WHAT IS CLUBHOUSE

Imagine you walk into an exclusive club and hang out with other guests in rooms hosted by your favorite celebrities, business personas, and miscellaneous idols. Now, make that experience audio only. That's Clubhouse. It's like an audio version of LinkedIn. Clubhouse is what you’d get if you combined influencer networking parties with socially distanced Discord hangouts. (Nick Hilton might agree.) 

Clubhouse combines the following staple social media features: transient content, exclusive community rooms, and the follower/following dynamics of most social apps.
 

PODCASTING AND CLUBHOUSE: CLOSER LOOK

A new app like this was sure to pique the interests of audio geeks. From industry experts wondering if "Clubhouse will kill podcasting" to if it might be "the new frontier for podcasting," people are talking about this. While their focus on audio is the obvious similarity between Clubhouse and podcasts, three key differences that stood out to me: 

• Podcasts and Clubhouse rooms both focus primarily on the niches preferred/promoted by their host. In practice, Clubhouse hosts are the niche — the focus of the conversation — and topical constraint is at the host's discretion.
• They also both focus on cultivating rich dialogues. In practice, Clubhouse is where the young and ambitious compete with each other in real time to deliver elevator pitches to the rich and powerful. 
• Unlike podcasting apps, which are best described as content media platforms with social media elements, Clubhouse is best described as a social network platform with content platform elements.

Here, I draw from my experience as a marketer, curator, and podcast geek to point out the pros and cons of Clubhouse. But first, a word from our sponsors...

THE GOOD

• Fascinating conversations moderated by insightful industry experts who know exactly which underrepresented voices need to be heard more widely.
• Streamlined meta-conversations between intra-industry experts — for example, Clubhouse is a great place for podcasters to talk to each other about the state of podcasting.
• In time, Clubhouse could become an excellent platform, and indeed, the best platform, for organic networking in a way that hews close to rubbing shoulders at real-life parties. That is, if users don't kill it before it gets there. 

THE BAD

• Difficult app navigation thanks to a chaotic interface that suffers from over-generalized "interest" categories.
• Minimal content moderation tools, ineffective anti-abuse policies, and a lack of user-driven topic-based tagging
• Room hosts and moderators tend to be established personas and/or celebrities with absolute veto powers, which can foster uneven power dynamics where the naivete of younger and less prominent users leaves them open to exploitation.
   

& THE UGLY

• The toxic marriage of both worlds — minority marginalization in real-life interactions and moderator tyranny of online discussion forums — can and does enable the unchecked birth and growth of misinformation.
• As the quality of the environment is directly correlated to the decency of the host/moderator, casual racism, sexism, and elitism can go unchecked in minimally moderated Clubhouse rooms.
• Clubhouse room dynamics create fertile conditions for multi-level marketing schemes. Imagine Shark Tank, but inverted, where the millionaires are the ones selling "self-help" products (read: snake oil) to the contestant, who, in these rooms, are not competing for funding, but for celebrity attention and approval.
   

TO SUM IT UP: 

• While Clubhouse does not compare to podcasting, as emphasized by the key differences I outlined previously, it might be beneficial for podcasters to explore opportunities to promote their content on Clubhouse by engaging with their target audience.
• We'll have a better idea of the long-term effects and success of the app, once it opens to the public in March. 

Today, Apple launched Apple Podcasts Spotlight, a monthly editorial that "celebrates rising podcasters."

More: 

• Every month, new creators from a range of locations, genres, and formats will be spotlighted. Apple Podcasts promises "a focus on independent and often underrepresented voices." 
• The first creator to be featured is comedian and writer Chelsea Devantez who hosts "Celebrity Book Club." 
• Devantez's show features guests discussing the memoirs of "badass celebrity womxn" including those of Jennifer Lopez, Drew Barrymore, and Tina Turner. 

Average site visitor lift was recorded as 80% across industries advertising on podcasts, as per Podsights' Conversions Benchmark Report 2020.

More:

• Incremental lift denotes the increase in conversions from podcast advertising vs. doing nothing at all.  
• Brands from the Pharma/Health and Beverages & Restaurants industries saw the highest incremental lift outcomes. 
• All industries saw an average lift of 121% in purchase events. 
• On average, 1.56% of visitors to the website converted. 
• Arts, Entertainment and Media had the highest site conversion rate (2.84%) amongst all industries. 

Download the free report here. I'd recommend reading Understanding Podcast Lift Reports by Bryan Barletta before you dive in.

PODS ON THE BLOCK

• "Tradeoffs" is an independent health show featuring stories that "cut through the jargon and numbers" to present healthcare research and news. The first episode centers around "why nursing home workers are hesitant to get vaccinated." 
• "Heroes of Brand Protection" is a new show that follows the journeys of "Brand Protection leaders" from big name brands across the globe. Guests so far have been Brand Protection professionals from Hugo Boss and Under Armour. 
• Wondery's "The Apology Line" tells the story of Mr. Apology, a man in Manhattan whose number you could call to apologize for whatever you felt guilty about. He received confessions for everything including shoplifting, infidelity, drug dealing, and murder. 
• Vox Quick Hits is a playlist that gets updated every morning and features Vox's podcasts from genres including news ("Today, Explained"), politics ("The Weeds") and culture ("Vox Conversations.") Each episode is 10 minutes or less with three new episodes arriving each morning*, Monday through Friday. (*Except for Tuesdays, which contains two new episodes.) 

QUICK HITS

• Avoid angry customer tweetstorms about submitting more data just to get theirs back, by asking these five questions about your data privacy solutions.* 
• New to podcasting? A Redditor shared a guide to editing on Audacity, which includes pre-production setup. 
• The team at Pacific Content built Paseo, a tool to help understand and improve podcast searchability. 
• Bullish on Bitcoin? Start earning daily interest on it with Nexo’s Crypto Savings Account.* 

*This is sponsored content.