First Annual (Virtual) G+ Bloggers Conference - G+ Hangouts and What You Need to Know About Them

Red, then you're live.

Hi there, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and we are here today for another session of the first annual Virtual Bloggers Conference and I'm here today with the Hangout Helper himself and he's gonna share some really cool things about Hangouts with you. So let me introduce Ronnie Bincer and we're gonna turn it over to him to get started because he's got a lot of great information to share today. And if you have questions please ask them in the comment bar and we'll do our best to get to them. Ronnie, take it away.

Thanks, Jeff, Dennis. Hey guys out there, this is Ronnie Binzer, the Hangout Helper. This is phenomenal, isn't it? This is a virtual conference and we're doing it because of the Hangout tool. If this Hangout tool didn't exist, we probably wouldn't be able to do this, or at least we wouldn't be doing it this way. And so I've got some neat stuff I want to share with you coming right up about how to prep for Hangouts if you're a guest, as well as how to Prep for Hangouts if you're going to be the host and you're doing a live broadcast. So those are sort of the things coming up, but I wanted to bring up a question to Dennis Littley and you guys out there. Those of you that have been attending other sessions prior to this one and you're sort of doing it live, I was just curious if the idea of this virtual thing's kind of rocking your world, it's interesting, or it's challenging. And I would think, because I used to do this in real life, I used to go do seminars at hotels and you'd have multiple rooms going on at the same time, or sometimes there was a main featured thing, and in between sessions people would gather. They would gather around in the lobby, right? And when you're in the lobby, you say, "Oh, I was at that session. Did you go to that? What did you learn? What did you get?" So that type of interaction is a little bit different or missing here. And so Dennis, I was thinking, what about this idea? If next time we do this you have— of course not you, you probably need someone else because you need a break, right? But you have somebody else hosting a lobby Hangout, you know, something in between the sessions so that when people want to, they can join in. Maybe another event room, in essence, that's just called the lobby, and we have a live Hangout on Air going on there where people can come in, interact with the comments that are going on on the outside as well as inside the filmstrip. What do you think about that?

I think that's a great idea, Ronnie, and it's definitely something to think about for next year's conference. We'll just have to find some help, people willing to run those lobby rooms so they can monitor.

Yeah, because I found, at least in real life, my interaction time— actually, it's not that different from a Hangout, except for you can't squeeze everybody into this thing, right? So when you're done with a Hangout On Air, you probably know this for sure, Chef Dennis Littley— I was going to call you Chef. I'll just call you Dennis.

That's fine.

So when the show's over, a lot of times the people inside that film strip are still hanging around and they're talking about how it went and things like that. And I think that's some of the most valuable times inside of a Hangout. That's the same concept of when you went to a session, now the session's over, chatting about what you learned, how it worked out, those kind of things. So just a thought.

Great idea. I think we definitely have to look into it for next year. We'll just get some volunteers to help run the other lobby rooms. And keep them up and running.

I want to bring this on screen for a second. This is Maureen Shaw saying, "Happy 4:30 AM from Australia." There's a trooper.

She is. She's been with us through almost all of it, and God knows what time it is.

Okay. Alright, well, let's dive into the idea unless there's other things you want to bring up, and you can bring them up anytime, Chef Dennis. Just let me know.

