53 Ways to Market Your Google Plus Hangout on Air

You are running your first Google+ Hangout on Air.

Now some of you are going to ask, what is the difference between a Google+ “Hangout” and a “Hangout on Air”? Both Hangouts and Hangouts on Air are video conferencing calls. The major difference is that Hangouts are private and only the people that have been invited know about them. Hangouts on Air are public and streamed live to YouTube, your Google+ profile and anywhere else you embed the code.

So if you want to reach a large and unlimited audience then the Hangouts on Air option is the best choice.

The world is full of possibility as you post your first event. Excited at the throngs of potential people interested to watch your new show. However, something happens between that first moment of excitement, and the point when you go live. You realize that not as many people as you thought knew about your Hangout.

Why not?…. you say incredulously to yourself. Am I not the bomb? People really need to know about this, you say to yourself with a hint of disdain. Then a thought pops into your head. Maybe I should have marketed the Google Hangout on Air to get more traffic. A second thought then occurs. “How do you do that?”

This article is for those searching for ways to promote your Google plus Hangout on Air, so you can get the word out and an audience turns up.

53 Ways To Market Your Google Plus Hangout On Air

1. Share with your circles – Google Plus allows you unlimited circles. Share specific Hangouts with different circles to let them know about events of interest to them. Once you have done a few Hangouts, go back to your old Hangouts, and create a specific circle for those who attended the first few events. Give them preferential notices about the Hangouts then in the future, along with specials for being proactive with your events.

2. Share with your communities – Are you active in various communities on Google+. Then share with those relevant communities your upcoming Google HoA.

3. Join the Hangout on Air communities – Another option for communities is to join the HoA communities. These communities were created to specifically share Hangouts with others.

4. Ask your co-host or speakers to share – Do not market everything on your own when possible. Ask your co-host’s or guests on the Hangout to share this with their social network.

5. Create a Facebook event – Remember that you do not have to do all of your marketing solely on Google+. Leverage Facebook events, and invite your social network on Facebook to join you on the event.

6. Email LinkedIn Connections – This is a great strategy if you do not over do it. Email up to 50 LinkedIn connections at a time to invite them to future Google Hangouts on Air. Choose professionals who will your topics relevant.

7. Tweet it – Create a few different tweets about the event, so your followers can participate.

8. Share in Eventbrite – Before social networks, using sites like Eventbrite were the gathering places online for people searching out events. They still have a large following of people who use the site to find events online.

9. Write a blog post – Going past social media, use your blog to drive traffic to your Hangouts. A blog with good traffic is a great way to drive traffic to your HoA.

10. Guest post with link to HoA – Going a step beyond just posting your event on your blog, you can create dynamic content for blogs in your niche. Then in the profile area or at the bottom of the post put the link to the Hangout event.

11. Have amazing guests to promote – Part of having people attend your events is having the best possible guests that motivate people to attend, in order to hear the speaker.

12. Create great content – This goes along with having amazing guests. The right content for your show will make all the difference when you combine it with the right target market.

13. YouTube teaser video – Give viewers a taste of what you will be discussing. If you have past episode highlights, then maybe you can create a highlight reel. Otherwise, entice with a video that explains what the Hangout will cover, but not too much information that they do not have to attend. In other words, tease.

14. Pin the event image – Use the power of images on Pinterest. This visually appealing social network jives really well with Hangouts video. Pin the event header, then also pin any logos and profile pics of speakers. Another option if you review books, give a copy of the speakers book away through a Pinterest contest.

15. Share with Skype Groups – One often overlooked, yet completely effective strategy is to share your Hangout with Skype groups. Generally, people who use Skype for business are more tech-savvy, entrepreneurs interested in testing out new technologies like Google Hangouts to see how it works.

16. Email your list – Never forget to send out targeted emails to your list about your upcoming hangouts.

17. Create event specific hashtags – Is there a hashtag you can create for your event, so whenever people share that hashtag they can stay in touch with others interested in the event? If so, then you need to create a relevant hashtag for your events.

