Is Blab the Next Awesome Influencer Marketing Tool?

While the live-streaming craze started big-time with the launch of Meerkat earlier this year and built further with Twitter’s Periscope, marketers are starting to see how multi-stream app Blab can be used for collaborative content beyond just a single stream done by an individual. While some great influencer marketing campaigns have been launched with Periscope across a variety of individual user channels, Blab’s option to include more voices and insight on audience metrics offers brands new opportunities for influencer marketing and community outreach.

If you haven’t heard of it, Blab has been around for a while but added multi-source live-streaming when it launched in beta last Spring. As the year has progressed, it’s become a key platform for conversational video broadcasts from media and brands alike. Blab has quickly become a popular place for talk shows, discussions, interviews and other live interactions.

Unlike many business-focused broadcast tools, Blab has built-in discovery, a social feel, and the opportunity for interaction is higher with a free-form, easily customizable chat feature. One major difference from other social platforms, however is how they handle “social love” earned during a broadcast. The Blab equivalent of hearts from Periscope are various kinds (e.g., applause, high-fives) of ‘Feels’ and they vanish after each broadcast. As a result, the platform doesn’t provide influencers or brands much opportunity to build followers/fans from show to show. Instead, it’s just about the quality of the content for each broadcast.

How Can You Use Blab For Influencer Marketing?

With multi-source live-streaming, Blab provides the opportunity for remote conversations between brands and influencers. This could take the form of a value-add mini-webinar, product introductions, thought leadership discussions, or a real-time Q&A through chat. Blab also has a simple integration with Twitter to allow you to send out tweets from the interface, meaning you can amplify as you broadcast and even easily get a hashtag going before, during and after you’re on the air.

Live streaming is high-energy and can be a lot of fun. While the off-the-cuff presentation may sound dangerous to some brands, it can also be a way to create truly authentic content, particularly if you’re working with an influencer that has your goals in mind and also knows how to interact with the audience in real-time. Most social media creators are used to regular interaction with their audiences so their inclusion can raise the potential for useful relationship building during your broadcasts.

Once the stream is over, the show doesn’t need to stop. Blab allows for video capture so you can upload a portion to YouTube, drop snippets on Instagram or Vine, or embed the video in a blog post. Blab is also aggressively building out audience reporting and segmentation tools so brands can build on the relationships they build up through live-streaming quality content.

While it is starting to feel like every social platform is adding live-stream options, Blab may be uniquely set up to be the ideal choice for those interested in real-time influencer marketing. The quick setup options for mobile or desktop computer on Blab mean that it’s easy to experiment on the platform ahead of time and potentially make your content highly targeted as well. Pair that with the ideal influencer and you can create a deeply compelling broadcast that works for any segment of your audience.