Thank you.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use some of the tools that I help people learn, and everybody can use them. They're free. One of the ones that I think is really cool is called the Hangout Toolbox, and Hangout Toolbox has built into it this thing that I'm pointing to on the bottom. This is called the lower third, and the lower third I've made a little fancy, you know, because I'm that way, I make things fancy. So it allows you to what I call self-identify. You can put your name, put the name of your website, those kind of things, and from a business or marketing perspective Very, very important. It's also helpful just to let people know who you are when you're in a private Hangout. So let's talk a little bit about the big differentiations between what's a Hangout, and then we'll get into some of the details of how you can prepare to be a guest and then how you can prepare to be a host. So we'll start from the very beginning. A regular Hangout video call that is not broadcast to anybody is just called a We used to just call it a Hangout. Nowadays we have to give it new names. I call it the Hangout video call. And a lot of us will call it a private Hangout. In other words, it's usually just 1 or 2, maybe up to 10 people, but it's not being broadcast to the world. And I do these every single day. I have business meetings with people all over the world. This has rocked my world. It's totally changed the way I do business because I can click a button and invite somebody into a Hangout and have a meeting. And there is so much nonverbal communication that happens with video calls compared to typing emails that nowadays, or even on the phone, nowadays I feel at a loss when I'm not in a Hangout when I'm doing my meetings. I did an interview with David Amerland the other day about semantic search and he calls Hangouts, I'm going to paraphrase because I don't remember the exact words, but I think he calls it semantically dense communication environments. It's a very fancy sounding name for saying there's a lot of stuff that goes on communication-wise inside of a Hangout. So it's a really, really great place to do your meetings if you haven't discovered that yet. So, and I set up my meetings inside what are called events. I use private events so that it's scheduled and all those that are supposed to be attending can say, "Yes, I'm coming," or "Maybe I can make it," or "No, I can't." It'll go on their calendars, it will remind them. Phenomenal way to conduct business meetings. And if you want, like I do, when it's appropriate, I will do a recording on my end of what we talked about so I can have a visual-verbal record so I can go back and review it when and if it's appropriate. So that's a regular Hangout, or what I call a regular Hangout. Now we just call it a Hangout video call.

Ronnie, quick question. Yeah. So if we're doing a private Hangout that's not recorded, what do I use to record it then?

Good question. It depends if you're on a PC or a Mac for the different software. I'm on a Mac, and so I prefer a program— the one I use is called Telestream ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow is the name of the product, Telestream is the company that makes it. It's about a $100 purchase, and the reason why it's good is it not only brings in the video well, which most of them will, but it also brings in the audio, the sound, and that's the key because that's where the problems break down. So that's for Mac-only people. If you are a PC person, then I might encourage you to try Camtasia, which is made by TechSmith, and that's also, I think, around a $100 program. So both solutions are about $100 to do that recording, and both Camtasia and Telestream's Screenflow will allow you to record what's called computer audio, and that is the key. And trust me, I went through about 10 different programs prior to that and figured out that most of them just did not do a good job with capturing the audio. Does that answer your question?

Yes, it does. Thank you.

