By now you probably have heard about Blab, the latest social media platform for video conferencing with 2-4 people. So what is it? Blab is a social conferencing platform that allows anyone to run their show. It is used for recording podcasts, for coaching & teaching, for interviews, for after shows and even discussions.
Blab started out a few months ago as a simple Slack integration. It is the product of a barside brainstorming session of the team who were supposed to relaunch Bebo and who were unsatisfied with the 500k downloads. According to their own statistics, the average user spends 65 mins/daily watching blabs. Their milestones include hosting a live commentary and after-show of the 2016 Republican debate and the Spyson Hour Podcast to talk about Big Brother 17. It is initially available for desktop and IOS users.
This is a fun way to do video conferencing with up to 3 different people at the same time. Using it is pretty simple.
1.Go to www.blab.im and sign up using your Twitter account. For now, the only way to use it is to sign up using your Twitter account. No other option. Not even using your email address or other social media accounts.
2. Authorize Blab to use your account.
3. Wait for application to redirect back to Blab
4. You can start using the application either by starting a new blab, viewing, or listening to other blabs. There are separate tabs for On Air, Scheduled and Replays. On the left side, you will see the tags commonly used in association with the blabs.
5. Customize your Blab or use your default Twitter profile. Take note though that bios in Blab are 20 characters shorter than Twitter so if you want a longer introduction to yourself or your business.
6. Watch and learn. Navigate your way through your Blab dashboard before you start one. Familiarize yourself with how it works both as an audience and a participant to someone else’s blab. That way, you can also familiarize yourself with the proper etiquette for using this platform.
1.You can start by following people so you can receive notifications when they have a new blab. You can just do a search lookup using the Twitter name or handle.
2. To start a new one, you can just click on the Purple button near your profile picture.
3. Give your blab a catchy title. For example, if your blab is about recycling your old dress, you could use: “Ten Ways to Recycle Your Old Dress & Look Like A Million Bucks”.
4. Add three tags so people can find it quite easily. In this case, you may use- fashion, clothes, and recycling
5. Go live or schedule it to go on air at a particular date ad time.
6. As the owner of the blab, you can record it. After the airing, you are given 2 links to download- for your audio and your video. You can upload your video link to YouTube while you can upload the audio link as a podcast on iTunes, Libsyn or any preferred podcast host. All your blabs are also archived so you get to keep a record on your account. These recorded sessions are called replays and there are a lot of things that you cannot do like follow people, chat or send feels.
7. Treat this the way you treat your normal events. Promote it in other social media networks. You can tweet details of your blab, create a Facebook events page and post it as a status update on your other social networks.
8. Moderate your video conferences. Just like your blog or Facebook page, you need to moderate your blab. As Blab allows up to 4 participants at a time, you can allow anyone to join in once a seat or a window has been vacated during the duration of the blab.
Blab can be likened to a late night talk show with you as the host. Once a new participant arrives, the rest of the guests can take the back seat and just observe the going ons.
9. There are several commands that you need to know though the most important ones are “/Q“ for the grey question box to appear and “/Topic“, to change the topic of the conference.
10. Audience members can give their appreciation to the participants by clicking on the pair of hands which is similar to hearts and likes in other social media networks.
11. At the end of the session, the screen will show the rankings of the participants based on the number of feels (a pair of hands) they received.
In many predictions for 2016 for social media marketing and content marketing, video streaming is the way to go and what perfect timing to start working on your Blab, follow industry leaders and create a follower base than now? What’s good about video streaming is that it gives you face to face real time interaction with your participants from all parts of th globe.
This is an ideal platform for sharing your products. You can promote events, host contests and share on scene video footages.
As a business owner and as a social media marketer, it is up to you to keep track of the latest trends in social media and learn how you can use it to promote your products and services. Though it is still on its Beta version, it has already surpassed other video streaming platforms like Google Hangout, Periscope, and Meerkat in the sense that it can allow up to 4 people to do the group video conferencing. Using it is not complicated as most of the steps are self-explanatory and very easy to follow.
An effective social media marketer knows how to take advantage of the latest trends, use it to promote her brand and stay competitive with same niche rivals. As most people live and breathe the internet, it is only fitting that you adapt to the latest trends when promoting your brand via social media. So what are you waiting for? Start using Blab for your business now.
