If in doubt, BEGIN.

A mantra I learnt from Gapingvoid Culture Design Group, when I discovered their image below. It has stuck with me and I will probably never get it out of my head. I fell in love with their doodles and I now have a Pinterest Board with 1,600 images. Do check them out, they are all awesome! I even created a 'small' company Culture Wall from my favourite 20 images.

Next Social Audio Community Chat: https://styin.me/sacc-sept09

But this is not what I am sharing with you today. I would like to share that I have been in doubt for a while, ever since I got a seat inside the now infamous social audio start-up and social media disruptor Clubhouse. Initially I was mega turned-on by the idea, after all I am a podcaster for nearly 7 years, so I do love anything audio. I started listening on Clubhouse and just wanted to get started with hosting my own rooms, but what do you talk about? I listened a bit more and then a bit more and then I heard EGO. I heard people sharing wisdom, their own or maybe wisdom they had borrowed and promoting themselves with bios on their profiles that read like the whose who of Egoland, yes Legoland with out the 'L'.

I was turned off completely, yuk, this didn't resonate with me at all and the same question kept appearing in my mind, 'what do you even talk about?'

But I promised myself to keep an eye on things or rather an EAR. Then Twitter rolled out Twitter Spaces and I initially believed this could be it for me. At least I have a small following there, just over 4k, which means if I could invite them, happy days, I could establish a small audience, but...what would I then talk about? And, I need a co-host do I, it's what all the greats appear to be doing? And then you can't really invite anyone, so that caused more doubt.

I didn't despair though, I came across a wonderful show/room/space, All Things Audio, just what I needed. I have been listening to hosts Suze Cooper and Madalyn Sklar for a few months now and I even create the occasional Mind Map from each weekly episode👇.

But what I came to realise on Twitter Spaces, discovery or searching for Spaces is pretty awful and almost impossible at times, something that LinkedIn appear to have copied for now, it's equally as poor here, but we've been told it will get better.

I knew LinkedIn Audio was on the horizon, they were Beta testing their offering and I discovered during listening to All Things Audio that Robert Hanna was doing a weekly LinkedIn Audio Townhall on a Sunday, except there would be nobody from LinkedIn attending, it wasn't like Clubhouse where the founders attended every single one of their Townhalls, a term coined by them actually for the purpose of engaging their users and providing updates on product development plans. These are still happening on Clubhouse.

Robert Hanna took it upon himself to update us creators on LinkedIn's development plans, the rollout expectation and what we could expect of the feature and of course by attending his Townhalls we could all get an insight to how it all actually worked in practice, I was impressed and the best thing of all, you can access it on desktop too, that's awesome. Robert has a direct communication link with LinkedIn, as well as other beta-testers and therefore he does speak with some authority and knowledge, we're all super appreciative of his work to help the community. 🤟

Cut a long story short I eventually got the ability to host my own LinkedIn Audio Events. There was no notification, I literally just tried to create an event and boom there it was on the drop down. Allegedly, you need to have creator mode turned on, on your profile, but my wife hasn't and she now has access to it took although she won't be hosting any rooms any time soon, she has suggested that she may attend one of mine at some point!

Before I got access to LinkedIn Audio Events I decided to set up a LinkedIn group in anticipation of its arrival titled 'Social Audio Community', I felt that it would be beneficial for many of us on LinkedIn to learn together about the topic of Social Audio, what are the benefits and what are the downsides for example. The group is still small, but that's how I like it! Do ask to join it. This was a 'if in doubt begin' moment for me, I decided, YES, LinkedIn is where I will start to host a regular event and link it to the group as well.

After all this is where my network is the largest of all platforms and where I know many people personally (face to face) too.

Plus, LinkedIn Audio has been inserted as part of their 'events' creation process, this means you can actually invite people, no pinging (Clubhouse term) or tagging (Twitter term), to try and get people's attention. You actually invite your first level connections directly and they will either accept or not. By the way even if they do accept, they may not necessarily turn up and that's absolutely fine.

And now for the Elephant in the room, what will I actually talk about? Well...

I will actually say very little, I would like the room to chat more. My intention is to hold the space for others to learn and grow on the topic of Social Audio. Of course I need to start with something to open the dialogue, but after that if guests are willing to come on stage, happy days. In the main the discussion will be about Social Audio tactics, not about the technical ins/outs there are plenty of rooms/events/spaces/houses/clubs discussing that, I would like to focus on, why should we even do it, will it help our businesses, how do we maximise our audience attendance and participation, etc.

Name: Social Audio Community Chat (the name links it back to the group) Time: 2.00 - 2.45pm (UK) - just 45 minutes, leaves me a few minutes if we over run. Frequency: Every Friday afternoon, excluding any planned vacation of course.

If you'd like to attend, click the link below and if you are already attending, do test it out and invite a few of your connections too, you never know who may benefit. By the way the actual link could be much better, so I shortened it, https://styin.me/sacc-sept09

Hope to hear you there and do let me know in the comments, (either in the event or here) if you have any questions for the event or if you have any questions at all on anything to do with Social Audio, will do my best to give my perception of it all.

Hear you soon, M ツ ~ bio.link/stayingaliveuk