Alright, so now let's move on. The next thing— we've got a regular Hangout video call, we've got the next one, which is the big one in my mind, is broadcasting your show. And that's what we're doing right now. This is called a Hangout On Air. It automagically— yes, I made up that word— automagically turns your Hangout conversation into a TV show, a live broadcast TV show for free. This is what's amazing from the marketing angle of things. So you can then do an interview, you can do a Q&A about your product, about your services, you can cover the frequently asked questions, you can interview the people that are in your business environment, you can get experts in your field and interview them, and it goes on and on and on. You can turn this into your own weekly broadcast, just a ton of things you can do. But besides the why, let's talk a little bit about the how, because if you don't do it well, it's not worth doing. In fact, you're gonna hurt yourself. So you want to have a good first impression when you do these things, and that's where I come in. I try to help you learn the tool so that you can use it efficiently and you can give a good first impression. Okay, so the Hangout on Air, big picture, it's a different way that you do a Hangout. It's a video call. You can have up to 10 people in that film strip down there. They can all interact. Right now there's just 2 of us, and so because of that, we're full screen, and so people aren't even seeing Chef Dennis right now unless he has himself blue boxed, which I'm assuming you don't. Okay, so, but what it is, it's live broadcast and that automatically or automagically shows up on your channel in YouTube and if you know what you're doing with video when you're done you can optimize your video so that they can get found for certain keywords and things like that or semantic phrases. So all that's part of putting a video up on YouTube but the easy version is start it with a Hangout On Air and you've automatically got a video. That gets recorded for you so you don't have to buy this other software to do your recordings. When I meet with my clients and I'm training them how to use Hangouts, part of my package is I will use a private regular Hangout video call and I'll record it and then I give them a private copy of that video so they can review it over and over again so that they really solidify the concepts. Does two big things. One, they don't have to scribble down all the notes, right, while I'm blabbing away all the important things they need to know. They can basically let that come and know that it's being recorded so they can watch it again later, and they can share it with other people in their business. So there's a lot of good reasons why you do it that way. If I'm meeting with a client, I don't usually think it's wise— in fact, for privacy reasons, I would not make it a Hangout On Air because then it's broadcast live and everybody in the world can watch it. And then, you know, the privacy level of being able to discuss specific details in that particular person's business or organization just out the window because you don't want it publicly known. So that's why I do private ones and record them on my own. But if I'm doing a show, I want it public. I want everybody to be able to see it. And some people, once it's done live, they turn off the public part and they put it behind a paywall. And that's a legitimate way to go about doing it, where you make a live show. If people are able to watch it live, great. And if they missed it, then they can watch it by paying you a fee to see it where you put it. So there's different ways to go about doing it. Someone in the comments here is saying that the Camtasia Studio for PC is quite high, it's $299. The Mac version is $99. Okay, sorry, I'm used to the Mac version. So that— thanks for bringing that up, Monique Johnson. I'll put that right here on the screen here for a second so everyone can see it. So apparently I was wrong with the pricing. If you're wanting an inexpensive version of a software— I'm sorry, I shifted back to the Hangout video call for a second here. Not the Hangout on Air, but the private Hangout. And you're trying to make a recording, there's an inexpensive software version, I gotta find it, there it is, screencast-o-matic.com. Screencast-o-matic.com. No, I did not make the name, I promise. They have a version that I think is like $15 a year. You have to get the Pro version because only the Pro version allows you to capture the audio properly. But guess what? Doesn't work for a Mac, only works for PCs. So that's, you know, there you go. Back to the Hangout on Air live broadcast. What I want to do is I want to bring up some things. I made other videos on this earlier, and I do train people one-on-one, so feel free to go to TheHangoutHelper.com and sign up there with the services area and I'll be happy to work with you. But I do want to do this, I'm going to turn on some bullet points and let's talk about being a Hangout On Air guest and how to do a good job doing that. So what I've got right here are some bullets that talk about the main concepts. So let's start out with the first one. When you're going to be a Hangout On Air guest, even just a regular Hangout, you're not even necessarily being broadcast live, these are good tips to know or follow. You're gonna want to make sure your accounts are set up properly so that if you're a Hangout On Air guest, the host knows how to actually find you. Because sometimes people have 5 or 10 accounts, and I'm not exaggerating. When they first start, they might not have a lot of accounts, and, and Chef Dennis Littley, if he's trying to find you to bring you in, he doesn't even know which is the right one to reach. So it's a good idea to set up your accounts appropriately and not have what I call blue heads. A blue head is when you first start, you don't put in your visual graphic for your profile picture. You're going to want to put that in there. It helps people know which is the right you. And if you don't have time or the knowledge at this point to figure out how to weed out all those extra accounts and the real one, you know, the one you really want to use, make sure the real one has your profile picture and leave the other ones as blue heads. Until you can eventually get rid of them. So that's just sort of the tips why I have that first point. The second point, when you're doing a Hangout on Air and you're going to be a great guest, you're going to want to make sure you have a good-looking environment. I've got a little curtain behind me and to be honest it's a shower curtain, but it looks good. I got it at Bed Bath Beyond and I got a couple versions of them in case I want to change them out and things like that. So just clean up your environment, it just makes you look a bit more professional. The other thing that's part of your environment is your lighting. So you don't want a lot of light from behind you because that does what's called backlighting and it makes everything look dark. I am a video nerd, I'm a Hangout nerd, I do this all the time so I get a little fancier. I've got some fancy lights in front of me and up above me and I've got a little bit of lighting behind me because that adds a little bit of depth. So I am maybe a little different than than some, but if you're going to have to choose one or the other, make sure the light is in front looking at your face because that's what matters to people in Hangouts. So that's your environment. Next, I would talk about you want to have a headset, a good headset. This one right here that I've got on is made by GE. It is cheap, $30. That is inexpensive for a headset. You can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars having high-quality microphones, I get it with a headset, okay? So it's pretty cheap. If you don't want to have a headset, I understand. If you've got hair— mine's gone— but if you have hair and you got— you're worried about that look and things like that, then just put in earbuds and have a separate microphone. The key is it's not going to be a good impression if you're on a laptop and you're just talking without anything extra. You end up usually causing echoes, and there's echoes that are not good. And because— here's the bottom line— the speakers of the laptop are right next to the microphone of the laptop, and there tends to be a little bit of feedback. So if you can, get yourself a headset or at least a microphone and earbuds so that you can have better quality sound. Because believe it or not, your video might look perfect, but if your sound stinks, nobody's going to want to watch. Okay. It's just the way it works. Chef Dennis, do you have anything you want to throw in the middle of all this?

