Google Gets Personal with “Search Plus Your World”

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Google Gets Personal – “Search Plus Your World”

This is amazing. You have to see this to believe whats going on here and how important it will be for each of us to have a stake in Google +. If you decide you don’t want to then it will be at your peril there is no doubt about that. Google Plus matters, the Google + like button matters, you have to find a way to get people to like your stuff. Blog posts, videos, websites, photos anything as these will all have an important place in being able to drive traffic to your site.

Should we get alarmed by this? no I don’t think so we just need to be aware of it and make the changes where necessary.

I have written a Blog post all about Dominating Google I suggest if you have not gone there and read it or downloaded the book then you do so. You need to take your place in the Social Media arena there is no choice if you want to make an income online or if you are wanting to promote yourself, Business or Product. So guys take a look at this great post From Googles own website so you can be prepared for what is coming.

 

 

This article has been curated from Social Media Examiner

Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.

Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.

We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features:

  1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page; 
  2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and, 
  3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community. 

Together, these features combine to create Search plus Your World. Search is simply better with your world in it, and we’re just getting started.

Personal Results
Say you’re looking for a vacation destination. You can of course search the web, but what if you want to learn from the experiences your friends have had on their vacations? Just as in real life, your friends’ experiences are often so much more meaningful to you than impersonal content on the web. With your world in search, you can find:

  • Google+ posts. You can find relevant Google+ posts from friends talking about an amazing trip they just took, whether they’ve shared privately with you or publicly. You’ll find links shared by your friends, such as activities, restaurants and other things they enjoyed on their trip. 
  • Photos. You can find beautiful vacation photos from your friends right in your search results page. You can also find your own private photos from Google+ and Picasa, based on captions, comments and album title. 

Personal Results: a family story 
As a child, my favorite fruit was Chikoo, which is exceptionally sweet and tasty. A few years back when getting a family dog, we decided to name our sweet little puppy after my favorite fruit. Over the years we have privately shared many pictures of Chikoo (our dog) with our family. To me, the query [chikoo] means two very sweet and different things, and today’s improvements give me the magical experience of finding both the Chikoos I love, right in the results page.

This is search that truly knows me, and gives me a result page that only I can see. And while I get a nice mix of personal results with results from the web, I can also click the link at the top of the results page (red arrow) for the option to search only within my world.

Profiles in Search 
Every day, there are hundreds of millions of searches for people. Sometimes, it’s hard to find the person you’re looking for. Once you do find him or her, there’s no quick way for you to actually interact. Starting today, you’ll have meaningful ways to connect with people instantly, right from the search results.

Now, typing just the first few letters of your friend’s name brings up a personalized profile prediction in autocomplete. Selecting a predicted profile takes you to a results page for your friend, which includes information from their Google+ profile and relevant web results that may be related to them. And you can have this personal experience instantaneously, thanks to Google Instant. So when I search for [ben smith], I now find my dear friend Ben every time, instead of the hundreds of other Ben Smiths out there (no offense to all of them!).

In addition, you’ll find profile autocomplete predictions for various prominent people from Google+, such as high-quality authors from our authorship pilot program.

Once you select that profile, if you’re a signed-in Google+ user, you’ll also see a button to add them to your circles right on your search results page.

People and Pages 
As I mentioned earlier, behind most queries are communities. Starting today, if you search for a topic like [music] or [baseball], you might see prominent people who frequently discuss this topic on Google+ appearing on the right-hand side of the results page. You can connect with them on Google+, strike up meaningful conversations and discover entire communities in a way that simply wasn’t possible before.

Unprecedented security, transparency and control 
When it comes to security and privacy, we set a high bar for Search plus Your World. Since some of the information you’ll now find in search results, including Google+ posts and private photos, is already secured by SSL encryption on Google+, we have decided that the results page should also have the same level of security and privacy protection. That’s part of why we were the first major search engine to turn on search via SSL by default for signed-in users last year. This means when you’re signed in to Google, your search results—including your private content—are protected by the same high standards of encryption as your messages in Gmail.

We also want to be transparent about how our features work and give you control over how to use them. With today’s changes, we provide interface elements and control settings like those you’ll find in Google+. For example, personal results are clearly marked as Public, Limited or Only you. Additionally, people in your results are clearly marked with the Google+ circle they are in, or as suggested connections.

We’re also introducing a prominent new toggle on the upper right of the results page where you can see what your search results look like without personal content. With a single click, you can see an unpersonalized view of search results.

That means no results from your friends, no private information and no personalization of results based on your Web History. This toggle button works for an individual search session, but you can also make this the default in your Search Settings. We provide separate control in Search Settings over other contextual signals we use, including location and language.

That’s unprecedented transparency and control over personal search results.

A beautiful journey begins 
Search plus Your World will become available over the next few days to people who are signed in and searching on https://www.google.com in English.

While there may be 7 billion people and 197 million square miles on Earth, a septillion stars and a trillion webpages, we spend our short, precious lives living in a particular town, with particular friends and family, orbiting a single star and relying on a tiny slice of the world’s information. Our dream is to have technology enable everyone to experience the richness of all their information and people around them.

We named our company after the mathematical number googol as an aspiration toward indexing the countless answers on webpages, but that’s only part of the picture. The other part is people, and that’s what Search plus Your World is all about.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

 

Okay there you have all the information. I have written another blog post ree this and it looks at this from another angle, some have said with these latest Google changes that you might as well stop all SEO as it’s not going to work any more, that could not be further from the truth so please check out this blog post Google’s Search Plus Your World.

What do you think with Google Gets Personal with “Search Plus Your World” ?

Comments Below and don’t forget if you would like to get the Dominating Google + book just go on over to my blog posts that shows you all about Google + and you can download from there.

Google’s Search Plus Your World

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Google’s Search Plus Your World

There are many changes a foot in Google this year. I was very interested when Google bought out it’s Google + button and then Google Plus the social media site to see exactly how it was going to integrate these all together, now it’s all becoming very clear.

Those of you out there that want nothing to do with Social Media like Facebook, Youtube, Google Plus had better rethink your plans as in the very near future it will matter.

I know this is a long post and I am sorry about that, but you need to be aware of what is going on so you can plan for it. These are huge changes and so you have to be aware of them and this is a great post from the guys at Ping Kaching so you can see a different angle on it.

I have also got the post from Google as well so I suggest you take a look at that post, it even has pictures. So SEO is still so important don’t throw the baby out with the bath water as they say, not everyone in the world is linked into Social Media sites. Read on and enjoy… get a cuppa before you start, and thanks to Ping Kaching’s Blog.

Post Curated From Ping Kaching’s Blog

This year Google is already pushing out what will be their largest change to search that they have ever done. With such huge changes in effect it’s important for you, as a website owner, to be prepared and have a clear plan of action for 2012.

In this blog post I am not going to be talking about what the latest changes are or show you screen shots of the changes. There are a ton of other websites that have done this over the last day. Instead I am going to be sharing some unique insights on how I see these changes effecting your online business

“Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.” -Google

Why SEO Is More Important Than Ever.

Let’s firstly examine what the new search results will turn up. When you do a search query the results are going to be far more tailored to you with information from your friends, shares from your social circles, etc.

New search results may include the following:

Listings from the web – (SEO based / Organic)
Listings tailored by your personal shares and actions
Listings shown because of your social connections
More Public Google+ profiles and posts
Photos shared on Picasa and Google+ by your social connections
Private, “Limited”, photos that you have shared or have been shared with you privately
Regular Photos off the web
YouTube Videos
AdWord Ads

As you can see the normal SEO results are going to be taking up far less of the search results page. However, does this mean SEO is less important? I would actually say this means SEO is MORE important than ever. It no longer is good enough to rank on page one for a keyword. Page one doesn’t mean anything anymore. What is important is ranking with in the top three positions for your keywords.

On any given search phrase there may only be three organic listings in the SERPs. The rest of the positions on page one of Google could all be taken up by a potential customers social influence. They may see results from their friends, photos their family shared and so on. Which means there aren’t ten slots for organic listings anymore. There may only be a very small handful of organic slots open on the first page of Google for various keyword phrases.

This means the real estate for the first page just got a whole lot smaller. It is more important than ever for you to push forward with your SEO campaigns getting your website into those coveted top three ranking spots. This will ensure that your website will be on the first page of Google no matter how big a potential customers social influence might be.

Let’s examine a few other reasons why SEO is still vitally important in 2012:

People who aren’t signed in:

Google’s customized search results is for people who are signed into their Google profile. Personally, this always applies to me as I am always signed into my Gmail account. 

