I have a confession. I have been avoiding Clubhouse like it’s the plague. I’ve been very anti-Clubhouse since it first came out because, let’s face it, the online space has seen its fair share of overly hyped platforms.
But things are changing a bit and that’s why I decided it was time to look more closely at Clubhouse as a viable platform for people who are marketing their businesses online.
Today I’m chatting today with Annabelle Bayhan, founder of Clubhouse for Bosses. She works 1:1 with clients to help them strategize around Clubhouse and get the most out of their marketing efforts. I have to say I learned a lot from my conversation with Annabelle. I hope you do too!
Listen in!
Mentioned in This Episode
- 5 Tips to Grow Your Clubhouse Room Size: text CLUBHOUSE to 33777 or go to clubhousepals.com
- Client Journey Ebook
- The Content Mastery Lab
About Annabelle Bayhan
Annabelle Bayhan is the founder of Clubhouse for Bosses and a Business & Digital Marketing Strategist for coaches & consultants who want to increase their influence, income and impact using Clubhouse. Prior to becoming a Business & Marketing Coach, Annabelle worked in Digital Marketing for over a decade.
Learn more about Annabelle by visiting her website or following her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Transcription
Abby Herman 0:08
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 127 of The Content Experiment podcast, a podcast that supports the idea that content and marketing are ever moving targets in any business. And it’s okay if you don’t feel like you’re doing it. All right all of the time, you have permission to experiment with little tweaks and changes in your content to find out what works for you, what increases value for your audience, and what grows your business, and most importantly, what feels good for you. I’m Abby Herman, content strategist and coach for online business owners who are ready to make a bigger impact online. I firmly believe that success isn’t about what big marketing brands and so called gurus think is the right thing. It’s about you and your business, your lifestyle, and frankly, your values and belief systems. You get to do business in a way that works for you. So, today, on today’s episode, I have a confession to make. I have been avoiding clubhouse like it’s the plague. I’ve been very anti clubhouse since it first came out, because let’s face it, the online space has seen its fair share of overly hyped platforms that get a lot of attention for the first few weeks, and then they fizzle out quickly. I remember when anchor got really popular among those who wanted to publish short form content I was quote unquote, on vacation at the reality is I didn’t actually take vacations back then, when all the hype started, and I was committed to staying off my phone for a few days, but I couldn’t help feel like I was missing out on something total FOMO.
Abby Herman 1:49
So I went ahead and just started an account to save my name, because somebody told me that like, I needed to do that. So sure enough, the popularity of anchor lasted maybe a month, and then people stopped talking about it. And it just kind of went away. And of course anchor has now changed gears completely. And I know a lot of people use it to publish their podcasts. But the original hype was for a different use case entirely and and just went away. So there have been other examples of that. And I’ve been avoiding clubhouse for that exact reason. Why am I Why am I going to invest a bunch of time and effort into something that’s not going to stick around. And I also feel like clubhouse is exclusionary only available for Apple products. There’s no text feature for those with hearing impairments. Not to mention that you can create content on the tool, but then it goes away immediately. Now I know that things are changing a bit and clubhouse is listening to its users and the people who want to use it, and it’s making changes to the platform. So that’s why I decided it was time to look more closely at clubhouse as a viable platform for people who are marketing their businesses online. I’ve seen a few clients and business connections have some really great results from clubhouse. So I wanted to find out what it was all about and maybe learn a few things. And who am I kidding, I’ve learned so much from this podcast, just like the podcast as a whole. And I feel like every interview I do is kind of like personal coaching for myself. And I love that you listeners all get to benefit from it as well. But before we tell you more about the interview, I want to welcome you I work really hard to make sure this podcast is full of no nonsense support, to help inspire you to get your message out there and give you actionable steps that you need to make it happen so that you can get on with doing business your own way. If you like what you hear, please hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss another episode. And if you are a repeat listener, and you haven’t already left a rating and review what’s stopping you, I would be so grateful if you’d hop over to your favorite podcast app, and do that. ratings and reviews are what helped tell Apple Spotify, Stitcher and all the other platforms and me that you like what you’re hearing and it helps to get the podcast in more earbuds so others can benefit from the information that I’m passing along on a regular basis.
Abby Herman 4:21
This podcast is brought to you by content mastery lab, my membership community where we talk about content creation, idea generation, market research, social media strategies are all of the mindset blogs that get in the way of our own visibility. Plus, there’s a whole lot more in there. Sometimes it takes some time to be brave enough to share our message and sometimes it takes some time to get the message right. In the lab we focus on little tweaks and changes in our content to get the best ROI of our time investments because big sweeping changes take a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money and they don’t always pay off like we expect them to So stop floundering with trying to figure it all out yourself and start creating content with the confidence that you’re on the right path. Join us monthly or quarterly or commit to a whole year for extra one on one time with me and quarterly planning parties where we work through your content together in an intimate group, head to the content experiment comm slash lab for more information and to sign up and use the coupon code podcast to try out your first month for just $1. Okay, back to our guest I’m chatting today with Annabel by Han founder of clubhouse for bosses. She works one on one with clients to help them strategize around clubhouse and get the most out of their marketing efforts. Annabel and I were recently in the rule breakers marketing and sales summit together that recorded this conversation several weeks before that went live. I felt like I was getting direct coaching from Annabel and I know I asked some questions that may make some of you roll your eyes. But you know, I don’t know much about clubhouse and I’m totally fine with asking some of the quote unquote dumb questions. But before we get to the interview, let me tell you more about Annabel Annabel by Han is the founder of clubhouse for bosses and a business and digital marketing strategist for coaches and consultants who want to increase their influence income and impact using clubhouse. Prior to becoming a business and marketing coach. Annabel worked in digital marketing for over a decade. You can learn more about her at Annabellebayhan.com. And there is a link to that in the show notes. Here is our conversation.
Abby Herman 6:42
Hi Annabel, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So before we get started and dig into all things clubhouse, can you share with listeners what you do and who you do it for?
Annabelle Bayhan 6:56
Yeah, hi, everyone. So I am a coach, a business strategist and brand strategist and I help businesses service based businesses use clubhouse through my program, clubhouse for bosses. And we really create a strategy for the companies to get on clubhouse and get visible so that they can find their ideal client.
Abby Herman 7:15
And so you focus exclusively on clubhouse with clients at this point? I do. Yeah. Yeah, I do. That’s awesome. So yeah, I mean, do you work with clients? One on one? Is it in a group format? What does that look like?
Annabelle Bayhan 7:28
Yeah, so right now it’s one on one coaching, because clubhouse is so new. And also, there’s so much inner work that’s happening when you get on the clubhouse app. A lot of people when they get on the app, they’re like, okay, like I am actually here is my own human self. They don’t let you have a business profile, you can’t be your business, you have to be yourself. And so for a lot of people, it’s like, that personal brand side comes up for them. And they they really like they see the opportunity in clubhouse, but they also see any gaps that they have in their brand that they’ve been almost masking behind their business in their marketing. But now that they’re showing up as themselves, there’s so much personal journey going on. So right now I’ve opted to do one on one coaching. But since the demand is somewhat increasing, I’ve been working on scalable more coaching models behind the scenes, but right now one on one, because I really want to be a part of that journey with people while I still can.
Abby Herman 8:15
Yes. Alright, so I asked you to come on the podcast because I was specifically looking for someone to talk about clubhouse. I know pretty much nothing about clubhouse. And that has been actually very intentional. That I opted not to you know, I am joined clubhouse at the urging of a client and she invited me and, you know, told me that I should check it out. And I did a little bit but it was so overwhelming. And I also opted out of clubhouse at the beginning because I thought oh, this is gonna be like Google Plus or like Periscope, and it’s the hot new thing. And then in three weeks, everybody’s gonna freak out about it. But that’s not been the case. Can you share? just you know, like, what is clubhouse? And why you feel like there is such a draw to this platform.
Annabelle Bayhan 9:14
Yeah, so clubhouse is an audio only app. But basically, it’s a place where there’s a lot of different chat rooms where you can talk to people. So if you’re familiar with Facebook groups, it’s very similar. You know, people post their topic in a Facebook group, it’s the same thing on clubhouse, someone will post a topic, but it’ll actually be a room with real actual people. And it’s somewhat of like a phone call, right, but with a bunch of strangers or people that you’ve met on an app. So for the people who are brave enough to at least go into one of those rooms, there’s normally really great targeted conversations that are based off of a topic. And so what I found is that people really enjoy this because if you find the places that are really interesting to you, you can basically be in conversation or talking to people about things that matter to you or things that you’re trying to learn anytime that you want on demand because there’s Going on 24 seven. So I think that that’s somewhat of the draw, you know, is that, um, you know, you can get entertainment on the app, you can learn, you can business mastermind, you can, you know, perform if you’re a performer. And so all these people from all these different backgrounds are coming and creating content. And so and also, what’s really fun is to somewhat like drop in on something that you would never have done before, like, shoot the shot room, right?
Annabelle Bayhan 10:25
Like, you know, you might not be in a Facebook group shoot the shot room, but it’s non committal, right? It’s not recorded, it’s not anything. So if you’re just like a curious mind, like me, you can go listen to some funny conversations, and get a little bit of entertainment under the app as well. So I think that that’s kind of what is like really attractive to it is that I think people for a long time have been waiting to talk to each other in a way. And like many of us are a little bit socially awkward. We don’t know how but we can start by just listening to someone else else’s conversation. And you don’t have to sign up for a webinar, you don’t have to give an email address, it’s so non committal that, that’s what I think people really like is that the agenda isn’t always there. And so it can be a little bit like just simply connecting. And I feel like we we haven’t done that as much in social media, in the current days, you know, sometimes it will be a deepened or deepened relationship, but because like we are, so I’m almost nullified by all the like, the static messages or written words, that actually hearing something, it’s, it’s new to us. And that’s one of the things that I said, when I first got in the app is like, I feel like this is the first time I’ve done something really new in a really long time. Because I went into an environment where I didn’t know anybody, I was using my ears instead of my eyes. And I was, you know, actually engaging in value based conversations on topics that I’ve always wanted to be a part of, but felt a little bit disconnected. Because, you know, if you don’t have time to read through 400 different social media posts on a Facebook chat, right, um, then you might not really be able to be at a conversation at depth. But with, you know, it being audio, you could be walking your dog, you could be doing your dishes, and actually participating in a conversation. And so that’s kind of cool.