No, you're really touching on all the bases there. And he's absolutely right. There's nothing worse than having a guest in a Hangout, and while I'm trying to talk, I'm hearing an echo of myself over and over again. It's really hard to concentrate. And that's because they're not using earbuds or they're not using a headset. So you want to come to the party prepared for the party. To watch it at home, you don't need anything but your computer. But if you'd like to come into the environment and actually take part in a Hangout, It's stuff you need to know.

Right. And then it brings us to the next point, which is learning how to mute and unmute yourself. When you are the guest, you should not be muted. In other words, when you first arrive, if there's a red symbol in the upper right corner where there's a microphone icon and it's red, that means you're muted. So you're gonna need to click on that red thing so it's no longer red, and then you're able to talk and people can hear you. And there's little indicators below you as well as up top that lets you know whether your sound is being heard or not, so those are also good to know. And I've got all this stuff, this is just a quick overview, I've got all this detail-wise, you can watch videos that I've made. So you want to learn to mute yourself and unmute yourself and realize this, if you are not the featured guest but you're in the film strip, that's the thing we call on the bottom, you might want to mute yourself when you're not talking, that way when sounds happen, the phone rings, you start typing, all these things that could distract the show, you won't distract it because no one's gonna hear it. Because here's the bottom line: when you make sound, whether it's you talking or the phone ringing, sometimes the video window will shift to you because it's based on sound. It's activated normally switching from person to person based on who's talking. Now the host can control that differently by doing what they call pinning or blue boxing, but that may not be the situation at all times, so it's just a good idea to mute yourself if you're not talking. Just, you know, out of basic— just a good idea. I was going to say etiquette, but people don't know it yet. So here it is, hangout etiquette. Okay, moving on. The next set, I've got another set of bullet points, actually two more sets. We want to look good all the time. Again, that's tricky for me because I don't look that good, but what I mean by that is if you're the featured guests in a Hangout On Air, you may not know that you are visible on screen. The reason— we don't have to go into the full reasons why, but bottom line is if the host has you blue boxed or focused on the screen, other people might be talking, but they made the decision to stick you on the main camera. And so you shouldn't be looking around wondering what's going on or scratching yourself or whatever, unless you want to turn off your camera. You want to look good all the time. So that's just a real important tip in my mind, and we'll get to the host idea in a minute. Okay, the lower third, we already talked about that. That's this fancy thing down here. Mine's fancier. Chef Dennis Littley's is more of the, the basics that are in there. You can add in custom graphics, which is what I'm doing right now, or you can use the basic built-in one. It's a great way to self-identify, and that's part of the Hangout toolbox, and it's a free tool that just adds on to your Hangout. So I'm gonna move on. Group chat, when you're inside of a Hangout on Air, you have an area that's called chat where the inards people, inards people, that's wrong, the people on the inside can chat with each other so they can send private messages like Chef Dennis can say, hey Joe, when Ronnie's done with this, you're next, you know, and help you prepare to get ready. So all this stuff can be done inside the Hangout chat. It's not visible to anybody on the outside. That's what's called group chat, or some people call it Hangout chat, which is confusing because there's another thing called Hangout chat. Then, if you're wanting to be the best guest possible, you should practice. And what that means is, first off, in my mind, turn on a Hangout, invite yourself and nobody else, and just come in and get situationally aware. Figure out where the buttons are, figure out what you look like on the screen, look at your background, see if it looks good, see if your microphone is making little dots move, if there's sound happening. All that stuff you can do that I just talked about, you can practice on your own, and then I'd invite your spouse or a friend or somebody else to join you in a Hangout and give you some feedback. How's it working? Does it look good? That kind of thing. Then graduate to joining into other people's Hangouts if you can. And just be part of it and just get a feel for it, then you're ready to do the big guest thing where you're the featured guest. Does it take time and effort? Yes. Do you want to make a first good impression? I think so. So it's a good idea to set these things up. Then the last thing for being a good Hangout On Air guest or being a good Hangouter, a big Hangouter, is to understand how you are invited. Inviting people are getting an invite is a bit of a challenge sometimes. And so one of the best tricks is if I know Chef Dennis Littley is inviting me to hang out for a certain date and time, and I for some reason didn't see the invitation, I can just go right to Chef Dennis's channel— or, I'm sorry, his profile page— and I should see a button that says "Join Hangout," because if he started the Hangout and invited me, I can get into it easily by going to Chef Dennis' profile. Now if Chef Dennis is running this as a page, not a profile, I have to then go to the page that's starting the Hangout. So I kind of need to know, but bottom line is try to figure out how the best way for you is to get the invites, and that's going to move us on to the next phase, which is how do I be a good Hangout on Air host. But Chef Dennis, do you want to bring in any questions or anything in between?

