Lisa M Cope

With so many businesses online today it is easy to not even know who is running the company. Let alone knowing what the business looks like or how your products are made or distributed.

If this applies to your business then why not open up your online business to the public by using Hangouts on Air? A Hangout is a way to connect with your customers regardless of their location. You can run your Hangout live or pre-record one and then share the link to it afterwards.

So how do you expose your business on a Hangout?

Well first of all you are going to conduct a tour of your business. Show customers and potential customers what you company looks like behind your website. What you are going to do is draw back your curtains and expose how you do things behind the scenes.

This is perfect for a product based business. You can show the manufacturing process, the packaging process and the shipping process of your products. Customers enjoy knowing how their product was made and delivered to them.

The major benefit of exposing your business is that you are putting a face to your business. Again customers love to know who is running the business behind their favorite products.

Using this technique can help boost your brand and your sales. Plus you are not hiding anything and customers will trust and like you even more.

You may even decide to do more than one Hangout behind the scenes of your company. You could run this as an open house event or for announcing a new product release.

If you decide to run a Hangout on Air then test your equipment ahead of time to ensure things run smoothly. You may even want to create an announcement slide that counts down the time until you draw back the curtains.

Not many companies are doing this at the moment so if you act quickly, you can be one of the first to run this type of Hangout. Expose your business and ‘show’ your customers what goes on behind the scenes.

By putting a face to your company you will be connecting in a new way with potential and current customers. You will build yourself a solid reputation and enhance your brand and your reliability tenfold.

Did you know that you can announce your Event as a Hangout on Google+? This applies only to brand new Events which you create and not ones that you already have listed.

When setting up your Event you need to go into the Advanced settings and click the box that says make this a Hangout on Air. Simple enough and this now provides you with the opportunity to hold a Live Event.

After you have created your Event you want to actively promote it on your Google+ page as well as other social sites. This way you can create a buzz leading up to your event and attract more guests.

This method could be used effectively for many different aspects of your business. Why not use an Event on Google+ as a way to showcase your business by holding a fundraiser for a local charity or organization. This would be a great way to get your name well known in your local community.

Other ideas for using Events and Hangouts would be to create a weekly type of show. This would vary depending upon your business but could include things like:

• Weekly cooking show
• Weekly product reviews
• Guest of the Week
• Overview of what happened this week in your business
• Weekly roundup of news on all your favorite social sites
• Special offer of the week and more...

Really the ideas are almost limitless of how you can use Hangouts in your business. Think of ways you can highlight certain areas of your business including your products, your customer service and your tech support. Then see if you can highlight how these things are run in your business by using Events and Hangouts.

If you are still stuck with what type of Event to create then check out some of the past events that have happened in your stream. Don’t forget to use the Find More Events tab to see what events are coming up.
Many business owners like to create things like Awareness Days. If this is applicable to your business you could use upcoming awareness days to help brand your company. This method would work well for a health based company as you could help bring awareness to things like Breast cancer month and other health related days.

Using Events and Hangouts together can really help brand your business and bring potential new customers and clients to you. So what are you waiting for? Create an event today!

Once you have learned the ropes, running a Google+ Hangout on Air is not that difficult. It can actually be a ton of fun and Hangouts allow you to get really creative. If you have any type of creative streak in you, you are just going to love using them for your business.

One aspect of Hangouts on Air is that they can be run as a live event. In fact you can create an Event inside your Google+ account and promote it as a Hangout on Air. While you can only have 10 people on a Hangout you can invite a lot more to view live on YouTube.

This live aspect is perfect for several business applications including:

• Concerts
• Cooking shows
• Product demonstrations
• Live Q&A sessions
• Interviews
• Press Releases

Adding in that ‘live’ aspect really allows your audience to be interactive and can really increase the number of people who attend your Hangout. This has been done successfully by many large corporations and singers. Taylor Swift held a live press release conference via a Hangout with great success.

The above list should provide you with a number of great ideas that you could incorporate into your business. Brick and mortar businesses can use this to showcase their products with How To type Hangouts. Can you image a DIY store creating tutorials on how to cut your ceramic tile or how to fix a leaky toilet?
As well as providing instruction you can recommend tools and other items from your store. This is a great way to help your customers and a way to pre-sell them.

Think about how you could incorporate this for a new product release. You could preview it in a Hangout and even offer discount coupons for people who place an order early. Then you could invite your local reporter and do a local press release or interview with them.

The ideas for using Hangouts on Air are almost endless. The more you use them the more ideas you are likely to generate.

Other ideas include things like staff meetings, sales team meet ups, connecting with a satellite office, talking with potential employees or using for customer service and technical support.

Incorporating your customers and clients into your business is the perfect way to brand your business and get your business name out in the community.