Abby Herman 12:03
You don’t have to be at your computer, in short, yeah, well, yeah. And that’s one of the big draws for me when it comes to podcasts is that I listen to podcasts while I’m walking my dogs while I’m doing the dishes while I’m doing laundry, or cleaning the house or whatever, or at the gym working out. That’s where I listen to podcasts. So because I can multitask, I can listen to the information. So this kind of takes it to the next level with the interaction piece. What if I wanted to listen at the gym? Can I just listen in to conversations? And and how does that work?
Annabelle Bayhan 12:42
Yeah, you can listen. So there’s in every given conversation, there’s like three tiers of people, which is the way it’s designed, it’s a little bit weird to kind of like see three tiers of people. But this is this kind of like coming into what you’re saying is that there’s a whole section for people who are just listening. And that section is divided by people who aren’t like, are followed by the people who are speaking on the stage. And then there’s another section of people that are just listening in but not not connected through their network, in the in the conversation. So you have the speakers, and that’s basically anyone that has like raised their hand or chosen to go on the stage and talk about the topic. So that would be anyone that really wants to be engaged. And then right below them is the list of all the people who are connected with them. But just listening for that, you know, for that time, maybe they can’t stay the whole time, so they don’t get on the stage. Or maybe they’re otherwise engaged. Maybe they’re at the gym. And then there’s new people who are not yet in the network aren’t followed by the speakers. And they’re there to so that we can see them. And I think it’s really interesting to kind of see like, who’s in my network who’s not in my network? Because just from that curiosity factor I was talking about before is that you can check them out and say, oh, who don’t I know, here yet. So it’s very cool. And like, you know, I’m much like being at a live networking event where like, you could see someone across the room and say, Oh, well, I don’t really recognize that person. But you don’t have to go up and ask them for their business card and you can just read their bio and know a lot about them. And then you know, and and a lot of people what they’ll do if they read your bio, they like you, but actually like contact talk to you on Instagram. And you might even have a friend by just like being at the gym listening to a club afternoon.
Abby Herman 14:15
Mm hmm. Okay. Okay, I’m starting to get intrigued a little bit. Can you one of the things that I’ve heard a lot about relating to club houses, the accessibility challenges so that it’s not really designed for people who have hearing disabilities or for people who have auditory processing issues or things like that, can you eat and not only that, but right now as of this recording, it’s only available on Apple products. So can you share what you know about the accessibility and whether that’s going to change whether it maybe they’ve already made changes since the last last I heard?
Annabelle Bayhan 14:54
Yeah, so they’re mindful of it. And they’re trying to build in more accessibility features, but from what I understand that takes two different things like one is that they made it more accessible for the readers, like, you know, say someone is hard of hearing, and they’re actually reading everything that’s going on in a room, they’ve made it so that they could just connect their, their reader, like directly to their phones, whereas before they had to be at a computer, and the computer would read it. And so they’ve they’ve taken steps to make it more accessible. But what’s been really interesting is that, actually, because there’s a lot of groups of, you know, like, basically advocates for each disability that are coming up on the app, they’re actually teaching us as participants as a whole, what would make it better for them. So now, there’s a whole culture of saying, like, what your name is, and that you’re done speaking, after you’re done speaking, so that in their reader, they’ll actually be able to see who was talking one instead of one, chunky paragraph that’s all together. And, and that’s really cool. Because, you know, we don’t know what we don’t know.
Annabelle Bayhan 15:54
But when these groups come together, and they’re like, Hey, you know, I don’t have to say this, that this would help me by myself. But there’s like five of us here. And we can all say it, then the community as a whole is becoming more diverse. And it’s the same thing for the blind, and, you know, other disabilities is that actually, I find it being very empowering for them, because they’re creating so much community. And it’s been like, no, no person that I have ever met on the app was like, No, I don’t want to do that I don’t want to make things more accessible, like everybody wants to make the conversation accessible. And so it’s making it really, really nice on the other side of like being able to bring on Android. So the idea is that they would be coming in May. And that’s coming up really soon. And the only thing is, though, when clubhouse tends to scale or grow really fast, a lot of things break. Because it’s a new, it’s a small app, still, it’s still relatively a small company, and they’ve had a lot of accelerated growth. So I think that there’s been a lot of chatter about whether or not they’ll be able to handle a huge influx meaning like all of the Android users at once. So I think that they’re probably going to phase them in, which they tend to do anyway, just to test everything to make sure that the app doesn’t crash for everyone.
Annabelle Bayhan 17:06
But I for one, I am ready for new friends to come on. I mean, there’s 10 million people on the app right now. But they’re not all active users, I definitely could, you know, would love to have a few new faces on the app. And I think a lot of people are feeling that. And so it’d be great to if they can open it up soon and make it available to as many people as possible. At the other side, I want them to do it, where they learned from the past where things have crashed, and you know, that has made bad room experiences for creators in the past. And I would like for them to be mindful for that too. So that they do it so that it works, if that makes sense.
Abby Herman 17:40
Yeah. So a rollout would that mean like the invitations that they’re doing our Do you feel like there were just too many invitations at the beginning that that’s kind of what crashed things?
Annabelle Bayhan 17:50
Yeah. Well, what happened is that Ilan musk came on. And they had a huge influx where everybody use their invitations all at the same time, and the server’s weren’t ready for it. And so the server’s had never had that many active users on at the same time. So that is, what is what happened. And so what happened is that many rooms would just shut themselves down. And people couldn’t even like exit rooms. And there was a lot of just bugs that was not great for the user experience. But the good thing is, is that they did fix it pretty fast. So you know, I have hoped for them to kind of like, you know, do that it says, whatever they could do before that happens would be great.
