SPI 493: How to Use Clubhouse for Social Media – All the Tips You Need to Make It Worth Your Time

SPI 493: How to Use Clubhouse for Social Media - All the Tips You Need to Make It Worth Your Time

Pat Flynn:
Today on the Smart Passive Income Podcast, we're talking about how to use and how to succeed on Clubhouse. Clubhouse, if you didn't know, has come out during the pandemic to revolutionize audio. It's not podcasting, it's live audio and a way to connect with people, a way to grow your brand, a way to validate ideas. And it's such a really, really amazing platform. I've grown my audience there to about 80,000 subscribers and followers, and there's just so many great things have happened, even though I'm not necessarily on the platform as much as some other people. And today, we have a special guest on, who's been on the show before. His name is Michael Stelzner. You might know him from Social Media Examiner, you might know him from the Social Media Marketing Podcast, or you might know him from Social Media Marketing World.

Either way, as you can tell, he's just completely knowledgeable about all things social media and he's the one who got me into Clubhouse, and I'm quite thankful for that because it's really, really been a game changer. So I look forward to sharing with you, along with Mike, some of the best practices for utilizing Clubhouse, from everything from room etiquette, how to show up, how to stand out, how to massage your bio so people actually check you out and follow through. If you're looking to get podcast guests, Clubhouse is a great way to do it. If you're looking to connect with a mentor, Clubhouse is a great way to do it. If you're looking to promote your brand, Clubhouse is a great way to do it. So let's talk all about it today with Mike. Cue the intro. Let's go.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it's all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now, your host - if he could choose any superpower, it would be the power to change to any superpower - Pat Flynn!

Pat:
What is up y'all? Pat Flynn here. Thank you so much for joining me in session 493 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. And like I said, Mike Stelzner in the house. Let's just cut right to it because we've got a lot of best practices for you up on Clubhouse. Let's go.

Hey Mike, welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thanks for coming back.

Mike Stelzner:
It's awesome to be back, Pat. Thanks for having me.

Pat:
Yeah, no problem. One thing I miss is seeing you in-person. We used to see each other quite a bit. And it's funny because we live really close to each other, but-

Mike:
I know.

Pat:
One of the places where I always saw you every year was Social Media Marketing World, and of course the pandemic has put all in-person conferences on a halt. But I also know that you are somebody who loves to look at the possibilities of things. And I'd love to ask you just to start out before we start talking about Clubhouse, what did the pandemic do? What did it make possible for your business and how did you adjust to the craziness?

Mike:
Well, Pat, I'm sure you can relate to this. You don't know how much work you put into something until you're not doing it anymore and you realize you've got all this free time. Right? And I'm like, "Wow, okay." Not just me, but everybody who works for this company. It was an unfortunate thing that happened because we lost many, many millions of dollars in our main source of income, but what it made possible was explorations of all sorts of new ideas. Clubhouse for sure is a rabbit hole I went down because it happened in December and I didn't have an event coming up in the spring. In addition, I'm now hosting three shows a week. I took over our Social Media Marketing talk show, which I don't think I could have done if I didn't have the conference looming.

And I also obviously didn't have to give a keynote - you know how much work goes into creating an original keynote. So it's just allowed me to explore countless new opportunities. It has allowed to spend more time with my kids and my wife, and it's just been like a magical little blessing. And I know that I'm going to look back next year when we do have the conference and I'm going to say, "Wow, look at all these new things that it made possible." I'm working on some stuff that's not yet public, but it's exciting because I'm a strong believer that when you cut a branch off of your tree, so to speak, it allows the energy of that tree to go into all sorts of new places and new things because that energy and that electricity, if you will, or that money or that whatever, time can be invested in new opportunities.

And man, there's just a whole flood of them that are coming as a result of not being able to have the conference. So we're looking forward to seeing you and everyone else who's used to coming in 2022. Yeah.

Pat:
Well, thank you for that. And that's exciting, it's funny you mentioned that analogy. We had Kevin from Epic Gardening on the channel, and he advised me with my new strawberry plants because I've been getting into gardening, that's one of the blessings that I've found since the pandemic happened was gardening from home. He said, if you plant strawberries, when you get those little white flowers that will become strawberries, snip them off, get them out of there because you want all the energy to be used, to create more leaves and cover more ground, which can give you more strawberries later.

Mike:
There you go.

Pat:
And it's just literally last week. And I was like, "Oh, this is really hard." And I think decisions like this in our business is really hard to do, but it's all for the future. Because I know we're all playing the long game, but I also know for the short game, a lot of people are missing the opportunity that they had at in-person conferences to connect with each other, to get real-time feedback, have real-time conversations. And this is exactly where Clubhouse has been able to come in and fill in a great hole. And you were the first person to introduce me and a few of our friends to Clubhouse. How did you know? You were so early on it and typically I'm like, "Ah, I don't want to get involved with these new things because there's so many of them coming out."

You are that way too, but you just grabbed onto this. How did you know Clubhouse is going to be something to pay attention to when you first saw it?

Mike:
Well, I've been in the social media industry since 2008, 2009 when I started Social Media Examiner, but I've also been an entrepreneur since the mid '90s. And you know something is going to be hot when you start to see a series of things like firing on all cylinders. One of the things that I noticed that Clubhouse, and I got in around December 5th, one of the things that I noticed was it was extremely sticky, which meant you didn't want to leave just like you don't want to leave an event. Pat, you have an amazing event or you had one, and nobody wants to leave. If you can create some sort of an experience that people just are willing to lose time in, that is something that is a very powerful signal.

