To engage your audience with your business and interact face to face with your customers, you can include hangout in your online marketing strategies and take advantage of it.
Here are some do’s that will assist you to move forward correctly.
Create Circles
Take advantage of Google+ communities to create specific circles according to your audience’s interests, demographics and geographical locations, and target each circle individually.
Audiences will also be able to Hangout with you, if they are in your circle.
You can create a unique “Circle” for a particular hangout by inviting only those users with whom you’d like to participate.
Solicit Twitter and Google
Google Hangouts provides a chance to boost engagement with your audience via live, real-time, multimedia interaction.
You can request Twitter and Google+ communities to advertise your hangout and ask them for discussion topics that will be addressed by the Hangout host.
Focus on their questions and share the results with particular communities.
Have an agenda
To make your hangout conversation easier, ensure that you have created an agenda for the meeting.
Having an agenda gives a clear overview about your hangout and sets the expectations of participants.
List the topics you are going to discuss in your hangout and introduce a short description at the beginning.
Limit the duration
Look at your complete agenda and find out how much time it is going to take. After analyzing it, assign a time limit for your hangout according to the needs of topics.
Time is really important for your business, as well as your audience.
If the hangout is not finished in that particular time period, you can host another hangout in the near future and use a recap to continue the hangout.
Respond to hangout email invitations
Managing the hangout invitation is important. You can either accept the invitation or decline.
If you don’t respond to the invites, they’ll always be on the top of your conversation list until you answer.
You can edit settings to restrict or block invites from specific persons.
Login and join the session 10 minutes early
Login to your Google account 10 minutes early to avoid any kind of technical glitches which could include checking your internet connection, shutting down all unnecessary software programs, eliminating background noise, inspecting your webcam and microphones, etc.
If you find any problem restart your system, router and internet connection to avoid further interruption.
Engage and pay attention
To get more of an audience, you need to pay attention to your words and the content you are going to share.
Make sure your hangout targets only those communities and audiences that are in the same niche.
Look for their interests and request them to suggest some topics for the hangout discussion to motivate the participation.
Mute if necessary
Muting depends on the number of participants in the hangout.
If there is more people, it is appropriate to mute your microphone and wait for your turn.
You also need to be prepared with the mute button for any unexpected situation, specifically if users are coming in and out throughout the hangout.
Wear headsets
If you are facing echoing sound from the surroundings during a Hangout call, use a headset and encourage your participants to do the same.
Wearing headsets improves the quality of sound.
After setting up your headset, go through its settings and enable the device as the microphone and speakers for better conversations.
Avoid typing on a keyboard
Continuous typing in a hangout can annoy other users, so try to use the keyboard’s shortcuts.
If you must type, mute your microphone before starting to type.
Users can see it in the hangout notification, so they will not interrupt the conversation.