Abby Herman 18:25
Yeah, well, I think any new anything new and it doesn’t matter what part of your life and then it’s never going to be perfect. And there’s always going to be tweaks and things that you can change to make it better. So yeah, it’s good that they’re receptive and open to making updates and changes to better the user experience for sure. Yeah, they definitely are. Yeah, so Okay, so if someone more just has decided that they want to start being active on clubhouse, they’re ready to get started to incorporate clubhouse into their content strategy. What are some of the most important things that we need to know about clubhouse in general? Like, how do we get started? How do we join a room or start a room? Do we have to do that? I know that there’s now you now have the ability to record some of the conversations as well, I think it’s if you are, I think you have to be like the host of the room in order to do that. But talk to like, can you kind of give the walkthrough of like, what it looks like to use clubhouse without overwhelming ourselves?
Annabelle Bayhan 19:35
Yes, yeah, absolutely. Because I think this is really important because one of the biggest complaints people have is that when they first get on the app, they’re somewhat uncomfortable. And this is why when you first get on the app, the people that you are connected with in that social network, or whoever’s in your phone, and whatever big names are kind of like presented to you as accounts that you should follow, right? So those really big names are awesome. In really huge rooms. So if you’re like, Okay, my only opinion of what clubhouse is, is going on the app, finding a really huge room, seeing hundreds of people that I don’t know, and not really knowing if this is the place for me, that could be a really uncomfortable experience. And so I think what they’re gonna build in in the future is ways to kind of identify what you’re actually interested in early on. But I can kind of give you guys a workaround so that you don’t just like hop on the app end up in a big room feel awkward, or raise your hand in a big room, but not really know the etiquette of the room and then get a bad experience, right? Because both of those things have happened as well as many good experiences. So I don’t want to say that like, nobody gets on the app and has a good experience. But there’s ways to kind of like, assure that self assured that for yourself a little bit more. So the first one is, is to not just take whatever context they gave you, right?
Annabelle Bayhan 20:53
So they’re gonna list some names out, it’s fine. If you follow them already. That’s all like fine and dandy, but just know that those are the rooms that you’re going to see. So go to the keyword section, and look up a keyword that’s interesting to you. So for me, I knew that women in business would be something that was interesting to me. So actually, one of the first clubs I got into from that keyword search was women in business. And then already I was starting to see at least some content that was interesting to me. So do that for all of your interests, right, and whatever intention that you want, and then that’s going to open up more rooms to you, so that they’re within your interest set, it’s also going to open up smaller rooms, because you know, some people are really, really well suited for a really big room, they’re not shy at all, if they’re super confident, like they don’t care, they’ll get up, they’ll raise their hand if they make a mistake, whatever, right. And then some people are like, I really like to start out meeting strangers with three to 25 of them, like I don’t need to like go up and talk in front of like hundreds of people. So I think that like if you get in right away, and you start to curate your hallway through joining clubs and using keyword search, even maybe even to read some BIOS and find some people that you might want to connect with, then that will help you to see better rooms that are more aligned.
Annabelle Bayhan 22:10
And then from there, all it really takes is opening up the app and looking through what the content is available. So don’t always take that first room, because that might be the biggest room of the day. But really do scroll through and see which one feels best for me to hop into. And then just know that if you get in that room, and it doesn’t feel like the best place for you that you can leave, you have permission. I know many of us are very polite, and we’ll stay in a room even if it feels not right. Don’t do that. Just go and find another one until you find the room and the people that feel good to you. And then you know, if you choose to participate, I think that it makes it an even better experience once you start really getting to know people. So I think you had kind of like that, like, oh, could this be the another periscope? You know, um, you know, it could be if we don’t connect, right? I think the people or the power behind this app, if the people who are on the app, keep showing up, if the people who are on the app, keep connecting, it’s gonna be hard to move that somewhere else, the way I explain it’s like, it’s much easier to move a single person to an apartment than it is a family of eight, right? So if you start to really build networks, it’s gonna be harder to move these networks off of the app unless, like, really horrible experiences happen on the app, which is why they need to actually make sure that they’re scalable, and that they’re really tapped into their community so that people stay on.
Abby Herman 23:32
Okay, so you mentioned you said something about curating your hallway? Can you explain what that means?
Annabelle Bayhan 23:40
Yeah, so that means Um, so your hallway is attached to who you follow, and what clubs you are, are you you are joined in. So if you’re seeing rooms that don’t feel aligned with you, or you just don’t like them really look and see like, who is in that room, because then you can remove them from the list of people that you follow. Say it’s something that’s like really against what what you care about, or just like completely not interested in you, you you have permission to unfollow that person, because then you’re gonna see less rooms like that in your hallway.
Abby Herman 24:08
Okay, so it’s kind of like your hallways, kind of like you’re like the branches that are connecting you to other people, right?
Annabelle Bayhan 24:16
Yeah. So clubhouse is built on a social graph, right? So the social graph is everyone that you follow. And a little bit beyond that, like maybe like some of their friends, you’ll see the content that they’re creating. So if you really are a person and what I’m noticing when I was talking about like, people are really considering their personal brand and their network, and they’re saying, well, the people in my phone aren’t necessarily the people that I really want to network for my own personal growth, right. So to push that limit, you add the layer of clubs, because then you’re going to see all of the content from those clubs as well. So you’re not just locked into your own network, but that’s great. Your hallway. Okay.