However, we shouldn’t forget about the millions of people who don’t have Google accounts or aren’t signed in. My very own brother hates Gmail, has no need for Google plus and doesn’t ever use a Google account. His search results will be primarily organic listings. He has no social influence for Google to pull from since he isn’t signed in. SEO and Adwords are the only two ways a website is going to reach people like him when he preforms search queries.

Additionally, we have to consider all the employees working at offices that do not allow them to be personally logged in to their Google accounts. I have a friend who is a purchaser at mid sized company. He is constantly doing searches on the internet for items for the office. Anything from batteries, office chairs, tools, software to huge purchases. All the searches he preforms on a daily basis are all SEO driven. He is not allowed to surf Facebook, Google+ or check his private Gmails at work. This means he is personally never signed in for a customized experience. SEO is still vital to reach the millions of people like him.

Lastly, I would consider the millions of people using smart phones who don’t use gmail. I have a second friend who has an iPhone but does not have a Gmail account or Google+ account. When they preform hundreds of searches they are not tied into any particular social network. All the results they find are SEO driven.

People With Small Social Networks:

I would say the people who are reading this blog, myself included, are a bit out of the ordinary when it comes to Social Media and Social Networks. People outside of the SEO and Website world, besides teenagers, will a lot of times have smaller social networks.

My Sister would be a great example of this. The last time I checked my sisters profile she had a whopping 42 friends. That’s the sum of her entire online social network. People like her are not going to see a very big change when it comes to their search results. From time to time she may preform a search where a few of her friends have shared something and she will have custom tailored result. However, the majority of her searches will be, you guessed it, SEO driven.

Way To Increase Your Market Leadership:

If a potential customer does a search for a product you happen to sell…they may see personalized results, from friends, for your competitors product. This potential customer is currently outside of your sphere of influence. If you didn’t use the SEO tactic you would miss out on this customer with no chance of having your website placed in front of them.

However, let’s say you rank on page one for an organic listing. This potential customer may see his friend Bob recommended your competitor and he may visit that site. However, this customer isn’t about to spend $100 on a product without a little research. So he goes back to the results page and looks for the next organic listing. If you used SEO on your website then this potential customer would now land on your page. If you had a better offer than your competitor this potential customer may decide to buy your product instead. Not only do they buy your product but they were so happy with your service that they actually click that Google +1 on your website. 

With that simple act you reached this potential customer, but better than that you entered his sphere of influence. Next time this customers friend Bob searches for this product he will see your website pop up as well. Now you don’t only reach that one potential customer but it becomes a chain reaction increasing your sphere of influence and market leadership.

Through the use of SEO we can grow our influence and market leadership by reaching potential customers who may never of found us before. This brings me to my next point. That Market Leadership is becoming MORE important than it ever has in the online world.

Market Leadership.

Market Leadership has always been important in a business. Building relationships with your customers and being recognized as a industry leader has always helped sales. However, Market Leadership didn’t use to do anything for a company when it came to search results.

With Google’s new search features this has changed. Now a site with relatively poor SEO can still rank high on page one. A site simply needs to have a friends recommendation and the next time you do a search you will see that brand as recommended for you.

By connecting with your customer base and gaining their follows, likes and loyalty you will now automatically be connected to their social influence. Essentially, a single like from a well connected person could potentially increase your rankings for hundreds of other people when they search for a product you sell.

One Social Network Isn’t Enough.

Google’s latest update is called, “Search Plus, Your World” but probably a more appropriate title for it is “Search Plus, Google+”. Because no other major Social Network is working with Google’s latest changes. In fact Google is primarily only highlighting their other services they own such as Picasa, Google+, YouTube, etc..

This doesn’t however mean that you only need to focus your SEO and Market Leadership on Google owned products. That would be a critical mistake. It’s true Google + has become hugely important for SEO and traffic generation with Google’s latest changes.

However, the majority of your customers aren’t on Google + they are on Facebook. Also the popular search engine Bing is incorporating a similar personalized search result based off of Facebook likes not Google +1’s.

So Google and Facebook are critical to a successful SEO and Market Leadership campaign but so are the other top Social Networks like StumbleUpon and LinkedIn with over 100+million registered accounts….Not to mention Twitter, etc.