Yeah, we do have a couple questions, Ronnie, if you don't mind. Sure, go for it. Monique Johnson has one. How do you have bullet points come up on your screen so nicely with the slight opacity and custom your lower thirds? Now you did answer that a bit, but I mean, could you touch on that again?

Sure, I shifted just so you see, I already just changed it. Whoops, it's over there, it's backwards. It's always hard. That way. Yeah, when it's mirrored, it's hard to point to it. I shifted my stuff so I'm not using the standard built-in stuff. I make custom graphics to do my Hangouts. I'm a Photoshop nerd from way back, and so I use a PNG format to make— I think it's 640 by— I gotta cheat, hold on, I gotta look at my notes. 640 by 360, there it is. 640 by 360 is the palette, or the— I'm sorry, the artwork size, and then anything that's invisible or clear you'd be able to see your face, and anything else is these other things. I've got them fading in and fading out with just Photoshop work.

Very good. We also have a question here from Adam Holland, and he says he's noticed that some host guests are choppier than others. What is the minimum upstream speed to avoid this, or is there any recommendations?

Yeah, that's a good question. Another— I mean, there's— these are main bullets, right? So I, I've got to limit I've spent 2 years learning this, so I can't fit it all into 1 hour, I promise. I try. So good upload speed, it's a valid thing. It's not just the download, because you can have phenomenal download speed, which everybody is getting more and more of that, but the upload speed is what's going to be your limiter. And a good minimum would be 1 to 1.5 megabits, okay? Nothing in the Ks, but in the megabits. And the higher the better. Honestly, that's really the way it works. And then just as another tip, because I see someone else has a question saying sometimes their Hangout lower third is blurry. When the Hangout lower third is blurry, that's a good sign that your upload speed is not good enough or that your computer is maxed out. There's something going on with your CPU, there's too much activity going on with the computer. So another tip I strongly suggest that people do— this is a freebie because normally I do this for my clients, but Here we go. Shut down your computer before you start your Hangout On Air or before you come in. Shut off all those programs. Shut off Photoshop. Shut off the things that are doing the heavy lifting on your computer. Shut them off. Restart the computer right before you do the Hangout On Air. That clears out a lot of stuff and then things will be a lot better for you. And don't— here's another big tip— don't allow that auto backup thing happen in the middle of the show. That's a bad thing because in other words, it starts picking up and starts uploading things to the internet or wherever, or the virus check and all that. Just a bad idea. You do not want that on while you're in the middle of a show.

Good advice. Good advice. Thank you.

Okay, so let's move on because I want to cover the next ones, or unless there's other— are there other questions, Chef Dennis? I'm usually thinking on the hour and we only got 5 minutes, but we started on the half hour and that's I'm all right.

No, that's it, just comments.