18. Put it in your email signature – Remember that not all email is in direct marketing. If you have a regular Hangout that you put on, include a link to your website, where people can sign up for the list to find out about future hangouts.

19. Trades – you promote mine, and I will promote yours. Works for some many different events and services, as well as Hangouts. Ask people in similar niches to share your event, and you will do the same for them. Check out sites like JustRetweet where you can do trades with large swaths of people Note: JustRetweet is a paid sponsor, but this is a real recommendation.

20. Social Bookmarking (Digg, BizSugar, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc) – Using social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon can drive tens of thousands of visits to your hangout event page in a short period of time.

21. Facebook Ads – Imagine having 1.3 Billion people checking out your Google Hangout. Well, that might be stretch, considering that we want to target your event to your specific audience. However, with so many people on Facebook, you are sure to find a target group to promote your Hangout.

22. Google Ads – If Facebook does not work, then use Google Ads. After all, directing Google search to Google Hangouts makes sense not only to Google and yourself, but also people searching on Google for specific topics. Why search for entrepreneurs articles, when you can search for a live Google Hangout with entrepreneurs on the call.

23. Stumble Ads – StumbleUpon ads have two decided advantages. As a social bookmarking site, you can accelerate your traffic from the site with the ads, plus when people see the ads they can choose to stumble and/or share the posts on StumbleUpon themselves. This means you have the potential to create some viral traffic from StumbleUpon.

24. LinkedIn Ads – While not my favorite type of ads, one of the new ad formats that they just came out with: Post ads for Companies shows some promise as a way of driving traffic and attention to your hangouts.

25. Press Release – Oh, how the press release has changed over the past decade. Instead of being a stodgy sheet of paper shared with a few news publications, press releases have become a full-fledged method of marketing your services and events. The press release services like PRWeb can distribute your press release to thousands of distribution sites across the web, including some major players. Also, really good if you are looking to get a lot of attention for your upcoming hangout.

26. Craigslist Classes – Do not forget the old school methods of driving traffic online. Few get more old school than Craigslist. This classified advertising powerhouse, however, still delivers quite the punch when marketed properly.

27. Craigslist Forum –A bonus to the Craigslist classes are the forums. In the forums you can post multiple times per day about your topic, and engage with online users about different topics. However, do not abuse the forums, because you will be booted as a spammer.

28. Use “Hype My hangout” to promote – Easily compress your Hangout into a little press kit that can easily be shared across the web. You even get to create a quick 12 second video for your hangouts on the site. Really sweet deal!

29. Share the presentation on Slideshare – Another option for Hangouts is to share any presentations you make after the fact on Slideshare. This can get you some cool post HoA traffic, and drive some additional traffic your way for the next hangout.

30. Answer relevant questions on Quora- Quora is a great way for you to provide authoritative answers to people in your industry, and build up a following with specific people who have questions about the services you provide. What could be better?

31. Create a Squidoo lens if you plan on creating a regular HoA – Squidoo lens are like mini website pages packed with information about a specific topic.

32. Tell your Podcast listeners – If you have a podcast, then start connecting your podcast users to your hangouts. In fact, you can also use your hangouts as a podcast when you separate the audio from the video. Great way to maximize your content. Using simple video editor software, you should be able to separate the audio in less than 5 minutes.

33. Ask attendees to share the event live – It is never too late to share the event. Especially during the event, when you have a wide variety of listeners attending who can share your event on the spot with their network.

34. Create an infographic for the event – Another way to repurpose your content is to turn the hangout into a cool infographic enticing attendees to share the graphic with their network. The infographic should contain your Hangout information along with other relevant content that could interest potential viewers.

35. Place Banner Ads (BuySellAds.com; BlogAds.com, etc.) – Promote the event with third party ads on niche sites through BuySellAds.com or BlogAds.com.

36. Integrate with Google+ Events – Fortunately, Google now automatically integrates your HoA with Google events, so you can schedule your event for additional Google+ users attending.

37. Send out multiple reminders (eg. 1 week, 1 day, and 2 hours before) – People forget. Remind them at targeted times about your event to increase the percentage of attendees from registered members.

38. Networking Events –You do not only have to market your hangout through online events. Utilize live networking events to connect with potential attendees to your event.

39. Trade Shows – If you have the option of going to a trade show you will connect with potential attendees who are not always at traditional networking and online events.

40. Call interested prospects – Yes, you can pick up a phone and call people. I know it is old school, but you will be surprised how much this strategy works.

41. Create a flyer for the HoA – Create a flyer for when you are at networking events or at local bulletin boards. A good idea is that if you are doing a business presentation, maybe go to your local Starbucks with flyers to post on their community boards. A number of entrepreneurs go to Starbucks on a regular basis. I know, because I am one of them.

42. Freebie Incentives – Is there a freebie you can offer that would entice people to attend? You will be surprised how innovative you can be with the freebies. Check out Incentivibes. Great way to cheaply get quality incentives.

43. Share on Facebook Groups – As long as you know your niche, you can go on Facebook to find your ideal prospects. Then use Facebook search to find these groups.

44. Share on LinkedIn Groups – Instead of repeating myself, check out what I said about Facebook groups.

45. Start early (at least 2-3 weeks) – Give people advanced notice of your events, so they can put it in their calendars.

46. Thank those who retweet, share, comment, and +1 your event – Whenever possible show gratitude to those who made your event a success. It builds for your next event, and is just good manners.

47. Create a tweet for attendees and speakers – Create a tweet that attendees and speakers can share with their followers. Use a service like ClickToTweet to track the success of this campaign.

48. Create a swipe email for attendees and speakers – Do not just stop at social media. You can also create a swipe email, so your attendees and speakers can email their list ahead of time.

49. Go back to your list of attendees from previous webinars, events, etc and personally invite them. I mentioned this before briefly, but it is worth restating. Invite people who attended previous events with you to your Hangout. Whether they are previous hangouts or webinars on other platforms, invite them to your events.

50. Attend other relevant Google+ Hangouts – The more I attend other people’s hangouts, the more the attendees and presenters will be enticed to attend your events.

51. Connect with people on other Google+ Hangouts – You want attendees to your hangouts. Instead of forcing people to join a Google hangout without feeling comfortable with the software, check out who is attending other HoA’s. I would not recommend poaching those connections, but setting up HoA’s at similar times is a great strategy to connect with others.

52. Post on Relevant Forums – Forums are an amazing source of targeted traffic, because forums are generally built around specific interests. Find a specific interest for your product, and become active on that forum. Then when you build the relationships, invite those people to your events.

53. Stream your hangout to your website – One of my favorite ways to get traffic is to tell people to go to my website for HoA’s. I have a specific page set up for the Hangout on Air where people can watch the event, chat, and even take notes. Plus, you can get people to sign up for your email list while they are there, which will increase your viewers over time.

Wow! Tired of promoting your Google Hangout on Air yet?

You now have 53 ways to promote your HoA. Now, here is a good method of approaching the strategies listed above. Do NOT do all of them at once. If you attempt to use 53 ways to market a single Hangout, you will probably get overwhelmed and just give up.

Instead, choose 3-4 methods above, and perfect your strategy with those methods to perfection. The reality is, that I know not every method above will work for your Google Hangouts. However, some methods will work for your specific event. Figure out which ones work the best, and then stick with those methods. Once you develop some consistency in your marketing of those methods, expand to other methods listed above.

At a certain point, you will develop a following. Then you can leverage that following for even greater success.

  This article originally appeared on Jeffbullas's Blog and has been republished with permission.
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Author: Andy Nathan

Follow @andynathan

Andy Nathan is the founder of Smart at the Start. His company has helped hundreds of businesses create content so amazing that it leaves Google crying for mercy, and pleading with the clients to put them on the first page of the search engine. Well, maybe that how he sees… View full profile ›

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