Do you remember, in the olden days way back at the start of this decade, there was a thing called Clubhouse?
I certainly remember, when the lockdowns came hard and heavy, that many big-name marketers were enthusing about Clubhouse. “The future of marketing!” they said.
I never got it, but from what I could understand, Clubhouse:
1. Required an invite to get in, and therefore had a velvet rope effect
2. Was some kind of app that allows group video chat in different-themed rooms, kind of like a big conference center
Clubhouse was very cool until it was not. It didn’t take long. From a peak of 13.5M monthly users in July 2021, Clubhouse quickly started turning into a ghost town.
Last December, I read an article in Business Insider about the “Rise and Fall of Clubhouse.” It said that Clubhouse is mostly dead but will linger on as a zombie for years, thanks to its $100M of VC money. That was the last I heard of Clubhouse until a couple days ago, when I read that the company is trying to pivot in an effort to regain some of its lost coolness.
I personally couldn’t care one Euro cent if Clubhouse succeeds or fails in recooling itself. I’m just writing you about it because of a trending Internet conversation over the past couple weeks. It all started with article with the headline:
“Sunset of the social network”
The argument in the article ran, Facebook is changing its algorithm to be more like Tik Tok. So say goodbye to updates from your friends, family, and business contacts. Instead, say hello to addicting content from around the world, whether you have any “social” connection to those people or not.
According to the article, so-called “social networks” like Facebook have basically become giant, impersonal media platforms. On the other hand, messaging takes care of properly intimate and personal communication. The article concludes by saying:
“All this leaves a vacuum in the middle — the space of forums, ad-hoc group formation and small communities that first drove excitement around internet adoption in the pre-Facebook era.”
So the point I’d like to suggest is, maybe you shouldn’t be looking at the next cool tech solution for your marketing. Not the next velvet-rope app… the next “AI” algorithm update… the next “new” and sexy way of delivering content.
The fact is, the technology that’s been around for the past 30 or more years — websites, forums, email — continues to work, and work well. And if you want proof of that, then I can tell you that that trending “Sunset of the social network” article appeared on Axios, an email newsletter I wrote about a few days ago, which recently sold for more than a half billion dollars.
So if it’s not technology that will make or break marketing, then what?
My bet is on interesting and engaging content, along with a feeling of community, peppered with some subtle human psychology to actually drive sales.
It can be on a website. Or a forum. Or even in email.
And on that note:
If you do have an email list, and if you want to make it more interesting, and more engaging, and even more community-like, so you can drive more sales, then I might be able to help.
In case you are curious: