Clubhouse is Hot and Facebook Is Not: How to Know If You Care

If you haven’t heard, Clubhouse is the newest social media darling to burst onto the scene. And it’s causing a lot of business owners heartburn. Should they be on it? How do they use it? What should they do with it (because it is different). And at the same time, Facebook, the old standard, seems to be a hot dumpster fire mess. What’s a forward-thinking business owner to do?

Listen to Season 1: Episode 26

It’s New, But Does That Make It Hot?

There’s always going to be some new thing that might be the next big thing. First, it was Snapchat. Then TikTok. And there were even a few other players that we’ve all but forgotten at this point because they got gobbled up by the bigger guys (remember Periscope?). And then the established platforms such as Facebook or Twitter don’t work like they used to.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but most of the businesses we work with have seen their organic reach absolutely tank on Facebook and are wondering what to do about it. The point of having these marketing channels is so you can amplify the message of your business to attract new customers, to nurture existing interested parties, and to close new business. And to be quite frank, these channels absolutely will continue to change. Not just because of a new technology or the redefining of an existing one, but because your business changes and your ideal clients change. Pretty much the only constant in business and in life is change.

How to Know If Clubhouse Is for You

The best way to know if you care about Clubhouse or if you need to abandon your Facebook strategy is not secret. If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you probably already guessed that the answer, my friends, is not blowing in the wind—it’s analytics.

Knowing where your people are coming from—and if they’re doing the things you want them to do—is key to deciding when to change your marketing channel or try something new and different with an existing marketing channel.

But Back to the question at hand: how to know if you care about Clubhouse.

Let’s talk about Clubhouse. From the user side, there’s really no tracking. (It appears there’s plenty of tracking on the backend, as their agreement has language about advertisers.) You can’t see who’s been in which rooms after they leave or the number of likes or comments. The best you can do is have a trackable link in your bio for people to connect directly with you.

Beyond that, you’re going to need some good old-fashioned analog tracking of your activities and the results they got. Enter a spreadsheet and some key performance indicators that you’re looking for, such as how many rooms you join, if anybody contacted you directly, and if that contact turned into a client or partner.

With Facebook, if you’re heavily relying on the platform for attracting and nurturing prospective clients, it’s probably way past time to add additional channels and take your reliance off of that one. Also, if you are still getting engagement on Facebook, making sure you’re getting those people to a channel that you control, such as email marketing, is critical to continue to nurture them and convert them into clients.

The Bottom Line: Let Analytics Decide

Having clearly defined metrics for each of your channels that indicate both leading markers (when people are expressing interest) and lagging markers (when you are able to convert people) helps you to see what’s working and why.

This applies not only to online channels (i.e., websites) and social media, but also to “offline” channels such as events, or even public relations. Knowing this information helps you decide whether you should keep on keeping on, try something different, or pull the plug.

Having these metrics in place means that you can make those decisions confidently or watch for indicators, such as Facebook, and know you need to supplement them so that if the rules change and if you no longer can get the clients you are looking for or the interest, you have other channels to put more resources into to achieve your goals.

Get the Help You Need

Ready to bust the uncertainty of growth and make more profitable decisions based on facts, not feelings? We can help. Our analytics and reporting service, Insight Pro, properly sets up metrics in your business and serves them up so you can make decisions based on the information that matters to your success. Go check it out!