And that was one of the first things I noticed is that this was a very fun place, especially for people that thrive on interaction, especially for extroverts, which I happened to be. So I just started to notice that, and then I started to be a student of what was in there and I noticed this was this really exciting thing. And I just ended up writing an article in early December that was titled, I think, "Why Clubhouse Might Be the Next Big Social Platform." Now, I don't know if me writing that triggered a series of things for Clubhouse, I'm sure it did because I emailed it to all of our subscribers. But even if I wasn't there and I didn't write that, I don't think things would have changed too much for Clubhouse because most people that went on there found it amazing.

There was a reason why people like you and me and Lewis were spending our evenings on there, because it was actually fun, it was exciting, right?

Pat:
It was really fun. And for those who maybe have heard about Clubhouse but don't know exactly what it is yet, now that we've had a number of months to have with it, how would you best explain Clubhouse to anyone who's listening?

Mike:
Well, if you're familiar with live video, which most everybody is, you go live on Facebook or Instagram, this is exact same thing, except it's just audio. Some people are using the phrase social audio, which I like a lot. And what makes it fascinating is the fact that... The best way to describe it as like talk radio, I think, Pat. I've heard someone else recently call it like the equivalent of talk radio where anybody can start up a room, create a topic and then invite people up to talk about it. But what's different about Clubhouse is that you can choose who you want to bring up on the stage, you can look at the people in the audience or the people that have raised their hands and you can read their bio and select the ones that you want instead of a traditional talk show where you have a pre screener who looks at every person and, what's your question, before they bring them up on the stage.

Really, it's like a talk show, but it's so much more than that. I'm sure we could add a lot to it. But what do you think about that phrase, it's like a talk show almost?

Pat:
It's totally like a talk show, but with an audience there. And to me, Clubhouse, it's almost like a virtual conference in my opinion. They literally call the main area like the hallway and you go into the hallway and then you see different rooms. And when you're going into these rooms, some of them start at certain times, some of them, people start ad hoc, but there's conversations already happening, there's literally a stage at the top of the screen in those rooms, and there's an audience where people can come in quietly, come in and sit and listen. They could raise their hand to potentially come up on stage or you could quietly leave. And it just is so interesting because almost every topic is spoken about now, I'm even in a number of Clubhouse conversations, a lot related to Pokemon now, which is funny.

It started in the business startup space and now it's transcended into everything. It's just so cool.

Mike:
Can I double down on that? I love the idea that it's like a conference, like a big conference where you're walking down the hall and you're seeing all these eclectic different rooms that you can walk into, but what makes it different than a conference is that sometimes there's 20 or 30 people up on the stage. That's what makes it different. And that's the part that's hard for a lot of people to wrap their head around. So you've usually got moderator or a couple of moderators that are in charge and are facilitating a dialogue between lots of different individuals. And that's what makes it really fascinating and social is that anyone, if they happen into a room where Pat is up on the stage with other people, could raise their hand could be allowed to ask Pat and other people that are up on the stage a question and might be able to remain up on the stage.

That's what adds a really fascinating and social dynamic to it. In addition, anyone can make a room. You don't have to be like preselected by the conference people, anyone can create a club. And this is where it's a little bit like Facebook Pages meets Facebook Groups. And that's where it gets really, really fascinating is that when you create a club, it's kind of like your own little private group, which can be public or private, and your profile is like your Facebook profile and you can host rooms just on your profile or you can host them for your club. And that's where it starts to get really dynamic when we start thinking about all the possible business applications.

Pat:
Yeah. And I do want to talk about, okay, well what does this actually do for us? But I do want to mention that there was a moment where, and some of you might remember this word, Elon Musk actually had come onto Clubhouse, which was a huge deal. And there were several rooms and they reached like the room limit. So there were some bleed over rooms and it was just really neat and fascinating. I actually got in the room with Elon Musk and although it was virtual, although he was on the stage talking with the people who were interviewing him and I was in the audience, I didn't have a chance to ask him a question, it still almost felt like I was there with him because it was in real time.

And he was asking the founder of Robinhood, an app that at the time had done some not so great things for their investors, he asked some really hard questions. Man, I really felt like I was there in person. I had another chance, with a room that Daryl Eves started about YouTube. And he had brought Mr. Beast on, Jimmy. And I actually got a chance to ask Jimmy a question. And that was in real time. And I was at home or I think I might've been at Target. It's just insane. So it has that like ability for you to be involved, but also the passive nature of consumption, like with a podcast, unlike a video or a blog-

Mike:
Yeah, that's the key part, because some people are like, "Well, why couldn't you have just done that with live video? And he could have, right? Elon or Daryl could have done that with live video, but the difference is that you can close your phone and listen to it like a podcast, which you can not do with video. And that's what's cool about it. And the other of it is, you don't have to be camera ready, which makes it really easy for anybody to just pop into the app and listen to it. It's really like a live podcast in that regard.

Pat:
That's so true. So for the business owners and entrepreneurs here who are listening, okay, a new social app, cool way to connect, audio only, I get it. What could this ultimately do for us? What is the results that we get from it?

Mike:
Yeah. First of all, it's an awesome way for you to connect with your audience, and this is really important. Anybody who understands marketing understands that people transact with you when they know you and they like you and they trust you. And Pat, you're a podcaster, you've got multiple podcasts, I have multiple podcasts. That is a on-demand, one-way medium. This is a two-way medium. Just like you said earlier, you felt like you were there in the room with Elon. You can't feel that way when you're listening to a podcast. So this connects that relationship that normally only happens at a conference. You start to get to know people and interact with people that are up on the stage, not the Elon Musks of the world, but the everyday people.

And all of a sudden, these people get to know you and they begin to check you out more and they begin to talk about you. And this is a really, really important marketing angle. I also know it leads a lot of small businesses into business opportunity because when you click on someone's profile, whether you're speaking on the stage or not, people are on Clubhouse for a long time and they got nothing better to do than the stare at their screen. So they start clicking on these profiles and they check these people out and then they click over on Instagram or Twitter and they start private messaging these people, "Hey, tell me more about what you do."

And it's a great way to generate leads. It's a great way to discover talent. If you're looking for great talent on your podcast, it's also a great way to experiment with new content ideas. So if you are a video person like you are Pat or me, or you're a podcaster, and you want to try out a couple of topics to see if there's an audience or your audience is interested in this, these aren't recorded, so this is a great way to see whether there's resonance. And if there is, maybe that's a signal or research signal that you could do more of the costly content, which is the video, for example. Just a couple of thoughts.

Pat:
No, those are great. And those are exactly why I use the platform as well for connections. So the ability for, if I hear somebody on stage, I don't even need to be on the stage with them. Every profile has, or if people set it up correctly, it has also their Twitter and Instagram profiles. I can't privately message somebody inside of Clubhouse, but I can easily click on their Instagram profile and then send them a direct message. It might say something like, "Hey, I really loved when you talked about this," or, "Hey, what you said was really interesting. I have somebody who I know can help you," and I can start to build a relationship and actually provide value in that way.

And I've noticed it on the other end, when I'm on stage, I start sharing some knowledge, I often get a barrage of messages from people who are looking to connect. And some of those are obviously people who are in it for themselves and other people are in it to help me. And I appreciate that. And so definitely utilizing the bios and the profiles to go and make connections is huge. I love Clubhouse for exactly what you said, which was experimentation, to go in in a live setting, just to get some immediate feedback, to share a little story or a presentation type thing, and then get people to ask questions about it. That helps me fill in the gaps for the blog post I'm going to write or the podcast episode I'm going to do more formally or even the questions that needs to be answered when I'm going to eventually make that course or write that book.

Wow. What an amazing opportunity to take all this knowledge that other people have, put it into a room and then be able to utilize that.

Mike:
Yeah. It's kind of a blank slate, whatever you can imagine is possible. That's kind of crazy. We've seen people do musicals on there, which I don't know if you saw, but I saw it.

Pat:
I didn't see the musical. I missed out.

Mike:
Yeah, there's some musicals. The Lion King musical was on there and then there's also been comedy shows on there, there's been morning news shows. Anything you could possibly imagine that you can do with your voice could be done on the platform.

Pat:
That's cool. What are some business-specific applications that you've seen people do?

Mike:
Yeah. Let me tell you what I do because I think that's easiest one. So every Saturday morning, typically at 9:00 AM Pacific, noon Eastern, I go live on Clubhouse and I invite a couple of people from my world and we have a topic. For example, last weekend I invited Mari Smith and I invited Jay Baer and we talked about marketing trends and we had 200 some people in the room. I spent the first 30 minutes asking them a couple of questions. Like each of them, I asked, what's the big marketing trend that you see going on? And then I added my voice in there. And then I say, "What's the threat?" And then at about the 30-minute mark, I brought up people from the audience and we went for another hour and we just answered Q&A.

Everybody had an amazing experience, it got tweeted all over the place, Jay and Mari thought it was an amazing experience because it was just serendipitously ,the majority of it, we had no idea what was going to happen because we were bringing up people from the audience, but it was a magical experience and I've been doing this every single week since December. And it started up a new show and it's something I do for fun on Saturday mornings when my family is sleeping. And what does it do for my business? Well, it allows me to show up more for my business, because most of the content I produce is not live, it's prerecorded. And this just gives me a great chance to like, try out stuff. And it gives me an opportunity to try out new talent.

I have discovered new people on this platform that have come on my podcast and are speaking at some of my online upcoming events that we have going on. So I use it really to just get myself out there a little bit more and to watch trends also. I noticed when news breaks, sometimes people go on there and spin up a room so I can go on there and see what are people talking about and get the pulse of the industry.

Pat:
Wow. That's another huge factor for sure. Let's talk about our friend Cliff. Cliff is another amazing user of Clubhouse. He's in a mastermind group with us and he's been on the show many times before.

Mike:
Cliff Ravenscraft. Yep.

Pat:
Cliff Ravenscraft. He uses it and he doesn't get hundreds of people into his rooms, but it's just as valuable. In fact, he's told us a couple of stories in the mastermind groups about moments where he's had just like four or five people in there, but then he's making these incredible connections on a very personal level, which again, like you said earlier, couldn't happen if it was just a one-way conversation on a podcast, right?

