I’m not sure about you, but I’ve been impatiently waiting for a new social media offering that isn’t Facebook. While I know that millions of people are active on all of the arms and legs of this giant, I’ve had fatigue for a couple of years now. But we can get into that another time. Clubhouse is a breathe of fresh air.
Audio Only & Exclusivity
One of the biggest and more unique features is that it is audio only. Where video is still a powerhouse, audio has been mainly used for podcasts. Though that sector is still booming, live audio is relatively new. So Clubhouse is an invite only social app and this is different when compared to most where anyone can get on (including bots). With this, invites are tracked by who invited you. And your invites are limited at first but grow with your engagement and prolonged use. This makes for a more exclusive feeling when you launch the app and it furthers that by curating rooms in your feed based on who you follow and interact with most. It helps to make it easier and quicker to jump right into a room and join a conversation.
Conversations & Stages
Joining a room is easy, but the key is to get up on stage. Not all rooms allow for everyone to be brought up on stage. So again, some exclusivity being exercised again. This is a good thing because it allows for room moderators to ensure whomever is going to be on stage is someone who will add value to the conversation. If you happen to notice people’s microphone icon go on and off repeatedly, that means they’re applauding what the speaker is saying.
Networking & Growth Opportunities
This is probably the biggest advantage to early adopters of this platform. As it is very organic right now, most of the interactions you’ll have will land you follows. It’s advantageous for your to follow others as well because you’ll get notifications of rooms that they enter as well as rooms they create. If they’re active with getting up on stages, chances are they’ll also get you on stage too. And being up there providing value to the crowd is where you always want to be when you put time into this app in my opinion. Very much like any other public opportunity, you’ll want to position yourself as an SME (Subject Matter Expert), that others will quickly come to regard you as such and seek you for more insight.
Another key element here is to create your own rooms, invite others to join you, and do this on a consistent basis. I’ve seen people do daily ones on open ended topics like a Lunch & Learn. Those are great because you’re not locked into a singular topic or stressed to think of a new topic for each day/room session. I’ve included screenshots on how to create and schedule a room. I found it hard at first to figure out so I figured I’d share.
These are the slides from a recent presentation on Email Marketing. A video of the presentation will be available later, but in the meantime the slides are available for you to view and download below.
If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur and you’re looking to learn some ways to grow your email list and also learn marketing tips to help reach and grow your audience, this is the presentation for you. Now it’s nothing too technical or hard to follow. It’s mainly concepts and best practices along with some statistics to help you design, engage, and even automate your email marketing efforts. This presentation is high level and so anyone from any industry can take from this and put aspects of it into practice immediately. If you’re looking for a custom solution or strategy for your email marketing efforts, please be sure to contact us so that we can help.
This is a quick two minute tip on how to increase your email open rates for your newsletters. When it comes to managing your business, there’s a bunch of outbound marketing efforts that you have to plan for. Email is still a great medium of transmitting information. The key though is to curate valuable content that your readers will come to expect and be able to take action on. The challenge that many businesses face with email though is that, people may be used to getting a lot of emails and not really paying attention to most of them.
You’ve gotta put yourself in the seat of an email subscriber, and imagine what their perspective is on their email inbox. Typically, when getting a bunch of emails from different sources, we tend to identify the senders that we know provide the best emails. Whether it’s because we anticipate some sales or deals, free stuff, exclusive information, data, whatever. And so because of that, we’ll usually skim through all our recent emails and go directly to those that we know and are familiar with to have value. This is how you have to position your email newsletters.
Using the 80/20 Rule, you’ll want to send out great content that is readily useful to your audience 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time is where you can promote your products and services. People know that you’re trying to sell to them, and they’re used to that. The key is to be more of a transparent source of information in a bite size or easy to consume way for your readers that are interested in your industry or products. Take a look at the video below and if you have any questions please feel free to contact us for a Strategy Session.
Being a designer isn’t always the rainbows and rivers of creativity that it seems from the outside looking in. It actually takes a lot of energy to take a unique approach to each project. What many people think is “easy to create a logo” or “easy to build a [simple] website” sometimes isn’t rudimentary at all. And when those days come we can get what I like to call designer’s block; where no matter how hard we try it is really hard to conceptualize a new creative thought. Here are some quick things you can do to help break that block.
Take a Walk or Hit The Gym
Stepping away from coding or designing a new logo can actually be pretty healthy. I’ll step away for a long walk, sometimes up to two miles just to really get my head clear. Listening to a podcast or music helps even better while taking that walk. Working out in a gym can also help and relieve a little bit of stress at the same time.
Take a Long Shower
I can’t tell you how many good ideas I come up with in shower or the loo. I used to think that maybe it had something with me being a Pisces but after several impromptu conversations with colleagues I find it’s not just me. Maybe it’s the running water that promotes a zen-like or calming environment, even if it is temporal.
Take a 30K View Look Down
When working on routine projects and something goes wrong along the way, we’re sometimes confused. Why would something break or go wrong, it never does at this point of the project. It doesn’t help that we can get tunnel vision and may have missed a step or forgot to confirm some details that are now vital.
Retrace your progress from the absolute beginning and review each step as if you were someone else checking someone else’s work
Perform an audit. Are you sure you have all the pertinent details necessary for your project?
Does someone else (with a specific expertise) need to finish this work?
So what are some things that you do to refresh your mind when you get stuck working on a project? Send me a Tweet me and let me know or comment below.
This week’s Blab was a rapid fire one! We dished out a bunch of apps, websites, tips, and tools for social media, engagement, websites and more. When I think back at it, it really was a LOT!
The objective at the beginning of any year is to do more and do better. With that be sure to try out some of the tools and tips mentioned in this replay. And if you do try some of these out be sure to let me know in the comments below.
Lastly be sure to scroll past the video to see the show notes!
Show Notes:
If This Than That A free tool for automating functions for when you do or post something, a function happens as a result.
Hot Jar A “freemium” website analytic tool to see what your visitors are reading on your website with heat maps and more.
OneShot For highlighting screenshots and quickly sharing to Twitter (iOS only)
![Increase Your Open Rates With Your Email Marketing [VIDEO]](https://jpdesigntheory.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Mans-finger-on-email-envelope-1080x675.jpg)