Abby Herman 24:52
Yeah, cuz I mean, so you said before that we can’t join clubhouse as our business. But yeah, the people who are contacts on my phone 98% of them are personal contacts. They have nothing to do with business because I conduct my business online and I use slack and I use boxer and all of that. So are they pulling in those contacts as well? Or is it just like your contacts that you have on your in your phone list?
Annabelle Bayhan 25:20
Yeah, so it’s only the contacts on your phone list that they’re automatically pulling in. But you do have the keyword search. So if you are going to say, Okay, I want to see if my clients are on here, or I want to see if like the people I’ve collaborated with in the past are on here, like maybe you go through all your old podcast guests, or whatever it is, you can search them one by one and see if they’re on and connect with them. You don’t really see there. If you follow them, you’ll see when they open up a room. So what’s really cool, right is that, you know, if there’s someone that you really look up to, and you see that they’re being active on clubhouse, that’s your chance to build a network with them, too. So there’s a lot of people that have been like hosting these really big Facebook groups or people who have communities that like they’re not necessarily a celebrity, but like maybe maybe I wouldn’t be able to go to a one on one conversation with them per se, right. Like there’s a little bit of a gap there. clubhouse is kind of acting like like closing that gap a little bit. If you can get connected to them on clubhouse turned on their notification bell figure out when their their events are, you know, especially as they’re first coming on the app and still growing on the app, you might actually get more access to them than you would any other platform.
Abby Herman 26:25
Okay, okay. All right. So we have clubhouse we have gone and checked out some of the rooms we’ve done the keyword search, we’ve checked out some of the rooms we’ve listened in, how do we start building our own authority on clubhouse? What are some of the best ways to do that, aside from connecting with people? What are some some of the ways that we can you know, be the speaker? I guess?
Annabelle Bayhan 26:50
Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, so there’s a few different things that you can think about, right? I think one is, as you’re doing all that work, all that homework, getting comfortable with the app, make sure that you have a bio that tells what you do, because sometimes people will connect with you just by like sitting in a room or being in a room. That’s another line topic. So the number one thing is to really spend some time connecting your bio connecting your Instagram or Twitter or both. So that people have a way to contact you is the moment that they notice you. The next is, you know, if you’re spending some time in the clubs, you can start to understand like who are the people who are talking about similar topics, maybe even complimentary topics than the ones that you would want to talk about. And you can start maybe messaging them what your room ideas are. Because then you have a container you have, you know, possibly people with some reach that you can actually invite to be part of your room, you have a club that you’ve started to build relationships with.
Annabelle Bayhan 27:45
And that kind of creates the foundation for when you open a room, more people will see it. And so really, you know, there, there comes a time when you are switching from being the person that is kind of like building a foundation of relationship by going into these clubs, being a listener to then being a participant. And you know, your first participation might be clicking on the hand icon, which means that you’re raising your hand to graduate yourself from listener to speaker. And so it’s somebody else’s room, right? But you’re giving yourself permission to go up there, add value, ask a really good question, just be a part of that. And a lot of times that allows people to get their first like taste of you and your value and start to respect you build that relationship, that type of thing. And so, you know, that takes a little bit of you know, work at the forefront, you go when you go into someone else’s space, and you honor that space, but you can still show up. And so that’s the very first way that I think that people can do it. And then all all in the meantime, they’re thinking about, okay, well, what can I provide this space? What are the topics I could provide that I would give the most value, once you get known for, Oh, she gives great value on this, she gave great value on that I like her voice I like her vibe, people are more likely to say yes to you to model room with you. And when they see you open up your own room, you know, the moment you decide to graduate yourself from speaker and participant to you know, event provider, then they are more likely to come into your room.
Annabelle Bayhan 29:12
And so it’s kind of like graduating yourself through the process. And it doesn’t have to happen slowly. You know, people can be as active as they want and as active as they can be, right? And so that’s kind of what I see is like, you know, you want to go and really think about it as a human experience where, you know, if people know about you, they’re going to know like and trust you a little bit more to come into your room come into your space and see all the value you have to provide. If you’ve done your homework and you really think about like, how can I curate a great conversation, they’re gonna see the value. I actually think it’s a great opportunity for like, you know, the amazing people who’ve been sitting back on their value a lot and not really showing up to show up for themselves because guess what, you don’t have to do your makeup. You don’t have to edit the video. You don’t have to edit the podcast. You could be in your pajamas and provide value change people’s lives in your special way. And you know, all it takes is like pressing a green little button that says start room. Right? I mean, the very technical form is like you can hop on today and do that start a room and hope people trickle in. But if you want even more success, and to feel a little bit more confident, you might do a little bit of relationship building before you do that. But really, it’s it’s not that hard.
Annabelle Bayhan 30:21
I think it’s more about people getting past that fear. And it’s a real one, a very real one that I have sometimes to, even to this day after, probably I’ve hosted hundreds and hundreds of rooms, of oh my gosh, what if no one comes in my room, and I have no one to talk to. But you know, I always like try to, like reverse that on myself and say, Well, if one person comes in, and you’re able to really have a great conversation with that one person, then that hour is worth your time. And so you know, it’s getting past that part of ourselves. And then also, you know, say say that we figure out that Oh, actually, I’m very comfortable. If I have at least like 20 people in the room. I feel like that’s a good conversation, a good base, then I’m going to do the work to build the relationships and networks so that when people see me open up a room, they’re excited. They join they get in. Yeah.
Abby Herman 31:07
Okay, let’s talk about some of the logistics behind clubhouse. So you mentioned hosting a room you said an hour is an hour about like, how long people usually host? Do you? How do you prep ahead of time for that? Do you give yourself talking points? Or do like, do you come up with questions ahead of time, just in case like nobody else has a question? What does that look like?
Annabelle Bayhan 31:31
Yeah, um, so to be honest with you, some of the best conversations normally lasts around two hours. But when I started, they were one hour because that’s what like we all time block easily, right? We’re like, okay, I can do one hour. And I even told myself, I can do one hour sitting there by myself if I have to write. So, you know, when our felt really comfortable. I think out algorithmically, it takes a little bit of time for the room to get busier. Right? It takes some time for people to find you in the hallway. So like, as far as like, cleaning out your room, just know that if you jump right into content, people might miss the beginning of it. Because it takes some time, like if you think about like people are in other rooms, or searching their own hallway, which is just a list of rooms. And they might not see your room until it has already started a little bit. So I always kind of like I like to create some like non full content based content just for that beginning part where I might be talking about something relevant, or maybe talking to someone that I’ve invited with me a little bit until people get a chance to trickle in. So always have that kind of like warm up material right at the beginning.
Abby Herman 32:43
Do you think that’s still the case? If you have a scheduled room like say I go live, I have a room that starts at noon every Wednesday, do you think that’s that’s still the case that you need a little bit of filler stuff there?
Annabelle Bayhan 32:54
Yeah, it tends to be, it tends to give make take people some time to get into the room, because even if you you know, send out a link ahead of time, do all your marketing and all of that it takes people time to kind of find the room and get settled. But you know, in that case, it might just be a couple minutes, where you’re kind of warming people up waiting for people to come and welcoming them organically. It takes about 15 minutes for the room for people to really find the room and start coming in. And so that’s when it’s like, okay, it’s a little bit awkward at first for people, but if you owe us you kind of know that going in, you’re like, Okay, for 15 minutes, I’m gonna like just kind of like talk small talk. But when there’s enough people, you know, maybe you have a quota for yourself, when there’s five people in the room, we’re gonna really get started, and we’ll catch everybody up belly up when they come in. So that that type of thing. But yeah, um, as far as like, before, that I always try to think, what is the structure of the room going to be? Am I giving a masterclass? Am I doing like a q&a and like having a great conversation? Am I you know, going to give people five tips on something and spread it out over the hour with conversation in between, you know, I think those are like the three main formats that are there.
Annabelle Bayhan 34:06
And I think that the the differentiation between all of them is how much audience participation is in them. I tend to really like to run rooms where more people can talk as possible. I want to really like so when I’m planning a room, I’m thinking about what do I think people would want to talk about and would give them a reason to raise their hand and come on stage and actually want to talk about this topic with me. And so, you know, and then have the value kind of come in between that. And so for that, yeah, I have some questions on the topic. And it’s normally just one to three questions. Once the conversation gets going. Normally, the topic tends to run itself, but I do think that some forefront and planning actually makes for a better room because nobody wants to just like kind of feel like oh my gosh, you know people are here but I don’t know how to guide the conversation. Just really think about how you would guide it. So because it makes people feel more secure. It gets them to open up, it gets them to actually talk in the conversation. And so yeah, so do that. If you have other moderators, talk about your intention for the room, how you’d like it to go, what role each other would play. You know, like, Who’s going to speak more? Are you going to introduce people off and on like that type of thing.
Annabelle Bayhan 35:17
And then I have some place in the background to talk, a lot of people use the Instagram chat dm feature, so that they can talk like two moderators, or three moderators can talk to each other behind the scenes about what’s going on in the room. So those are like the things that you might do before. But then after you just show up and you go with the conversation, you do not know who’s gonna come in your room. It could be like the biggest influencer, it could be somebody who’s really aggravated it could be someone who’s really happy and peppy, it could be someone that like is the world’s leading expert on the topic, like you literally don’t know. And so just be open to whoever comes in your room and simply having a conversation. And so that’s, you know, I think we do tend to overcomplicate it, sometimes I see people like really planning their rooms. And you know, I totally honor that. But at the same time, at the end of the day, it’s it’s really about attracting people to come and have a talk, and then being really comfortable talking to people.
Abby Herman 36:09
Yeah. And what about the people who our participant not participating? The listeners? So is there a way for the listeners to communicate with one another? while they’re listening without interrupting the speaker? So you mentioned something about the Instagram DMS can is that basically how you would communicate with other listeners to connect?
Annabelle Bayhan 36:33
Yeah, a lot of people do. So if you want to communicate with one individual, like, say you’re in a room. And this is what a lot of people do, like, say, from the business side, like you’re in a room, people are going up, they’re asking questions, but you know, an answer that really wasn’t touched on, they’ll click on their profile and go to their Instagram dm and say, Hey, great question that you had, it was so great, knowing that you have a question about that. And then they’ll kind of give them some value. So that’s like from the business sense. But also like peer to peer, like, there’s people who are just in the listening section more like, I would say, a lot of my introverted friends do this, where they read everyone’s file, and then they say, Hey, I saw you in the clubhouse room wasn’t that so interesting? I read your bio, and you seem interesting to would love to connect with you. So a lot of that is happening. And I think it is, you know, the people who are really there to grow their network, they’re spending the time and energy, you know, intentionally to go and meet people and taking it over to the direct messages and Instagram. And it’s been, it’s been great. I mean, there’s a lot of people that are really connecting, and now that things are opening up a little bit are connecting in real life. So they’re becoming friends on and off of clubhouse. But there’s also as far as like, audience participating without being on the stage, there is a site called ch dot chat, where people could participate in the rooms, and share questions, share thoughts without necessarily coming up. So say you’re in a very loud place, or say, like your whole family sleeping, and you can’t necessarily talk but you’re in the room, you’re listening, you’re engaged, you could engage through that chat feature if the moderator had set it up for you.