Mike:
Yeah. And he's a coach. I see a lot of coaches, a lot of consultants and a lot of agency owners going on there and just sharing insight and wisdom, knowing full well that some of the people in the room would be just like if they spoke at an event. When you sell yourself as a knowledge expert and you go to an event, you do it so that you might pick up some clients. So a lot of these people are doing the exact same thing, but they're doing it on Clubhouse. I've also seen people when they're in launch sequence, they'll bring people on Clubhouse - like I'm going to be part of a Clubhouse room tonight that's related to TikTok, and I'm one of like seven or eight panelists that are going to be part of this two-hour thing. And this person is launching a new TikTok course.

So there's a lot of ways that you can just use it as an alternative to live video because it does have that coolness factor to it. Now, we should state, as of this recording, it is only iOS. Soon it will be open to the world, but right now it's restricted only to Apple customers.

Pat:
Right, right, right. By the way, is that TikTok course from Keenya?

Mike:
Yes. Keenya Kelly. Exactly.

Pat:
Keenya is awesome. She was here on the show talking about TikTok and reels not too long ago. So everybody go check out that episode, we'll put it in the show notes. I'm glad to mention her. She's awesome.

Mike:
And by the way, like Keenya, I knew because I had her on my podcast, but I got to know her really well because of Clubhouse. And I also think Clubhouse is one of those magical things where you get to reconnect with old friends that you maybe haven't seen in a while because the social platforms repressed them. Like you might be active on social platform X or Y, but you're just not seeing the stuff from your friends that used to be really close to. And all of a sudden, you're on Clubhouse and you see, oh, so-and-so's on Clubhouse. Derek Halpern reached out to me because we saw that we were both on Clubhouse and we started messaging each other. There's so many levels of dynamics that you can do with Clubhouse that are hard to wrap your brain around, frankly.

Pat:
There is a lot, for sure. And a lot more coming. The founders are very, very open and honest and authentic and open with sharing what's coming. It's been really cool. They have these town halls every Sunday, I think, with what's coming in what the news is inside of Clubhouse.

Mike:
9:00 Pacific every Sunday.

Pat:
Look at that. Perfect. So for people who are listening, who are like, "Okay, I want to get in, where do I even begin? What should I focus on to start utilizing this platform in the best way possible?" Or maybe Android users once it opens up. How do we best utilize this fast?

Mike:
Okay. Step one is if you're starting from total scratch, I have a couple of YouTube videos on my YouTube channel that will help keep bringing you up to speed because you have to... It's got a little bit of a learning cycle, but I think it's SocialMediaExaminer.com/ch. Maybe you can test that out, Pat, while we're talking, just to see if that pops up.

Pat:
Sure, I'll test it out right now.

Mike:
But there's two different videos that I did, each one's about 15 minutes long, which will help you understand how the whole ecosystem works. But in the beginning, you want to poke around and you want to understand the culture of the platform. One thing you should know is that it's not a platform where you just get up and you start pitching yourself. For example, if you're in a room and you raise your hand you get brought up, you don't want to say, "Hey everybody, my name is Pat Flynn and I'm the world's top expert in smart passive income and I've got this blah blah, blah." That's just not going to be looked good upon because your bio is supposed to do that. Everybody clicks on your bio.

So instead, you just want to ask a great question or provide a valuable tip. You have to be patient on the platform because typically you're in rooms where there's a lot of people up on the stage and it might take a while for someone to get to you. So if you don't have time, it might be something you want to proceed with caution. I would recommend you spend at least a week or a couple of weeks just trying out what it's like to go into different rooms. Some are going to be absolutely garbage, but remember, it's the same on all the platforms. If you go into some groups, they're garbage on Facebook. If you go into some YouTube channels are horrible. You want to look for the good ones.

If you want a really good one, you should check out mine because I've been refining my craft for like four or five months, but look what others are doing. And then once you get to the point where you're ready to get into a room, I've got some tips I can add as well.

Pat:
In a minute, in a minute, because number one, SocialMediaExaminer.com/ch does work. So go there. And number two, very important before you start getting involved, we need to doctor up our profile. It is so important on Clubhouse. It's interesting because I didn't think it was going to be important because on all these other social media platforms, the bio on Twitter, the bio on Instagram, it's like, "Okay. You only have so much room to work with. No, this is like so important on Clubhouse. Do you have two or three tips for how to make our profile stand out?

Mike:
Yeah. First of all, it's search indexable on the platform, so you want to bulk some of those keywords right upfront. It's funny because like my name is Michael Stelzner, but I go by Mike a lot and some people on the platform were searching for Mike Stelzner and they couldn't find me because my name is Michael. So what I did was I wrote social media marketing geek Mike Stelzner, founded Social Media Examiner. So what I did there is I created a keyword thing there. Because I had Social Media Examiner and my other first name, not Michael, but Mike, so that when people were searching for me, they could find it or when they were searching for Social Media Examiner. People use emojis a lot, I don't know if you did this Pat, but emojis help, and you can paste those emojis in there.

There's an article on Social Media Examiner, which I will look up in a minute, there's a lot of cool tools that you can use to help you with your picture, and also with your bio on the platform. There's a whole ecosystem of third-party tools just like there has been with Twitter in the early days. I think it's wise to put topics that interest me into your bio because it sends a signal when you're in a room that, hey, maybe they ought to bring you up on stage, because remember, when you raise your hand and you're in a room you're not the only one that's raised your hand, and the moderators get to choose who they bring up on the stage. And as long as your bio and your picture seem to match, well that's very important.

You can change your bio by the way, you can have different... Pat, you can have the Pokémon bio when you go into Pokémon rooms and you can have the business bio when you go into business rooms and you can swap them, you just have to paste them in and out.

Pat:
Yeah. I do that because when people start to hear you on stage, they're going to click on your profile to learn more about you, or you might even have people check out your profile before bringing you on stage because they want to make sure it's going to be a good fit. So you really want to make sure it works. Starting your bio at the top, remember you have a little bit of room before a person has to click to then see the rest of it, so make sure that first sentence is something related to what people are going to be interested in. If you just make it all about yourself upfront, it can work against you.

And I love to use the bottom part of my bio for more personality stuff. I even mentioned that I'm like the number one Back to the Future fan and like all these kinds of things that are about me, that no aren't at the top, but make me seem more human and personal.

Mike:
Yeah. And don't forget to connect those Twitter and Instagram accounts because like I mentioned earlier, because they can't private message you if you don't have that connected. If you Google 20 plus Clubhouse tools for marketers, you're going to find a really good article, we wrote it at Social Media Examiner that has a bazillion and cool little tools that makes it easy for you to jack up your profile in a good way. So that might be something useful for everyone who is listening.

Pat:
Cool. I like it. And you have a lot of room to work with, way more than really any other platform.

Mike:
Yeah, exactly. Because most platforms you have like 200 characters if you're like... This is like practically a blog post, if you wanted.

Pat:
Yeah, essentially. Now, let's talk about getting into rooms and what's the etiquette in there? How do we maximize our efforts and show up?

Mike:
First really important thing is when you raise your hand is to hit the Mute button when they bring you up on stage because this is not intuitive for a lot of people. So if you're brought up on stage, don't say, "Ah, I got called to the stage." How many times have you been in a room where that's happened?

Pat:
Every time I go to a Clubhouse.

Mike:
So be aware that you're unmuted when you're brought up on the stage and don't drop any crazy language. Other best practices are just to wait your turn, because just because you brought up on stage doesn't mean you're going to be next. Sometimes you can just leave. I've been brought up on the stage and I haven't been called on in a period of time and I got to go. And sometimes you have to understand in some rooms they're bringing you up on the stage just because they're trying to get a lot of people up on the stage. Other cases, they're bringing you up on the stage because they call you out.

So if you're someone who's known in a particular industry and you go into a room, someone might say, "Hey, Pat Flynn's in the room." You've had that happen. Right, Pat?

Pat:
Yeah.

Mike:
"We'd love you to come up."

Pat:
You will get invited on the stage, you're not just randomly put there, but it'll be like, "Oh, Michael Stelzner is inviting you to be a speaker."

Mike:
Yeah. And you can accept it or deny it and it's totally cool. What else? What am I forgetting here? That's the basics when you're just in someone else's room. We can talk about what it's like to spin up your own room if you want to because there's lot of cool... Oh, one of the things you might want to do: if somebody prearranges with you to co-host a room with you, which a lot of people do - I've done this with you, you've probably done this with others, Pat. This is where you can do something really cool, which is to pin something in your Twitter stream. For example, if you're going to be in a room and you want to mention a cool video or resource that you've created, you can say, "Hey, everybody, I've pinned it over on Twitter," because there's no links inside of Clubhouse.

And there's no easy way to do this except for pinning a tweet. And this is really, really valuable because it's super easy to just go on Twitter and pin and unpin a tweet. If you know you're going to be in a room, and you are one of the main attractions of that room, you could just simply have whatever you want pinned up as a tweet, and that way, nobody needs to type it into URLs at all, they can just click on that tweet and they're off to the races.

Pat:
I like that. I like that a lot. How does one who maybe is a little bit more shy or introverted get a chance to speak when there are loads of people and there's just a lot of, I don't know, alphas in the room?

Mike:
Don't go into those rooms is my advice to you in the beginning, if you want to speak, because start out by going into the rooms with just a few people, if you're really just experimenting. Or reach out to a couple of your friends and say, "Hey, let's do a room together," so you're not all by yourself. That's what I would recommend because it is overwhelming.

Pat:
And then you can take turns because sometimes I'm in a room and I'm a little bit more shy, so I have to be like, "Oh wait, can I talk really quick? Can I answer that question?" And then I'll have the room silence so that I can talk. That's the hard part about this is we can't see each other so we can't signal like, "Okay, I'm next or you're next or whoever." Sometimes that's a little bit difficult.

Mike:
Well, I've come up with a cool strategy on that if you want. Here's what I tell everybody: when you are working with a couple of your friends, what you do is you just tell them to mute and unmute for a couple of seconds, because when you unmute, it shows a little, I forget what that symbol is, but there's some sort of a mute symbol that disappears temporarily when you're on mute. What I do is whenever I'm hosting a room with a couple of my friends, if they want to say something, I just tell them to unmute for a couple of seconds, because etiquette, this is important, to always mute yourself when you're on the stage when you're not talking, that's what is expected. And that's really important, we should have mentioned that earlier.

