Take Content Marketing to a New Level for Your Practice: Meet Blab.im

The social media scene keeps coming up with new and sometimes improved ways to market your practice. Among the latest sites to hit the Internet is Blab, a platform that combines social media and video chats. The idea for Blab has been around since April 2015, but the site has just started to take off in recent weeks. What makes Blab a potentially promising way for attorneys to market our practice? It lets users host video chats and engage in real-time conversations with others while an online audience watches. Let’s explore how Blab works and take a look at the pros and cons of this new marketing tool.

How It Works

Blab is easy to use, even for those who don’t have any experience working with video chat services. All you have to do get started is the following:

• Sign in with Twitter
• Start your Blab
• Pick a topic and category
• Share the link with your co-host
• Accept callers
• Record your Blab
• Schedule a new one

It’s that simple! The site walks you through the whole process and has a user-friendly setup that makes it easy to figure out what you need to do next. The great thing about Blab is that you can build followers, just like on Twitter and Facebook. These followers can turn into regular audience members who post comments during each Blab. You can also invite them to join in the conversation if desired.

As far as your co-hosts go, who should you invite? When your aim is to market your practice as a lawyer, think of potentially great and informative conservationists you know, such as a Fellow lawyer in your practice or another legal professional who can give additional advice on your Blab topic. Blab allows you to have up to four people chatting away to keep the conversation flowing smoothly. The most important thing to bear in mind is that you want your discussion to be lively and engaging, yet also insightful for your audience. You want them to see you as an expert in your field and someone they can turn to when they need legal help.

Blab is still growing, so it’s mainly used by smaller businesses for marketing purposes. Business owners and brands are still testing the platform. You can search different topic and see who is living streaming or recorded Blabs that are about your interests. I had the opportunity to jump on a few blabs with fellow attorneys and experts in the industry, be sure to take a peek here.

The Pros of Blab

Blab offers a lot of benefits for a video chat/social media hybrid site. These are just some to consider:

• There’s an option to go off record if you don’t want to include certain parts of your Blab in the recording, such as if the hosts go off an a tangent while chatting.
• Blab recordings don’t have any type of expiration date, so potential clients can watch yours for weeks, months or years to come.
• Blab records for up to 6 hours, giving you plenty of time to get your marketing message across.
• You can Tweet live during your Blab to draw some of your Twitter followers.
• Comments from your audience are very easy to monitor.
• Blab offers high-quality audio, so you don’t have to worry about your audience having trouble hearing the conversation.
• The live streaming feature runs smoothly, so you won’t encounter video interruptions.

Some of the potential Downside of Blab

Blab isn’t without its quirks, although these will hopefully be fixed shortly. While the site works great overall, keep the following cons in mind:

• As of now, there’s no way to send direct messages, so you can’t reach out to followers one-on-one.
• Blabs are all public, although you can limit the number of seats in your audience. This shouldn’t be a concern when you’re marketing your practice to the general public, but the lack of private Blabs has been criticized by some.
• There’s no way to retrieve your conversation if you forget to press the record button, so pay close attention to this while starting up your Blab.
• The iOS app is in beta mode right now, so expect some glitches. Some users have reported glitches while using Blab in Chrome, too.

Ready to get the conversation started? Head over to Blab to take a look around and set up your first conversation. Let me know what you think! Come on board and test drive! Would you like to Blab together? Contact me and we can have a Blab together!