Abby Herman 38:04
Interesting. So that I mean, like, a lot of what I’m getting out of what you’re saying is that it’s something that I that I talk about all the time, and that’s every platform is different. And so you show up differently to different platforms, and you connect with people in different ways based on what platform you’re on. So it doesn’t seem quite so scary. anymore.
Annabelle Bayhan 38:27
Oh, yeah, it’s totally not scary. And actually, you know, what I’m noticing is that, you know, you know, I’m on the business side. So I know, like the way that businesses connect with people. And if you’ve already been doing this on Facebook, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, you’ve been connecting in text form, you are a superstar when you go to clubhouse, because already there’s a layer of trust and acceptance, like, because you’ve talked to each other, because you’re in the same room, you are physically present. It’s not like, you know, your VA is commenting on their posts. And then you know, once it gets the DM, then it’s you and it’s a little bit cold. It’s not like that. It’s like I heard your voice. I know what you were doing at 7am yesterday, and now you’re in my dm, and we’re talking about something. So and that can be used for, you know, just regular networking, as well as business. But just that like active, like we were in the same place, like not by location, but our voice and our presence were in the same place that creates this level of warmth, that speeds everything up. But the people who have the systems in place, the networking systems, the business prospecting systems, and that type of thing already on their businesses are doing really well. Because what’s happening is you’re contacting so many people so fast. If you don’t have systems, then you lose a lot of people, right? Because then the person that you met 7am you know, once you meet your next 1000 people, they might not be as relevant to you in a week unless you have them somewhere in a spreadsheet or something like that.
Abby Herman 39:48
Yeah, yeah. Are there other times of the day that people tend to be a little more active on on clubhouse and i and i Say that knowing that I mean, I have clients who are in Europe and Asia. And so I know that it’s kind of relative. So, but in general, are there times that are more active?
Annabelle Bayhan 40:11
Yeah, well, the only time I’ve heard them talk about it is that it used to be 5pm. Pacific time, but with them going global, it’s in the early morning pacific time. So you know, I think it’s around like 678 am pacific time is the time when they have the most user base, but just know that like, if everybody in the world is on that, there’s probably also more room competition at that time. So there’s, you know, as you go into, like building a strategy of when you might actually open up your rooms, I think there’s a few factors of like, when there’s more people on, but also, when the competition for your topic is a little bit low, so that you can get more people into your rooms? If that’s what you want to do.
Abby Herman 40:52
Okay. And is there a way and you may have already covered this, and I just missed it, or I just didn’t take notes on this. But is there a way to like if if there’s a specific person who I want to follow where I want to see like I would if I wanted to join your rooms? Can I search your name, and find you that way, and find out what rooms you’re hosting, and when?
Annabelle Bayhan 41:14
Yeah, so I’m not for the individual. And I can tell you a workaround that I have for that. But if you wanted to like say Follow me, they do have a notification bell that if you turn it on to always you’ll always get a ping when that person opens their schedules, rooms, which is kind of interesting. Like that’s one way you’ll at least be alerted. But you won’t be able to pre schedule anything. So I’ve used websites like yo yo club, as well as built a web page on my own website to put a calendar of all my clubhouse rooms so that people could see it because they don’t have it in app. But they do for clubs now. And this was just there mostly this update where if you go to the club page, you can see their upcoming rooms and add them to your calendar so that they’re moving in that direction. But it’s not there yet.
Abby Herman 41:56
What’s the difference between a club and a room?
Annabelle Bayhan 42:00
Yeah, so a club is like a container, like I have my club, the clubhouse mastermind, where I put all the conversations about clubhouse in it. So the CH mastermind. So if you’ve come to that page, you can see all of my rooms that are on clubhouse topics. And so you can scroll through all of them. And so it’s like me as an individual, but it’s really it’s for anyone that’s interested in clubhouse content. It’s the same thing for like someone that might be in the beauty club, right? They want to know only about beauty from that club. And so that club will have rooms all on beauty. But for me as an individual, they don’t have that yet, they want to build it in so that you can come to my profile and see all of my other rooms, because I do also rooms on business development and a different club. So those rooms are listed on that Club’s page. So So right now, it’s kind of like, it’s hard for people to figure out where other people are, I guess it’s part of the excitement. But eventually, it’s been asked for several times for them to create a way for people to know where other people are. But I also think that as we are, you know, going out there creating these events, if it tells a story that we can create marketing around, I think that it makes sense to also create some sort of event marketing or event scheduler so that people can kind of start to track you know, you as an individual, as well. And that’s also kind of pulling people off of the app, because like you said, like, there is a level of uncertainty with any new social media app, it should always be our intention to pull people off of the app and into our own community in some way so that we can deepen the relationship. So having your own events page, it kind of helps to do that. So yeah.
Abby Herman 43:33
So what I’m hearing is if you are somebody like me, who doesn’t know a lot about clubhouse, but you want to follow a specific person, check out go to their website, see if they have something on their website. And if you are that person and you want people to follow you have an events page on your on your website so that people can find you easily. So at least until clubhouse catches up and and creates that option for users.
Annabelle Bayhan 44:02
Yeah, yeah, that would be great. And like, I know some people that go even beyond this where like, they have like phone number messaging, like from community app or something like that. And they will text people whenever they have a room. I haven’t done that yet. But there are people that are doing that as well. But I think at the very basic, like we can all have an events page, and then people can can find us. Because that way, we don’t have to have that awkward 15 minutes of people not in the room yet. Right? We can have, like you said, If I mark it It won’t people just show up? Well, that’s the perfect scenario that the algorithm doesn’t give you but you could give yourself if you are marketing your events.
Abby Herman 44:36
Yeah, yeah. I could probably like ask you 20 million other questions. But I won’t, I won’t. I want to respect your time, but I so appreciate you being here. I want to ask before we go if listeners were only able to take away two actionable things from this conversation, What are two things that that people should do right now to either get started on clubhouse or get more active there to, you know, use this information moving forward?
Annabelle Bayhan 45:11
Yeah, I think the very first thing and this is like the pillar of everything that I do is, what is your actual intention, it can be complicated, I’m okay with that if your intention is to vote, like, you know, make yourself more visible, build your personal brand, build your business, find a husband, like I’m okay with, like it being all those things. But know what your intention is. So that, you know, when you go and spend time on the app that you are taking the actions that kind of feed that intention, so I would write that down somewhere so that every time you’re there, you’re like, Okay, am I in the clubs that helped me to find it to fuel this intention, and have I connected with the people that I think are going to help me, you know, and then every time you’re in a room, you can be looking to connect with people that help you align with your intention. So that’s like the number one thing. The second thing is, you know, if the fear of being visible is getting in your way of your intention, do the inner work, if you feel afraid that your Instagram doesn’t have the right posts, so you’re not showing up, create nine posts, let’s get you out there. Because I really believe that whether or not clubhouse stays or goes, it’s giving everyone a chance to be more visible, and everyone a chance to get a little bit closer to what they really, really want.
Annabelle Bayhan 46:24
So feel with those, you know, things that come up, and they will like, that’s why I’m doing the one on one coaching right now, because so much is coming up for people. But it’s all serving us in a way that it’s finding those little areas that have not been challenged for a really long time, and bringing them to the forefront so that more of what people really want can happen for them. And so that they can take the bold move to start their room, find their places of value, move forward towards their intention. And so allow that growth to happen. And I think that when people do and they’re in the places that kind of serve their intention that they start having a lot of fun on the app, because they’re finding, you know, they see that you are, you know, the accumulation of the people that you hang out with, if you find you know, five people that are all working towards the same thing that you’re working towards, and that’s not what you know, the people who are in your cell phone, then you are already going to be more connected with getting what you want.
Abby Herman 47:17
Yes, I love that. Yeah, doing the inner work. And, and I also think too, just like just doing it, you know, put yourself out there, it’s really hard. But as business owners, we have done it already by by doing what we do in business. And so I think that this is just like a brave move that people could make. Where can people find you online to work with you to follow you to get more information about you?
Annabelle Bayhan 47:48
Yeah, I met Annabel Bayhan at all the social media platforms so they can find me there. My website is AnnabelBayhan.com and if you want my guide for clubhouse, just text the word clubhouse to the number 33777.
Abby Herman 48:02
Fabulous. Thank you so much, Annabel, for all of the information. This is so great. And I am going to find you on clubhouse. You there. So you heard me talk about my love of audio content. It is so easy for me to put my earbuds in and tune into podcasts mostly business related, but sometimes news and fun. It’s easy, and that’s definitely a drop for clubhouse for those of us who find audio content accessible. I’m really looking forward to the changes that clubhouse is making to make it more accessible and I’ll be keeping an eye on what those changes are. I have to say that I learned a lot from my conversation with Annabel I am definitely more open to trying out clubhouse to see if it’s a good fit for me. And who knows maybe by the time this episode goes live, maybe you might see me in a room or two. I’m in a networking group that leverages clubhouse and uses it to promote members and I’ve had a lot of clients have success with it too. Like Annabelle said it’s important to set expectations for clubhouse or any content medium that you use and know why you’re using it. It’s the same with any piece of content you create. What’s the purpose behind it? What are your goals?
Abby Herman 49:18
That’s something that we talk about in content mastery lab, my membership community and I’m really excited that Annabel is going to be a guest expert in the lab in a few months teaching us even more about clubhouse. If you’re ready to start experimenting with content and marketing in your own business without having to do all the guesswork yourself. Remember that you can join us inside content mastery lab at thecontentexperiment com/lab and use the coupon code podcast to get your first month for $1 Pricing starts at just $97 A month after that. If you found value in what you learned here today, be sure to share it on social media. Take a screen Shut up the episode on your phone and share it over on Instagram stories. tag me @AbbyHerman and @thecontentexperiment at Anna and Annabel @AnnabelleBayhan. The more you share, the more we can get the podcast into the hands and earbuds of more business owners just like you who need to hear the message that they are not alone. Until next time, take care.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
