A Starter Guide to Clubhouse
Have you heard about Clubhouse? I’ve been on the app for less than two weeks and I really enjoy the experience so far. Think of it as stepping into an audio-only conference with workshops to pick from. You can pop in and out of rooms based on your interest. It’s networking in real-time, but without having to get camera-ready for Zoom!
Like any social media app, whether you find it a professional or personal benefit depends on how you use the tool.
How Clubhouse Works
The app is still in its infancy or beta mode, and is only available for iPhone. We hear an Android version is in the works, though. It is defined as “casual drop-in audio conversations with friends and other interesting people around the world.” Conversations in Clubhouse take place in “rooms” and users can either be a moderator, a speaker, or a listener. That room can be out in the open, available to all. Or it can be held within the confines of a “club,” which you’d need to be a member of to pop in.
You are able to follow topics, celebrities and your favorite business pros. Figuring out who is legitimately a celebrity is questionable right now unless you hear them actually speak. The official blue check mark we see on social sites like Facebook and Twitter aren’t available on the app yet.
Here are some tips I noted in my short time on Clubhouse to make you or your clients look “experienced.”
Invitations Are Needed
It’s invite-only during this beta phase. Invites are earned by current users based on their app activity, so your friends may be on the app but don’t have an invite to offer. If you want in, sign up to be on the Clubhouse waiting list so you can reserve your username. If someone who has your phone number in their contact list is already a Clubhouse member, they will get a notification that you are on the waiting list. Then, that established user can allow you in without needing to use an invite! Joining the app could happen quickly or take a few days depending on how active your friends are.
Know This Immediately
You are automatically muted when you enter a room as a guest. You can only be heard if you click on the Hand button and request to be brought up on stage. (Visualize your asking permission to speak to panelists at a luncheon.)
Watch which rooms you visit. There’s a spectrum of professional to rather racy choices, and people who follow you may see or even get notified of your activity.
Bad apples are around. Bullying can happen here but you can report someone by holding down the person’s profile picture until options appear. (You’ll notice a plethora of millionaires around. “There’s a lot of cap on this app,” is what I heard one room saying about the fake millionaires theory.) Be careful of scammers.
Hosting a room is like managing an event. It should be planned out for success.
Room Moderation Best Practices
When you host a room, you and your speakers will be considered to be “onstage.” Listeners are able to raise their hand and then be accepted to the stage to ask their question or to engage.
First, agree on the rules with your co-moderator(s) and main speakers. How long will you host the room? Will you allow for questions, and when? How many speakers are too many to be onstage?
Do This
Handle a professional room like how you’d host a professional speaking event. Welcome guests, introduce your speaker, share direction on the format and such. Be sure to set limits on how long you’re hosting the room, and help the flow of the conversation. For popular rooms, you can invite your speakers to share 60-second pitches of who they are to help the audience learn their credibility.
Like any meeting, people don’t want to hear someone rambling. Make sure to tell the audience how long the event is for and when you will start and stop taking questions. Since people are coming and going in the room, make sure to announce your topic and room format every so often. You can ping or notify your friends in the app of the live room to invite them over and grow your audience. While you’re hosting a room, pull to refresh the app. This will give you an updated audience as time goes one. (By the way, that’s called “PTR” by Clubhousers.)
Not This
Don’t boot guest commentators off your stage without thanking them and then telling them they are being put into the audience. Giving them this warning is more courteous and will help those new to the platform learn the ropes. It’s ideal to tell your guest speakers how to ask a question and step off the stage when they are done as you start your room though.
As a listener, you are able to raise your hand, which is in the bottom right of the app to ask questions or comment. When you are allowed on the stage, make sure to put yourself on mute unless speaking. No one wants to hear extra background noise. Some rooms are busier than others, and you may have to wait in line for someone to accept you raising your hand.
After speaking, you can get down off the stage by pushing on your profile picture and a pop up will come up where you can move yourself back to the audience. If you have to leave the room, you can tap “Leave Quietly” in the left-hand side of the app.
Other Helpful Tips
Clubs Inside Clubhouse: To be a member of a club, you can follow a room, ask to join or someone can nominate you. The admin will have to accept you before you’re an actual member. Once you are a Club member, you can host a room within that Club. That will help you filter your audience a bit.
Search: You can search people by name and topic in their bio. When people say “DM me” on Clubhouse, they mean to direct message them on Twitter or Instagram that’s usually linked on their Clubhouse bio (the only two options Clubhouse syncs with right now). Do make sure your bio is filled out with at least one account you’d want others to follow or contact you at.
Community Guidelines from Clubhouse
Once you get the hang of Clubhouse, you will find how it best suits you. Get on the waiting list or ask your friends on social media to invite you. These tips are a good starting point and Clubhouse is still making adjustments. It recently updated its Community Guidelines on Jan. 6 and Jan. 14, and here are a few things that you might find interesting:
When you start a room in Clubhouse, you are the moderator. This means you are a speaker with the special power to add or remove other speakers. In Clubhouse, the best moderators tend to:
Speakers are the people in a room who have the ability to talk. By default, the person who starts the room is a speaker, and so is the first person to join them on stage.
Don’t feel pressure to speak: Feel free to remain a listener even if you're invited to speak; there is no obligation to accept. People are often doing other things while they Clubhouse!
Pull your friends aside to chat: See a friend in the audience you want to catch up with? Tap on their profile and ask them to start a new room together.
Come and go at will: On Clubhouse, ghosting isn’t a bad thing! You can drop in and out of rooms as you please without worrying about offending anyone. You won’t set off any alerts when you go.
Accept or reject speakers: If you are a room moderator you decide who can speak. If you’d like to invite someone from the audience to speak, just tap on the profile photo of that user and select “Invite to Speak.” If someone else requests to speak, you have the option to decline.
Mute or remove speakers: Rooms moderators can also temporarily mute a speaker or move them back to the audience. To mute the speaker, tap on their profile photo to open the half-sheet, and then tap the mute button to the right of their profile photo. To move them down to the audience, tap on their profile photo to open the half-sheet, then tap “‘Move to Audience.”
Remove from room: If someone is being disruptive or distressing to people in the room, moderators can remove them, and they will no longer see or be able to re-enter the room. To remove them from the room, tap on their profile half-sheet, tap the ellipses and remove.
Unfollow: You can unfollow a user at any time. To do so, navigate to the user’s profile and tap on the button that says “Following” to unselect it. They won’t be notified, and you won’t receive any further notifications about their activity.
Block: You can block a user at any time. On their profile, click on the 3 vertical dots in the top right, and select “Block.” Blocked users will not be able to see or join any room that you create or in which you are a moderator or speaker.
Temporary audio recording: Solely for the purpose of supporting incident investigations, we temporarily record the audio in a room while the room is live. If a user reports a Trust and Safety violation while the room is active, we retain the audio for the purposes of investigating the incident, and then delete it when the investigation is complete. If no incident is reported in a room, we delete the temporary audio recording when the room ends. Audio from (i) muted speakers and (ii) audience members is never captured, and all temporary audio recordings are encrypted.
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