By pbump@hubspot.com (Pamela Bump)

If you’ve been on social media, marketing news sites, or the HubSpot Blog lately, you might have heard about Clubhouse.

The nearly one-year-old social media platform which allows users to drop into audio-only chat rooms has grown from 600,000 to 10 million active users in just a few short months. Although the app is invite-only, more and more people are gaining access and tuning into discussions related to their industry, hobbies, and other interests each day.

Users also love Clubhouse for its entertainment factor. When surfing through Clubhouse, you might find celebrities, like Joe Rogan, chatting with fellow influencers; audio-only musical productions, comedy nights; or even standup comedy events.

But, when exploring Clubhouse’s vast and highly-creative audio rooms as a marketer, you might wonder if and how you can leverage it within your marketing strategy.

At this point, most Clubhouse content is still highly experimental. However, one major theme to note is that it’s users want to hear from people — not just brands.

Because Clubhouse’s users crave authentic human discussion, they’ll likely disengage from rooms that prioritize promotional content over a relatable conversation.

However, while building brand awareness on an ultra-personal app like Clubhouse takes time, energy, and lots of community management, we’re already starting to see brands begin to connect with the channel’s growing audience.

To help marketers who are just learning about Clubhouse, I spent the last few days surfing the app to learn how brands are reaching users. Below I’ll highlight four common brand awareness tactics and offer a few actual examples.

How Brands Leverage Clubhouse

1. Fireside Chats or Q&As

When I first heard about Clubhouse and explored the app, a lot of rooms I dropped into felt like audio-only video calls or webinars where only the hosts began with speaking privileges. To me, it’s not surprising that brand-affiliated room creators and moderators have begun to leverage Q&As, panels, and fireside-chat formats to create interactive — yet well-managed — discussions on the platform.

When watching a panel or interview affiliated with a brand, it’s often formatted in one of two ways:

• The moderator — who works for the brand coordinating the room — asks thought leaders or influencers affiliated with their industry questions. This moderator might also permit audience members to ask questions or come to the stage to the speaker as well.
• An employee or leader from a brand serves as an interviewee or panel member while an influencer that does not work for the brand asks questions or moderates questions from the audience.

Regardless of which role the brand member holds in the chat, these rooms have very similar formats. They usually begin with the moderator announcing who they are, who they’ll be talking to, and the topic of the room. From there, the moderator will either ask questions to the speakers or giving speaking privileges to other users who raise their hands.

Below I’ll highlight two examples of rooms I’ve seen. Because …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron