Hit the Mic Marketing

3 Ways to Use Google+ Hangouts

by Stacey Harris

Using Google+ Hangouts to rock your business from Hit the Mic Marketing

Google+ Hangouts are one of the reasons I listed that you should stop ignoring Google+ and it’s, hands down, one of my favorite features. One of the biggest things I hear about Google+ Hangouts is “Yeah, it’s really cool, but how will I use it?”. I generally respond with “Oooh! Let me show you the ways!” and an evil laugh. Oh ok… the last part isn’t true. Just let me pretend.

What are the 3 ways you can use Google+ Hangouts? Let me tell you…

1. Team Meetings

Seriously! Google+ Hangouts are free to use, you control the privacy settings, AND you can have up to 10 people involved. Now obviously if you have a team larger than that this won’t work, but if you don’t, why are you not using this? I challenge you to have your next team meeting with video instead of just on the phone. Everyone is focused, everyone is sharing, and it’s the next best thing to being able to gather in person.

2. Webshow

This is a really cool way to be able to do an interview style web show and broadcast it live to your network. In addition to being able to broadcast it you can immediately get it up on YouTube. Seriously! And with some of the new features like rewinding that Google Hangouts On Air has, it makes this even cooler! This is a great way to share your amazing content and self with your audience. A fabulous example of someone who uses this feature and uses it well is Sylvia Nasser from TheFitFem.com. She has been doing really cool live workout classes which you can see on her YouTube channel.

3. Mastermind

Who says your favorite mastermind buddies have to be local? No one, that’s who! Why not up your mastermind game and have a small video chat, again this is totally free and you control the privacy settings. You can keep your goals in a shared Google Doc that you can actually review and everyone can see during the Hangout. Motivate, stay connected, and stay on track during your next VIRTUAL mastermind session!

This week’s challenge for you is simple, hit the comments and tell me one way you are going to try to use Google+ Hangouts. It can be one of the above ways or you can share a totally new creative way to use it! Also if you’re not signed up for Open Mic News, do so NOW, next week I’m doing a super cool secret things ONLY for email subscribers so you don’t want to miss it!

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Say So Long to TweetChat – But I Have An Alternative!

by Stacey Harris

I have good news and I have bad news, which do you want first? I’m going to pretend you said bad news because that’s always what I choose . Bad news is that Twitter is changing the way they allow 3rd parties to access things, this means sites like TweetChat and TweetGrid will no longer be able to function. With that said, I may have found us an alternative, OneQube. I used this when I was unable to access hashtags from Hootsuite or TweetChat and I think it’s a winner.

What is OneQube?

OneQube may be overwhelming for some, but for those of us using Twitter to power our business I think it could be a really awesome tool. In addition to being able to use it to focus on one hashtag you can use it to see what users and hashtags are active in your stream. This allows you to really target your tweets to hashtags that are being used by your connections.

The one BIG problem with OneQube is it’s really new. In fact it appears that many things haven’t even been rolled out for testing yet. Once they are rolled out, I can’t imagine how powerful this tool will be but in the meantime it ‘s a bit tough. This certainly isn’t’ replacing Hootsuite for me, but I have used it during a Twitter Chat and really enjoyed it. Plus it’s a great way to see where I can expand and grow my marketing.

Are Tweet Chats Dead?

I really don’t think this is the end of these kinds of chats, I think it’s just an evolution. I know a few developers are already hard at work developing something new to replace the sites that are choosing not to evolve with the change. I do think that this is going to make it more difficult for them but new tools will be developed,we’re just going to have to be open to trying new things.

I encourage you to check out OneQube and let me know what you think. If you know of any other tools that are going to be evolving with these changes head to the comments and share them so we can all figure this out together.

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