Social Audio Influencers: Who’s Paving The Way For Social Audio

These top social audio influencers deliver industry thought leadership and insightful commentary on social audio apps like Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, Spotify Live, and more. If you want to stay up to date on all of the innovations in the social audio space, start paying attention to this group.

Social audio is a new way to create community, connect with others, and share thought leadership. Clubhouse had the first mover’s advantage, but several others are in the marketplace today. Industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang recently reported that there were 33 social audio apps last year.

The role of influencer marketing within the social audio category is still being defined. There are a few notable examples, like Alex Kantrowitz’s use of Clubhouse to build an audience for his Substack newsletter or Casey Newton’s use of Twitter Spaces to promote his membership program. But for the most part, influencer marketing in social audio is still in its infancy.

As with any new platform, there is a rush by users to build their communities and gain influence before social audio becomes mainstream. In more simple terms, people are trying to become social audio influencers.

From a brand perspective, it’s important to ask these questions before jumping head-first into social audio:

• What is my overall influencer marketing strategy, and how does social audio fit?
• Do our customers or prospects even use social audio?
• Where do we invest our time, money, in resources?
• How do we even track the effectiveness of a program within Clubhouse or another app?
• How will social audio fit into my larger PESO media strategy?

These are all questions that many people are asking today. The space is so new that there are no right or wrong answers. It boils down to priority, strategy, and patience.

When identifying social audio influencers, it’s more important to understand whether these individuals have influence in other channels. This approach will help you to understand better how your content strategy can be supported by these individuals cross-platform.

This is where I would start. I would also consider these four variables that will help identify influence:

• Reach: How large is their community outside of social audio?
• Relevance: Do they have social audio topical authority?
• Resonance: When they publish social audio content, does it create engagement with others?
• Reference: Do other influencers reference them?

These factors should help you narrow down which social audio influencers you may want to collaborate with for a campaign.

What’s interesting about these social audio influencers is that some aren’t necessarily influential within the Clubhouse app. Rather, they’re using other channels of influence to talk about their experiences and inform the general market about the innovation in the social audio space.

I want to emphasize that Clubhouse influencer marketing is not the Holy Grail. It’s one of many channels where brands can leverage third-party voices to help tell brand stories. One of the results of successful brand storytelling is to surround sound target audiences with relevant, repetitive, and actionable content. Consumers and B2B audiences must engage with branded content 3-5 times before they buy your product or believe your message.

We have included several other technologies and business influencer lists based on various B2B topics. We use the same algorithms to identify these influencers based on reach, resonance, relevance, and reference. The reality is that when brands activate influencer programs is not just a strategic approach. Still, it also requires working knowledge of data and analytics, content and storytelling, and measuring success.

Using the same methodology above, we created additional technology influencer lists below. Don’t forget: Use these lists as a starting point.

Related Content

• Influencer marketing trends
• Influencer marketing case studies
• B2B influencer marketing strategy