Today's salespeople constantly seek new avenues to connect with prospects. Clubhouse seemed like a natural fit--combining podcasts, webinars, and trade shows into a drop-in audio format--for salespeople whom are used to listening and speaking.
The jury is still out on whether CH is permanently valuable. However, there is mad hype, especially with a slated April rollout onto Android.
Two challenges have made Clubhouse less ideal for prospecting or top of funnel activity as originally anticipated or promised by its drop-in audio nature:
- Difficult to add production value to events
- Due to the iOS Apple-exclusivity, it's been difficult to add any type of production to rooms (music, better microphones, soundboard, etc)
- This results in rooms that RELY ON THE TOPIC to keep interest. If you've ever sold a thing in your life you know that your audience is only hearing max 50% of what you say at any given time. Further, if your topic is stale, lets say you're an HR tech rep trying to do a room with HR ppl, you're not going to have a good time
- "Fun"-factor. As b2b marketing continues to shift towards b2c trends (and millennial increasingly making purchasing decisions) consumers will come to expect this level of entertainment from your boring business content
- Think about why Axel, a guy who sings ppl to sleep with lullabies, is on the cover.
- The online b2b revenue community has gotten pretty good at video content and Zoom call engagement, but there is room for improvement on the audio side
- Impossible to record and repurpose content
- One of the reasons podcasts blew up is the ease of making them: anyone can hop on a zoom call and press record
- The second main benefit is your long podcast now can become a content pillar from which you can now repurpose short snippets and get 5-10 posts out of one recording
- Clubhouse- with its discovery function, should be an optimal place for podcast-style content....however, the devs discourage recording and actually block the sound from your phone
- Thus, it wasn't worth it for people to try and run recorded podcasts on clubhouse since at best they could mic the audio coming from the speakerphone into another mic, which sounds....well, bad
Luckily for you, your boy is a full-fledged sales rapper, and I'm here to show you how I solved both the production and the recording issues. The linked video walks you through set up. Below are all the individual pieces you need (with inexpensive options/brands in parenthesis):
Hardware:
- XLR Microphone (AT2020, Blue Ember, AKG etc)
- XLR cable (any brand will do, amazon or monoprice are good places)
- Audio Interface (Focusrite Scarlet, M-Audio AIR, Presonus, Behringer etc)
- Computer (the new m1 macs are great at this)
- iRig 2 (do NOT get other versions they wont work)
- L/R (red is right, left is black/white) to female 1/4" cable, again any brand will do
- Lightning to 3.5mm adapter (amazon has a ton)
- 1.4" to 1.4" audio cable (commonly used as guitar cords or line in inputs, again any will do)
- 3.5mm to 1.4" cable (outgoing from irig monitoring port into the guitar input on interface)
- Wired headphones for lowest latency
Software:
- Digital audio workstation (DAW) - used to put efx on voice in and capture audio out, can also use to port Spotify/browser/ other app audio into your master sound output going into CH
- Loopback virtual mixer https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/
- below link shows how to route your signals so you can hear the sound from CH on through your computer, but doesn't reroute back into CH
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/8b9o4pogmtuaitt/Screen%20Shot%202021-03-31%20at%203.50.23%20PM.png?dl=0
- VST plugins of your choice to change your effect sounds
Video will demonstrate how to wire everything.
If you still have questions or decide you want to outsource, hit me up ;)
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