But when you want to say something, if you unmute for like three seconds and mute yourself, most good moderators will know that there's a signal there that so-and-so wants to say something. And if they're really paying attention, then they're going to say, "Hey, Jane, did you have something you wanted to add?" And another thing you can do is applaud. And applause is something fun, you just unmute and mute yourself very, very rapidly. But these are little things that have become cultural norms in the ecosystem of Clubhouse in the same way that hashtags in the beginning on Twitter were not a cultural norm and then eventually became a cultural norm.

Pat:
Great, perfect. That's a great solution. I think start another room and then... Yeah, let's talk about starting your own room. How does one do that and make sure it's set up properly so that we can get the most out of it?

Mike:
There's two ways to spin up a room. Number one is the, I'm just going to click the Room button on the bottom and start up a room and just hope somebody shows up. That is the riskier way to do it, but if you're in a mood where you just want to try it out, nobody might show up, somebody might show up. The better way is to schedule a room. And if you schedule a room, you just click on the Calendar icon at the top of the app and you can pick a date and a time, you can title it however you want, you can retitle it later, you can change the description of it. And then what's cool was when you schedule a room, Pat, you're given a link.

And when you're given that link, you can share that out to your friends, you can add them as co moderators in the room or co-speakers. You can share that link on social platforms, you can email that link to your friends, your customers, or your prospects. I prefer everybody schedule a room because it also gives you more exposure in the app, because some people will see that room on the calendar under the For You section where they would never ever see it maybe in the hallway. Have you ever scheduled a room Pat?

Pat:
I have.

Mike:
Have you ever spun up a room spontaneously?

Pat:
I have done that too. You get way more people who preschedule it.

Mike:
Yeah. It's the scheduling of the room that allows you to do all these cool things.

Pat:
Also, I think what happens when you schedule a room, it forces you to go, "Okay, well, what is this really going to be about? What do I want to talk about?" You add it into the little description. And that just helps make the topic and the discussion much more clean, much more precise for people who either come in knowing it's going to be there or they find it randomly.

Mike:
Here's the thing, when you start up a room, if nobody's there, you don't need to talk. This is not like live video where you act like people are there. I went into a Guy Kawasaki, his very first room and he was dead silent. He couldn't figure out how to unmute himself. So I ended up messaging him and then I ended up spinning up a room with him, helping him understand how it all works. And now, Guy just goes with ask-me-anything rooms. And Cliff, our friend, Cliff Ravenscraft has done this as well. And he just uses it as a way to just interact with his audience and do fun stuff. But Guy's definitely someone who's not shy, you know what I mean? And is willing to just do whatever comes his way. But yeah, I would definitely schedule a room.

You can always change the schedule, you can always remove the room. And I think that's the best way to get started. And then I would also think about like, "All right, what are some basic things that I can do as people come into the room?" Some of the basic things you want to do is in the beginning, welcome people into the room as they just show up, "Hey Jack. Hey, Jill. Welcome. We're super excited you're here. Here's what we're going to be talking about today." You don't want a lot of dead airtime, just like you don't when you're live on a social media platform, because people have choices and they might've just popped into the room because they saw you were live or they got a notification.

So, the moment people start showing up in the room, what you could do is say, "This is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about Clubhouse. And by the way, do me a favor," and you can tell them to hit that plus sign at the bottom of the room and you can tell them to share it out on the socials or to invite their friends in. And it's really easy to do that, and you just tell them, hit that plus sign, and then they'll see some options where they can share it out. And then what you can do is just kill a little bit of time, but not a lot of time, you want to get started pretty quickly.

And ideally, you just start telling people, "Hey, it's just me today, and I would love you to raise your hand if you're interested in coming up on stage and asking a few questions. What I'm going to do is ask you all to mute yourself. I'm going to go in the order that you raised your hand, and I'm going to politely send you back to the audience when you're done asking your question." And you can easily send anybody up on the stage back to the audience, or you could say, "Hey, Pat, you've provided so much value. I'd love you to stick around." We both have experienced this, where you've been in a room and you just asked the question but they loved your response a little bit and they offered you the opportunity to stick around. And that's the serendipitous nature of Clubhouse.

Be prepared, it's really hard to end a room. What's the longest room you've ever done?

Pat:
Probably about three hours. I know that's on the lower end of what people have done.

Mike:
And what's the shortest room you've ever done?

Pat:
Probably 10 minutes.

Mike:
Really? Is it because nobody was there?

Pat:
It was because I had to go, honestly.

Mike:
Okay. You started a room and you shut it down 10 minutes later?

Pat:
Yeah. I left because I had an emergency, but people who were there who were on stage were, and I'm very grateful for this, they took over. I offered them moderation and then they kept it and I wasn't able to come back in, but it was still open for another hour after that, which is kind of cool.

Mike:
Yeah. It's hard to do a Clubhouse room in less than an hour unless you're super intentional, because once you start getting into the flow and the conversation starts flowing, there's going to be so many people that have questions. I tend to try to keep it to 90 minutes max, just because I don't want it to take up my whole day, but I've been in rooms for three or four hours, and it's crazy. But the good news about Clubhouse is as long as you've got other people up on the stage, you could be eating food while someone else is talking, you could be using the restroom. You could say, "Hey, Jane, you're in charge, I'll be back in 15 minutes. I got to deal with something. I've got somebody at the front door."

Or you could just private message them off the platform. That's what's really cool about it is that you could do a lot of cool stuff with it. You could use nice podcasting equipment, by the way, we should probably mention that for all our podcaster friends, you can hook your RODECaster into it.

Pat:
Yeah. I use my AirPods just because I'm usually on the go when I'm doing a Clubhouse situation, but you're right, you can use your RODECaster Pro, you can plug it in and go through Bluetooth and whatever. We won't get into the technicalities of that, but you can get super pro with it too, which begs the question... I do want to cover the idea of moderating a room with multiple speakers. How do we do that? Our good friend, Mark Mason is super pro at that, I know you are too, but I do want to ask you about recording. You had mentioned that these things are not recorded, but what if a person wanted to repurpose some of these conversations? Are they allowed to? What's okay or not okay?

Mike:
Yeah. Here's what the terms of service say. If you get permission from everybody who's up on the stage, you can record. So here's what you can do. You can pre-arrange a panel and tell everybody, "Hey, are you okay with me recording?" And then what you do is you stop recording once you do the live Q&A. When you do that, nobody needs to know you were ever recording. What other people do is they'll put the word recording and they'll put like a red dot up in the title, and then they'll every few minutes remind people, "Do not raise your hand unless you're willing to be recorded." That's one way to do it

I would say most people don't record what's on the platform because it's not easy to record what's on the platform, you would have to have a RODECaster to do it easily. The app warns you that you're violating terms of service if you do record, so you just have to be careful, you don't want your account to be shut down. But if you plug it into a RODECaster, which again is technical, there's no way for them to know that you're actually recording it. I like the idea of generally not recording, but there are some circumstances where I want to record. Like I created an article and I was sourcing content from the article and I wanted to be able to properly quote everybody I interviewed, so I told them that I was recording.

So that's just my take on what you should do, but I don't think the founders... I've heard that the founders are thinking of adding a recording feature, but I don't know exactly where they're at and if that's going to happen.

Pat:
Yeah. True. And there are other plans too, like a tip jar or a place for people who are in the audience to offer like a Super Chat on YouTube or something where the audience can-

Mike:
Now, that is already rolled out.

Pat:
Oh, that has rolled out.

Mike:
That has rolled out.

Pat:
Oh, no way.

Mike:
And you can go under your profile and you can just turn on like, Accept Money. And then you connect your Stripe account and then people can tip you. I don't know if you remember, but Cliff made his first five bucks or whatever, because somebody did that.

Pat:
Oh, that's right.

Mike:
But yeah, it has rolled out to a lot of people. I don't think the brand-new people on the platform, like if you sign up today, you're not going to get it today. You go into your personal profile, you click on the gear, and in the upper right-hand corner, I think I'd have to look up exactly what the words are, but it says like money or something like that. It's called Payments. That's what it's called.

Pat:
It looks like you have to connect like a Stripe account or something.

Mike:
That's exactly right. And I don't know if you have to set up a personal Stripe or use your business, but Stripe is what's the payment processor. And what's cool is 100 percent of the revenue is going to the creators.

Pat:
Oh, that's neat.

Mike:
The person that tips pays the transaction fee, so it's like on these other Eventbrites and stuff where if you want to give five bucks, then you're going to pay slightly more than five bucks to cover the transaction fee.

Pat:
That's cool. Because I know on YouTube, for example, Super Chat, YouTube takes 30 percent of that, which is huge.

Mike:
Yeah. So people can make good money, potentially. I'm not there for that, but some people, it could be a really powerful opportunity for them to make some money.

Pat:
I'm also thinking about charity-related events, things like that could be really cool and exciting. Okay, awesome. Oh, let's talk about to finish up, moderating room. When you get, not just you up on stage, but a few other people, it can get out of control. How does one best moderate a room full of speakers?

Mike:
First, control who is the moderator. I like to be the only moderator in the room, or if I'm going to make someone else a moderator, we're going to agree ahead of time, I'm going to be the one that's going to make the decisions about who comes up on the stage and who doesn't come up on the stage, because rooms can get rapidly out of control if you have a lot of different moderators because they all have the same powers, which is to mute and unmute people, to bring them up on the stage and to send them off the stage. So the first thing is to just agree who's going to be the person in charge. The second thing is to set the ground rules.

Typically, at the start of any room, I would say, "All right, everybody, this is how this is going to work. I'm going to ask a question and we're going to round robin it, or I'm going to call your name. And I would love you to answer the question. And if you have something to add, just unmute yourself for a couple of seconds and I'll watch for it." That just allows a really, nice fluid experience for the audience. Cool stuff you can do as a moderator is you can do polls. You can say, "Hey everybody who's here in the room. I just would love to bring all of you back that are out walking, pull out your phone real quick."

Because remember, this is like a podcast almost, "And pull up the app. Raise your hand right now if you happen to have a podcast. Let's say we're doing a room on podcasting, and boom, "Okay. It looks like a third of you happened to have a podcast. All right, everybody lower your hands." And then we get right back to it. So that's a fun little interactive thing you can do with the audience. You can also turn a hand raising on and off to reset that room, which is fun. Other things that you can do is when people come up on the stage, remember to send them back to the audience. That just keeps that stage light, because when there's, you've experienced this, when there's like 30 or 40 people on the stage, it's impossible to manage it because you can only see the first 12 people.

