I had the pleasure recently of co-presenting on the topic of “Productivity for Writers During the Pandemic” on Clubhouse, hosted by the literary agent Carly Watters. If you missed that talk, no worries. I plan to highlight some productivity tips for writers and other creatives in future blog posts issues, so stay tuned!
Meanwhile, if you’re thinking, “I don’t need another social media app,” that’s exactly what I thought about Clubhouse. But after several clients encouraged me to try it out saying that I would love it, I bit the bullet and decided to give it a try. And I must say that I’m impressed! It may seem overwhelming but I’m going to simplify it in case any of you are interested in joining.
Clubhouse is basically podcasting with participation. It is audio-only. You can’t post anything or type in comments the way you can with other social media channels. There is no print component to it. (Although they just added Back Channel, which is a direct messaging feature and can be used as a chat feature.) The idea is that there are “clubs” organized around particular topics. Similar to the way you would have clubs in real life. You can join a club and you’ll be alerted when they have a “room” going on to talk about a certain issue. Each one of these rooms or talks will have a few moderators. The moderators are considered to be “on stage” and you can hear them, similar to the way you would a podcast host. Everyone else that joins the room to listen is muted. You can raise your hand if you want to join them on stage and ask a question. The little icon with your image will move up to the moderator area while you’re asking a question, and then you will be unmuted. When you’re done asking your question, they will move you back down to the general room in the audience and you will be on mute again.
I think the beauty of this is that there are conversations going on about lots of different topics. It’s a great place to listen, learn, and participate. Plus some of the moderators in the publishing industry are bigwigs and you’re basically joining them for a conversation. (Like I did recently with literary agent, Carly Watters!)
Here’s a screenshot of my profile but you don’t need to do something as comprehensive as this. You can copy over your Twitter or Instagram profile bio. Clubhouse recommends that you link to your Twitter and Instagram profiles if you have them. You’ll see that I also linked to my websites. I recommend you link to a website or blog if you have one.
If you’re interested in a quick video tutorial on how to use Clubhouse beyond what I wrote here, I recommend you check out this video by a social media expert named Michael Stelzner who has an awesome quick Clubhouse tutorial. I watched it and was up and running within an hour. https://youtu.be/o7gv7U-
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