This week we focused on Starting a Club, led by our Michele Van Tilborg who delivered a most excellent session, craft fully moderated. We’re super grateful to Paul Baron, Ish Milly, Brandon Lumpkins, Tevin Jackson, Jeff Sass, and Norm Farrar for all dropping in to share their incredible insights and bringing value to our session. Get ready, because we covered a TON of content!
How do we get our Clubs approved?
@paulbarron says to first grow a following and find a niche. What are you good at and what do you know about? Whether you like cigars, scotch, or learning Spanish, there is a club for you. There are a variety of conversations happening all the time. Find one that appeals to you and get in there! Remember, it’s not about the quantity, but the quality.
What are your Top 3 Tips in Starting a Club?
@ishmilly advises that you identify a topic that people are interested in, add value to that topic, and then curate a room of experts around that topic. It pays to have a club of like-minded individuals. In addition, he suggests that you get everyone’s contact info so that you can connect outside of the club and without algorithm interference.
What’s your advice to people new at Clubhouse?
@colin.club, referencing last week’s podcast with @normfarrar he reiterates, “It’s all about content, stupid.” No matter what platform or medium, it all starts with great quality content. Then when you add a good domain, brand, and website outside of Clubhouse, you’re able to connect with people on a more broad basis. He further explains that it’s important to have a website on your Clubhouse profile bio because you can list your schedule, features, event links, store recordings of shows or host a weekly blog. Your website reinforces the club which reinforces your website and ultimately connecting you to the outside world.. think about title tags, for google indexing.
What Are Your Tips When Moderating a Room?
@jeffsass offers the Dos to Moderating a Room. He advises that these points apply to being on a live stage as well as moderating a digital space. When hosting or moderating a room, have a backup. Moderators are in control of the room, opening the floor, bringing in speakers, stacking the topic, queuing relevant questions, and keeping the room on topic. Like air traffic control, this can become a large task for one person, so it is a wise idea to bring in one to two other moderators to help out in a session. Consider keeping notes to stay organized, keep on task and stay informed about your listeners, but also, remember that this is a live conversation so it’s more like improv, not a presentation! A key function to improv is the “Yes and…” concept. Listen carefully and then… What can you add to that to bring us on to the next speaker, a comment or two on your experience, and another point as a segue to bring another speaker on. The listeners and the moderators have the power to contribute, so you’ll need to manage the room. You can choose to be active or passive, you can choose to start with the ‘hand raise’ feature turned off to allow mods to say what needs to be said. Moderators can leverage the audience to see who can contribute to a particular topic, and then switch the ‘hand raise’ feature back on to allow more input and contribution from those listeners and speakers. Finally, a key element to remember is that people enter rooms based on topics, so you want to keep to that topic otherwise someone comes in because your room is talking about Serial Entrepreneur, and they hear ‘baseball’, they’re going to leave…consistently reset the room and steer the topic back to what the room is about.
How do you build out your club presence?
We asked growth hacker @casuallyb who, since Nov 28 has seen a lot of transition in Clubhouse. At first, it was QA style relaxed convo happening, now it’s marketing and entrepreneurship. One big tip in building out your club presence is to allow people to engage with you on Instagram. Another quality tip is to get yourself a .club extension, Brandon cites that the early days of Clubhouse may offer a lot of growth in an unforeseen direction, having a .club extension will bring you a ton of value, similar to having a general club and a club that is more subset and as Colin mentioned, that website can generate a lot of foot traffic and broaden the channel to promote your club and brand.
More key tips from @casuallyb include moderating a room at least 3x a week, which will push your handle to the top of the list for engagement, interactions, and time spent at Clubhouse. Keep in mind that who follows you matters, how you curate your experience matters a lot, so be sure to moderate every day with quality content. Finally, use Clubhouse creatively, think sponsorship, membership, and partnership within clubs. If you do invest in a .club extension, offer exclusive benefits there, promoted through your Club. These platforms can work seamlessly together, through your genius.
What’s the difference between a podcast and coming into Clubhouse?
@normfarrar loves that you can take a one-way conversation (an interview on a podcast, for example), reintroduce people at another time on another platform (Clubhouse), and then open the invitation to have that conversation. It’s not so much comparing a podcast to a drop-in audio platform, but about supplementing the two, creating synergy between them. It’s additional content. Take @paulbarron for example, he takes the info discussed in a session, takes notes, and provides value by allowing people to grab those notes for free. And that is tons of content.
Extras from Our Listeners
@lilroberts: Pick the right domain name, make the investment in the right domain name and then get on Clubhouse.
Kristin: I did hear a tip from another room: make sure you submit with a graphic logo when applying for your new club.
Samir: There are a lot of coaches on here coaching how to coach. I’d love to see actual experts talk about the industry and give the real tools to use in that industry, rather than coaching how to coach. Get industry-specific. Discuss tools and marketing to build whatever business rather than hype people up.
Fernando: You need to sharpen your speaking skills and your moderating skills. Practice practice practice. Find a mentor and invest in yourself.
One final tip from @paulbaron in this respect is to BE AUTHENTIC. If you are looking to grow a following, be that person of value and let the value you give, be the example. Find places where you can add value, and just add value. People will see through the sales pitch and it won’t go very far. We’re all here to learn, we are here to Give to Get.
As always, take care of yourselves and each other out there! We’ll see you again every Friday at 2:00 PM Eastern on Clubhouse!