podcast consulting.com slash schedule. Let's schedule a strategy session to get you going in the right direction.

Transcribed by otter.ai