What’s the next step for social audio?

The hype around the Clubhouse seems to have died down and there are countless comparable initiatives developed by the main technological players. With varying degrees of success so far. And after?

Last year’s lockdown gave Clubhouse in the Netherlands a major boost. This makes sense, because people naturally need to connect and have conversations with like-minded people. The platform responded perfectly to this. From questions asked to Diederik Gommers and Sigrid Kaag to football analyzes by Patrick Kluivert. In no time, Clubhouse had many creators and a million downloads in our country. This growth has stagnated. Some pioneers even stopped doing it. In particular, service-oriented (small) entrepreneurs remain active on the platform. Experts and specialists draw customers away because they can share their expertise easily and discreetly on the platform.

Generation Netflix
Now that the world is opening up again, we are also going back to old ways. Another factor is that other big tech companies are grabbing hold of the audio room phenomenon, such as Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Which the audio community trend is here to stay with. However, it is still too early to draw any conclusions on who will be the favorite.
An important distinguishing feature of Clubhouse is that you cannot record conversations. The advantage of this is that the conversations are real, less thoughtful, more sincere. The downside is that when the conversation is over, that content cannot be found, meaning value is lost and creators return to content and community platforms where they can. Which is better for your visibility, your expert status and your search ability through search engines. But recipients also want to consume content when it’s convenient for them. The Netflix generation. A Facebook group, a Linkedin or Slack group are indeed competitors.

to bump
What’s different is that at the Clubhouse, you usually don’t speak on behalf of a brand, but in a personal capacity. As a brand, you are therefore less likely to set up a community manager, which is easier to do on another platform. Clubhouse is therefore the most suitable for personal connections, which you can then use professionally. It is also not inconceivable that as the platform matures, the big brands are also using their marketing communication budget on Clubhouse. In the US and UK, the app is still extremely popular. So the app seems to be able to take a hit. Time will tell who will ultimately come out on top.

* This article originally appeared in the October issue of Emerce magazine (# 185).