Tag Archives: Clubhouse

When the media is gone, what’s your plan B?

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You may know the PESO model, but do you use the O element?

Whoever is in charge of bringing more media investments to Dubai, may luck be on their side. It’s drier out there than a summer spent in the Sahara. The media is suffering. I’ve had some brilliant journalists approach me recently asking about a move to public relations (and even cynical old me has been taken aback by these asks), as they’re under so much pressure from others, be it sales or management, that they feel they can’t do their jobs. And then there’s the difficulty in getting a good story published; more and more, if you’re not advertising, you’re not getting coverage (unless you’re the government).

I truly get this; media outlets need to make money and I have countless conversations with marketing teams as to why this matters and why they should put money into local publications (often the response is, we’re paying the PR agency and so we should get coverage – this drives me nuts and reflects one of the many misunderstandings of how PR and media works).

Let’s be straight. The number of media outlets reporting straight news is dropping. And those working in communications for brands need to have a Plan B. So, what’s your Plan B? How are you getting out your message?

We all know about social media, and there’s always the option to boost messaging using advertising (especially on the social media sites). But I’m still surprised by how few organizations here, especially local brands, are using their owned media to get out their messaging.

I’m not going to go into too much detail, but there’s so many audio choices – think podcasts and audio chat rooms like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces – and there’s the “traditional” option of a blog page. Blogs like this one can be done for next to no costs and technical expertise, and they can be used to build up a long-term audience through email signups and social media. If you want to, you can start off by posting articles to LinkedIn (though I’d always recommend your own site for SEO purposes). And there’s also vlogs, video blogs, which is how many “social media influencers” started out.

And then there’s your own influencers, namely your employees. I’ve often found them to be brilliant at pushing out your company’s news on their own social media feeds. There are tools to push out content to them, such as LinkedIn Pulse or Sprinklr. But you don’t need an app – you could even push to them content via email and incentivize their posting.

Technology is making it much, much easier for organizations to create their own channels to push out content. Yes, the media matters a great deal. But smart communicators need to think about what they can do to create new channels for pushing out good messaging and content. What I’ve listed above is just a sampling of what you can do with the owned media element of the PESO model. And I can’t wait to see what you come up with. As always, please do share ideas. The more we share, the better we all get.

Goodbye Clubhouse!

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Clubhouse was fun for us in the UAE, at least for a couple of weeks

The buzz came and went faster than you can say ‘two-shot vaccination’. Clubhouse has been the invite-only app that everyone has been talking about, at least iPhone users (the application isn’t available on Android phones, yet). The app, which is audio-based and is designed around the idea of creating rooms where people can listen in to speakers in a talk-radio format (think a live stream but with no video), has proved to be wildly popular in the Gulf.

Some users have likened Clubhouse to the early days of social media, where people were open and discussed anything and everything. Eman Hussein wrote a very good piece on how Clubhouse is giving a voice for people to discuss a myriad of socio-political issues in a way that hasn’t been possible for years. Others have speculated that the app would soon be banned or be eroded by fake accounts and trolling.

I’ve loved the application, and the ability to listen in and engage in talks and debates, both scheduled and on the fly. You can find rooms by interest, follow friends and colleagues, and be as involved or as uninvolved as you want. There are talks about current affairs, social issues, and even silence (which is very handy if you’re living in Cairo). And there were also a myriad of PR possibilities for the platform, which made it so exciting.

Sadly for me and all my friends in the UAE, you won’t be able to use Clubhouse. The service has been throttled to the point that the audio is, frankly, inaudible. Have a listen to the below (and Omar is on a 5G connection, which is going to be faster than my wifi).

I don’t know the reasons why this is happening. I assume it’s due to the UAE’s VoIP laws, which requires any application that uses voice over the internet to be regulated (in theory, you can call another individual via Clubhouse, but that’s not really the purpose of the application). Have the country’s networks deemed that Clubhouse is an application whose performance should be reduced to the point that it’s unusable? The only way that the application can be used is via a VPN, which is also not ideal.

It’s a shame that this is happening; Clubhouse looked to be such a fun place to hear others and hold group chats. And it doesn’t help the region in its goal to become a technology leader. But anyone who has lived here for a while knows how these things are (we can’t use Facebook messenger calling, for example). Ah well, anyone up for another WhatsApp group chat?