10 Fun (And Easy) Ways Makers and Handmade Entrepreneurs Use Blab

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These days, it seems like a new live streaming service is introduced every other week. Aside from the usual glitches all new technologies experience, most of these services perform quite well.

It can be dizzying to have to choose between them, but whichever one(s) you decide to use, we cannot overstate the significance of having the ability to live stream video about your handmade products to your customers — for free. Recently, I have been using and enjoying Blab, a video streaming service that allows you to host a video with up to three live guests.

Here are some super easy ways handmade entrepreneurs can use Blab to stream video to spread your message and promote your brand to the world.

1. Interview Your Retail Customers

What better way to let the world see how happy your customers are with your products than to interview them about what they love most. You and your happy customers can showcase how your products make life fun and enjoyable, and you can allow viewers to join you and ask questions. Your customers on Blab will enjoy having this unique opportunity to help you tell the world about your brand.

2. Showcase a Work in Progress

Cue up a Blab to show the world how you make your products! Put your hardhat on and melt some gold into a charm for a bracelet. Fire up the pottery wheel to demonstrate how you create a coffee mug. Let the world see you put those beautiful colorants into a pot of your signature nail polish. After you’re done, you can take questions about your technique.

3. Interview a Fellow Entrepreneur

If you have a great network of fellow handmade entrepreneurs, why not interview them about their products and services? Blab makes a super backdrop for wonderful entrepreneurial conversations. You can get to know your fellow small business owners better, swap stories and be helping others build their own success at the same time.

4. Host a Shopping Show

Invite everyone you know to your own shopping show on Blab. All you need is your Blab account and the products you want to sell. Show everyone how great they are, and then let them know that you have a limited quantity, and that they can buy immediately. What better way to combine technology with commerce? Model your show after the home shopping shows on television, and adapt them to an Internet and smartphone audience.

5. Get Pre-Launch Feedback on New Product Ideas

If you need some input on a new product idea, why not use Blab to ask the public what they think? A new blend of tea? A new soap product? A new lipstick color? Whatever the case, Blab can be a great way to get input and feedback on something new before you spend a ton of money bringing it to market.

6. Showcase Raw Materials and Components

Do your customers ask you about the quality of ingredients and components used to make the product you sell them? Of course they do. Make it easy for them to see for themselves by showing them exactly what goes into their products. Whether it’s a new pail of shea butter or a crop of new pigments for your new line of eye shadows, pulling back the curtain on how you make things is an interesting and fun way to build consumer trust.

7. Host a Q&A Show

Hosting a Blab event where your customers can ask you anything they’d like about your products is a super way to get to know them better while giving them a taste of your open and authentic personality. These types of interactions will also help you understand what makes your customers tick, so you can innovate in ways that appeal to them (and to their wallets). Tell them to join your Blab and ask away!

8. Share Your Entrepreneurial Journey

Use Blab to tell the world about your entrepreneurial journey. Have you taken some great classes? Have you read books that have helped you be successful? Did you just download the best plugin ever invented? Take to Blab and share what you’ve learned. Doing so will help others as well as solidify your own knowledge of a new subject matter.

9. Interview Your Stockists

If you wholesale your products, invite your stockists to be guests on your Blab. They can tell you how much their customers love your products and you can showcase their stores. Ask them what they like about doing business with you and give them a chance to toot their horn a bit as well. This is a super way to lift another entrepreneur as you also climb.

10. Launch a New Product

Schedule a Blab for the specific purpose of announcing a new product to the world. You can play music in the background and invite your friends and supporters to join you live as you introduce your new creation to the world. Create some announcement graphics in advance so even more people can join in the fun.

One of the greatest things about Blab is that the recordings can be embedded on your website or blog so you can send people directly to your website to watch any replays. This is a great way to get more than one use out of an event, and to attract traffic to your website for months and years to come.

My 10 suggestions on how makers and handmade entrepreneurs use Blab really are fun and easy. In what ways have you used Blab to engage customers and other stakeholders around your handmade brand?

Image: Blab

This article, "10 Fun (And Easy) Ways Makers and Handmade Entrepreneurs Use Blab" was first published on Small Business Trends

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