So to have a truly successful SEO and Market Leadership campaign we need be present in all the platforms our potential customers are hanging out at. This means maintaining a presence on several different locations at once. It almost seems impossible. Let’s look at how we can use a tool to accomplish this task and stay current with Google’s changes.

Using A Tool To Keep Up With Google Is A No Brainer.

It’s becoming more and more clear that there are just too many platforms, too many social networks and too many traffic sources for a company to keep track of. The simplest way to stay on top of it all and to keep up with Google’s latest changes is by using tools to help you. Ping Kaching can help you with all three of the major points we mentioned.
The software has powerful features such as RSS Distribution, Pinging, Directory Submission, etc. to assist you with your SEO efforts. Ping Kaching has been designed to help you increase your websites rankings so that you can reach not only the first page but that first position. Increasing your traffic, exposure and increasing your market leadership to customers who might have never saw you otherwise.

To think Ping Kaching is just an SEO tool though is dead wrong. Ping Kaching has powerful features to help you become a market leader. You can use Ping Kaching to update all your Social Networks from a single location. Simply enter a single message and it will be sent out to all the top Social Networks such as Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Fanpages and more! Not only that but the tool has a built in URL shortener with tracking. This feature will allow you to update your Social Status messages with a click of a button and actually be able to track how much traffic those sites generated. The tool will also connect you and your websites to the top Social Bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon with over 10 million accounts. 

Ping Kaching submits to the highest quality sites on the entire web. We don’t just throw in small social sites just to bolster our numbers. In fact we are against that very idea and only stick to the very top and well used social sites that have real traffic, real customers and real value. Ping Kaching submits to the very top social networks in the entire world period.

I do actually use this software and if you are not using any software to Automate your Social bookmarking etc then I suggest you do. It is easy and does a great job.

Whatever you do as I say at the top you need to keep up your SEO on-page and make sure the long tail keywords you use have people searching for them. Google Search Plus Your World is coming so lets use it the way intended and get out there and into the Social spots that count. If you don’t want to do it, there are plenty of places to outsource to. If you are not sure how to setup Google + then please head over to a blog post I have written that will help you out. You can even download the ebook there as well. Go to Dominating Google.

I have written another post about Google Gets Personal With Search your world if you are looking for more information and a different perspective.

Let me know your thoughts below on Google’s Search Plus Your World

3 New YouTube Changes

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3 New YouTube Changes

I just love Youtube, it has been a great source of traffic for me over the years. In December Youtube did some upgrades, changed the look and feel, I am not sure I like it as much but hey, it’s a free service and I can get videos ranked pretty quick using it. So I guess I have to adapt and change.

I found this great article for the Social Media Examiner – 3  New YouTube Changes and What They Mean for Businesses and so decided I would share it with you all as it’s a really great article with tips along the way, and of course pictures which is always helpful. With so many people viewing videos and also searching youtube for answers to problems then Youtube is the place to be.

I recently did a webinar with Mynders all about videos and how easy it is with the right gear. You might want to check out the webinar right here.

So important to use video so please get your act together and start to use it. The you can get an account open up in Youtube and go present, your company, your product or service to the world. It’s up to you to make it happen.

 

Are you thinking about doing more with YouTube?

In December of 2011, YouTube unveiled their latest design and navigational changes to the world.

Although it was met with unbridled criticism from a virtual mob of YouTube fanatics, these changes are here to stay.

Embrace YouTube’s recent makeover and their vision for the future of online entertainment. Change is good, right?

This article will only cover the three major changes that may affect your online strategy. If you want to stay on top of your video marketing game in 2012, these are the only three changes that you need to focus on.

Ready? Here we go!

#1: New YouTube Home Page

YouTube's new home page

YouTube’s new home page offers a new Subscription Feed function.

YouTube has changed their design to follow a much more clean and modern look.

A quick peek at the home page will reveal that quite a bit of rearranging has been done. Instead of showcasing the most popular and trending videos on the website, YouTube has now prominently positioned a “Subscription Feed” smack-dab in the middle of the page.

Note: You must be logged in to see this properly.

This “Subscription Feed” (which bears an uncanny resemblance to Facebook’s Live Feed), now features the latest video content and updates from your subscribers.

In an effort to provide a better, more relevant user experience for viewers, YouTube is behaving more like a social-networking site than ever before. But what does this mean for you?

Until now, the “cute baby” and “shockingly embarrassing caught-on-tape” videos have dominated YouTube with millions of views from your bored co-workers looking for a quick distraction from their day. Most of us have discredited YouTube as a legitimate traffic source or brand-builder for our businesses because let’s face it, creating randomly hilarious videos probably isn’t your forte! And that’s OK, because things are changing…

This “Subscription Feed” gives the smaller guy who doesn’t have “crazy-viral” content a fighting chance for more exposure.

As your viewers watch, rate and comment on your latest video, exposure for your content will spread to the followers and subscribers of each of your viewers through YouTube’s feed, creating a smaller yet more relevant viral effect.

youtube subscriptions

Building your subscriber base is even more imperative than ever before!

To take advantage of the Subscription Feed, here is what I recommend:

  •  Be active daily and consistently: Make sure to upload fresh content to YouTube weekly and follow up as many times as possible to comment, share and promote other videos that you enjoy watching. The more activity you have on YouTube, the more exposure you can get.
  • Get your audience to take action: Using a call to action, get your viewers to subscribe, rate, comment and share each of your videos. The more activity and interaction that takes place on each of your videos, the more potential exposure you get on the home page of YouTube.

I don’t expect your 3-minute, content-rich video on how to get more leads in your business to suddenly go viral and compete with the likes of “Rebecca Black” & “Charlie Bit My Finger.” I do however see a mini-viral effect take place! Your videos have the potential of being shared and seen by more targeted viewers (quality views over quantity!).

#2: New YouTube Channel Page

The new channel layout may look different, but it still behaves relatively the same. However, as YouTube moves in the direction of becoming more “channel-centric,” it is imperative that you activate, update and optimize your new channel as quickly as possible for the best results.

In fact, YouTube is already making more of an effort to feature channels on search results pages for related keywords. Focus on using your main keyword phrase properly in your channel, and you can get found even quicker!

youtube keywords

Optimize your channel with your main keyword phrase for more exposure!

Here is your action list for proper channel page optimization:

Step 1: Set up background image.

Depending on how your channel’s background image was designed before the big change, you may need to modify and upload a new image. The best background images reflect your brand and the services you provide through pictures and text on the far left-hand side of your background image.

To begin the editing process, simply click the “Edit Channel” button on the top right-hand corner of your channel page.

Step 2: Edit your channel details.

The next step is to make sure the title, description and tags for your channel are properly filled out using your main keyword phrase. (Note: Some users have experienced losing all the content they used in their previous channel description after making the switch. Don’t assume your description is still intact.)

Your title should be clear, concise and benefit-driven. Your description should detail exactly what type of value and benefits your audience will get when they watch your videos. And you can finish this by adding a bunch of your relevant keyword phrases (in quotation marks) in the Tags section.

youtube channel info

Properly fill out your channel info and include your keyword phrase.

Step 3: Activate the “Blogger Template.”

The new channel page offers the choice to customize the design and layout of your channel with one of four templates. I recommend using the “Blogger” layout. It can be selected with the click of a button!

youtube layout

Select the layout that best suits your needs!

Step 4: Edit your featured video.

Similar to the old channel design, you’ll want to have a featured video that auto-plays when people view your channel. You can choose from any of your past videos or select the option to use your most recent video (recommended).

youtube featured video

Remember to properly add your “featured video.”

Step 5: Add your links.

The new channel design makes it fairly easy to add website, blog and social profile links to drive traffic to your other web properties. Make sure to take the time to add and edit this information and use compelling benefit-driven copy to encourage your visitors to click over to your website!

youtube links

Include links to your website, blog and social networking profiles.

Most marketers will never take the 4.3 minutes to make these minor adjustments to their channel. Take this opportunity to optimize your channel page properly and focus on getting it ranked for your main keyword phrase!

#3: YouTube Analytics

My personal favorite change in YouTube’s most recent overhaul has been their introduction of YouTube Analytics. Previously called YouTube Insight, this extremely detailed and informative feature allows you to learn more about your audience, your videos and your activity on YouTube. In other words, you get to totally geek out!

Each statistic tells a story about the viewing habits of your audience. With proper deduction skills, you can effectively identify problems with your videos and make the necessary changes to improve your results.

