How Cool is Google Hangout? Bringing Public and Private Chats for Your Business's Benefit
Do you know how cool Google Hangout is if you're not familiar with what it can do? To businesses that still use Skype for video chats, you'll be surprised at what you can do when you create a Hangout. Likewise, you can equally do text chats in ways that are either private or public, depending on what business discussions you want taking place.
Setting Up a Chat on Hangout
Before you can start a text chat on Hangout, you have to be a member of Google+ first. That and Hangout complement one another nicely, and they're both beneficial in nurturing relationships with people in your industry. When you want to start a chat from your main Google+ page, simply select the Hangout icon up at the top right of the page. You'll be prompted to select the people you want to invite to your Hangout, and these can be anybody in your circle of existing friends.
Once a chat is underway, you'll be able to use a number of different ways to express yourself. With a bevy of emojis available, you can easily express ideas in more complex ways. You can also quickly share images to everybody in the chat without them needing to click on a separate link.
What makes the chats so useful is that you can make them either private or public. In the latter case, you can even use it as a form of crowdsourcing where the public is invited in to your particular discussion. With your own real-time input, it could help provide answers to something important. On the other hand, it could also lead to troublemakers, so use the public setting judiciously.
Creating a Video Chat
Not enough attention has been given to the fact that Google Hangout provides free video chat capability with some very useful features. While you can only hold nine people at a time in the free version of Hangout, it could be an excellent tool for a small business with a small staff. Using Google's Youtube features, you can leave comments at the bottom of the video chat, plus the capability to record it for later reference.
What makes video chatting here stand out is that you can immediately toggle to just audio or text chatting if the video happens to freeze. All video chats are going to crash at least once in a while. The ability to instantly keep the conversation going on Google Hangout is one you'll find useful during critical discussions.
Here at Crowd Siren, we highly recommend using Hangout regularly if you have a business. But that's only the beginning on getting your brand into the online world. We're an online communications company that knows the insider secrets to getting your brand noticed.
Contact us so we can help you take your business to the limit and utilize the best online tools available to get your brand into the minds of everyone.
By: Lauralie Ezra