Pat:
Yeah. It gets crazy.

Mike:
After that, It's just you have to scroll, and it's just a nightmare. I don't even like to go into rooms where I can see that there's a lot of people up on the stage because I just know it's going to be completely out of control. So those are the things. You may want to, every like 10 or 15 minutes, watch how many people are coming into the room and just say, "Hey, for those of you that are new, I'm going to do a quick room reset. This is what we're talking about today. This is what we've covered. This is what we're going." It's also a best practice to encourage people to follow the guests that are up on the stage: "Everybody, if you're not already following so-and-so, follow them."

You can also say, "Hey, if you're not following the Social Media Examiner Club, which is my club, click on the Green Monopoly House and follow us." And we should mention that anybody can start a club after they've been on the app for about two weeks and people can follow a club or they can be members of a club and they could also follow you. So you have to decide if you want to try to encourage people with a call to action to follow you. You probably want them to follow the club because it's called Clubhouse, and really the key to the entire thing is the clubs.

Pat:
Right. And again, there's a lot more information over at SocialMediaExaminer.com/ch. Those videos are really great. I think it's really smart also linking to a playlist, Mike, just a little side comment. I liked that idea.

Mike:
Thank you.

Pat:
We could probably talk for another two hours about strategies and tactics, but if you were to sum up for people who are now excited about Clubhouse, just a reminder for them, the Clubhouse app, I know can be very addicting and maybe a warning if you will, or just from your expert level having done this for a while, what should people look out for or be aware of if they're going to get involved?

Mike:
Okay. Well, the evenings and the weekends are the best time to actually do Clubhouse because it's mostly a working person's experience right now. So most of the people on Clubhouse are actually, they have jobs. So in the evenings and on the weekends are the best time to experience the best content on Clubhouse. And it's also potentially the time where your spouse or kids may never see you again. So just monitor yourself and tell your family, "Hey, are you guys okay, instead of watching a movie tonight, I'm going to go try a Clubhouse." And give yourself a limit. Just say, "I'm only going to be on here for a little while."

Just know full well, you might have so much fun that you don't want to leave. And that's the key to the entire thing. In addition, if you really want to make Clubhouse part of your business strategy, just like all social platforms, you're going to need to drive people to your room. So in the beginning - and as the app grows and as the app has algorithms and stuff, it's just going to get harder and harder for random people to show up your room. So you have to think of this just like you do a podcast, or just like you do a live stream. You're going to want to let your tribe know about it, and you're going to want to give them opportunities to basically show up and be part of it.

And that's going to be the key because in the beginning, you're not going to have a lot of people, but maybe you don't need a lot of people. So just properly set your expectations that you could get sucked into other people's rooms. And when you get started with your own rooms, there might not be a lot of people there in the beginning, but over time, it might really take off for you.

Pat:
I love that. And like you said, remember, it's about the people, it's about the connections, your self-awareness in terms of how you use the app. And it can be a slow start, but it can definitely pay dividends. It's been really, really nice to connect with people and even old friends again on the platform, but it has helped with business. It has helped with business and it can help you too.

Mike, thank you so much for this. Where should people go besides the Clubhouse link that we shared earlier to discover more and to get excited about what you have going on next?

Mike:
Yeah. So I would say if you're already on Clubhouse, follow Social Media Examiner. And if you go to SocialMediaExaminer.com/q, that's where you will find the calendar and the ability to ask questions when you're in a live room with me. I use a cool little tool called Zealous. And you can see what shows I have on the horizon, and you can get them on your calendar and come experience how I use it. And then if people want to follow me, if they want to message me on Instagram, I'm @stelzner, S-T-E-L-Z-N-E-R. And I should say that we have a ton of content on our YouTube channel and also on Social Media Examiner. So if you really want to understand how this new social audio thing works, it's the easy place to go and get yourself rapidly educated.

Pat:
So good. Man, that was excellent. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate you, and look forward to connecting with you on our next probably mastermind call.

Mike:
My absolute pleasure. Thank you, Pat.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Mike from Social Media Examiner. Again, if you want to check out those links, all the links that were mentioned are on the show notes page at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session493. And if you are on Clubhouse already, SocialMediaExaminer.com/q. Also, just say hello to Mike at @stelzner on Instagram, and he'll say hello back.

Wow, I hope you enjoyed this episode, a lot of tactics, a lot of strategies, and a lot of very practical advice for those of us who are going to be using Clubhouse. And even if down the road, Clubhouse maybe, I don't know, gets acquired or shuts down or something, audio social, or social audio like this, is here to stay.

And whether it's Facebook or the Twitter version of this or a different one that comes about, a lot of these etiquettes and practices will remain for sure, because it's just like how it is in person, just done online instead. And Mike of course is very knowledgeable in the world of events. And so SocialMediaExaminer.com. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate you. Thank you for listening and all the way through. I appreciate that. And I look forward to serving you next week. Hit that Subscribe button if you haven't already. Big thank you to everybody who's left a review recently. Thank you so much. And until next week, I'll see you later. Keep rocking it. Peace out. And as always, team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Sound design and editing by Paul Grigoras. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.