Most of the features in YouTube Analytics have remained the same; however, there are two features that I would like to call special attention to:

1: Audience retention

Previously labeled as “Hotspots,” this improved function allows you to see just how engaging (or unengaging!) your videos really are. Identify the exact moments that are causing your viewers to run for the hills or making them perform a “digital double-take,” rewinding your video and begging you for more! Want to see more results with your videos? This function tells you exactly what you need to do!

youtube analytics

Two exciting features to play with inside YouTube Analytics.

2: Playback locations

This new function allows you to see exactly where your videos are being watched. As mobile devices become predominant in our lives, you’ll notice a greater percentage of playback locations coming from “mobile.” This feature will also allow you to see exactly who is embedding your videos and which blogs/websites are giving you views! Find out what is working and you can do more of the same!

Why Change Is Good

Even though this round of changes was met with harsh criticism from the YouTube community, it’s our duty as business owners to embrace the change and understand YouTube’s ultimate vision.

As the third-largest website in the world with an audience that rivals any major television network, YouTube is an absolute powerhouse! It has big plans for blurring the line of offline television and online entertainment, and we can expect YouTube to continue to evolve and morph into something new and different.

What do you think? Do you understand the rules of YouTube’s game? Embrace the change and you can see results for a long time to come! Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

I trust you found this article helpful, if so share it around or leave a comment below .

If you need any help setting up your whole Video marketing system then please contact me .

I am sure you can use these 3 New YouTube Changes to make changes to your youtube channel if you have one and if you don’t you can then use them to set your channel up with correctly.

How to Hold A Google + Hangout

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How to Hold A Google + Hangout

 This is an amazing article from Social Media Examiner on How to Hold A Google + Hangout that I read the other day and I just had to share it with you all. Google + is the new place to be for many and the Hangout place is where many are doing business, sharing stories and generally having a good time. You can hang out with your buddies or your work mates, family or friends. It’s all there for you. I think it is an amazing resource for people who belong to MLM companies where they can get a group of people together and share the story or share the business opportunity.

This article takes you through every part of setting it up to how to invite it is brilliant and rather than me reinvent the wheel I thought it best that I just share it with you. So you can either click here on the link How to Hold A Google + Hangout or you can read this section below then head on over there later…..

 

How businesses can use Google+ Hangouts to connect with customers and colleagues, and how to get them to join your video conference.

3 Reasons to Consider a Google Hangout

Your prospects are already here! Video conferencing has been available for a while, but Google+ Hangouts takes it to where people are.

Here are some ways you can use Hangouts:

#1: Part of the sales process: You could invite people who are already in your sales pipeline to hang out. Not to put a high-pressure sales speech on them. Just to further the relationship.

To make it more intriguing for people to join, try naming the Hangout “Overcoming _________,” where the blank is filled in with a key problem you know your prospects tend to have.

#2: Office hours: College professors have standing office hours—times students can be sure to see them at their desk. Why don’t you? You could set up a standing weekly or monthly Hangout as a way to increase customer service or to keep in touch with your staff.

#3: Fireside chats: Everyone seems to want time with the CEO, so why not give it? “Town hall”–style conference calls have been popular in recent years, but they are conducted over the phone. What if you were to set up a standing quarterly time for people to actually hear from your CEO? And more than hear, they’ll be able to see and interact.

Hangouts could be used by colleges to communicate with incoming students, or alumni, or even current students or their parents. Or you could use this as a way for your board and investors to interact with the CEO between meetings. If you have a circle of “investors” and only invite them, they should be the only ones who see the invitation………

read the rest of the article here…...  How to Hold a Google+ Hangout and Why You Should | Social …

 

 

 Here is what is covered in the Article:

  1. 3 Reasons to Consider a Google Hangout

  2. 3 Steps to Start a Hangout

  3. In the Hangout

  4. 3 Things to Fine-Tune

  5. Some Closing Thoughts on Google+ Hangouts


You really should go over and check out the full article even has pictures which is helpful for people like me, :-)   I like to see as well as read. Oh there are also a couple of videos. If you are still not that familiar with Google + then I have written a couple of other posts all about it and this one Dominating Google + has been very popular.__So if you ever thought it would be a great idea to hold a Hangout but did not know how then this article is for you How to Hold A Google + Hangout

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