Okay, so let's talk about— I'm shifting now. We were talking about being a good Hangout on Air guest or just a regular Hangouter, if that's even a word, a Hangouter, doing a good job with that. Now I want to talk about the other side, meaning I'm the guy running the show, I'm the person in charge, what we call a Hangout on Air host. So this is for the live broadcast part. These areas that I've got here in the bullets right next to me are some of the keys that I thought of today, and I figured let's talk about that. You're gonna need to actually produce a show. It's like you're a TV producer and the guest and the host and the interviewer. You got all these roles you're gonna have to play, so realize there's a lot involved. You might want to take them a little bit at a time until you get more and more proficient And so here it comes, it's a production, that's the bottom line. It's not just turn on the camera and hope it looks good. If you want to do it right, it's a production. So let's talk about some of the things that you're involved with when you make your production, and one is called packaging. That's what I call it. Does your Hangout on Air, how does it get found? How do people know about it? Do they go to your website to watch it? Do they go to YouTube to watch it, or do they do it in an event? All three or more are options that are totally legitimate. I personally love the integration of a Hangout On Air with a Google+ event, and that's what we're doing right here. The reason why is the event can be advertised before, talked about during, and talked about after. So it's got a before, during, and after lifespan. So it's phenomenal. It's a meeting room in which we stick in the Hangout. And so all those are great options, but to me the event is one of the best ones because of that capability. Now, there are a lot of people have a hard time with it, honestly, because there is no Hangout on Air button in an event. You have to bring pieces together. I train people how to do that on a weekly basis, so if you're having difficulty with that, contact me. I'd be happy to help you with work through the process. So I think events are wonderful because of that. However, some people have the majority of their viewers outside of Google+ right now and they want to sort of move them in maybe, but they're not willing to come in yet. So a good in-betweener space is YouTube because most people that are used to Facebook are also used to going to YouTube. So you could promote your activities so that you show up, your Hangout on Air on YouTube. And by the way, it automatically does anyways but you have to do some adjustments to make it more visible on YouTube if that's your goal. So you just have to figure out what your goal is and then talk with me or other people and we'll help guide you as to how to promote that best. Then the last one that at least I've got in my list right here is your website. You can put a video embed of the Hangout so that once it goes live, it's actually live on your website. And more and more people are making plugins to make this easier, and it's an interesting way to do it. It has some challenges, but I'm sure it's going to be getting better and better as the days go by. So those are what I call packaging, where you gotta figure out where you're gonna make your Hangout On Air visible so that people can find it. Oh, there's another one, right? It just shows up in the Google+ stream, or it might show up in your Google+ community, or, or, right, it goes on and on and on.— but that's enough for now. If you are a host, the Hangout on Air host, it is your job to invite people properly. And that means if they can't get the invite, even though you think it's done, if it's not, you gotta do it. You gotta make it work. And here's the biggest tip of the day: if you are the Hangout on Air host, you need to find the URL to your Hangout on Air— not the YouTube video, that's a video for people to watch on the outside. But if you're trying to invite people down into that film strip, you need to find that URL for the Hangout on Air and share that with your guests. So if they don't get another invite in any other way, that's your fail-safe way to get them in. Okay, that's the job of the host, is try your best to make sure your guests that are in the film strip are able to find you and get in there. So that's part of inviting well. Another thing is pre-show prep. Now I'm going to get a little weird on you, but when I start a Hangout On Air, I start 45 minutes ahead of time. Before the show goes live, I'm in here prepping. I am bringing in comments. I'm bringing in the lower third. I'm making sure the graphics look good. I'm doing all this prep work before I even invite my guests. Then based on when I told the guest and whether I've vetted the guest ahead of time and know that they're good with the camera setup and the microphone phone, I might just invite them in 15 minutes before live time, but if they're new, they're brand new to the platform, I'm inviting them in at least 30 minutes before showtime because they might have a problem, the sound's not working, you're going to have to help them figure it out. So it's a good idea if you can, as a host, do a test Hangout with somebody before you're doing your live show just to make sure everything's cool. So that's pre-show prep stuff. And then there's the emotional part. Now trust me, you have to trust me on this one. I've been doing these forever, or it seems like it, almost 2 years. I'm very comfortable in here. Not everybody is. So as a host, one of your jobs is to calm them down and help them realize this is just a conversation, it's between me and you, never mind that millions of people might be able to watch it. Okay, so try to calm them down and say, look, let's just have a good conversation. Here's what I'd like us to cover. If I can, you know, I'll put up some bullet points like these and we can help us keep on topic and that kind of thing, but this is the thing I'd like to cover. I'm gonna do the intro first, then I'm gonna introduce you, and that's your time to talk. Just work through some really basic stuff like that. That will help make you a better host. That's all pre-show prep. Okay, now interaction. This is one of the hardest but the best parts of the Hangout. If we can do like what we're doing right here, let me remind you what it looks like. I'm gonna bring in a comment. There's different tools. I'll just turn on this one. I'm sorry, but I'm just choosing one. This is from Madeline. I'm bringing in a comment. There's a comment right there. Look at that. I've never noticed that the comment would still be with my lower third graphics around it. That's pretty cool, or it's a bug. Oh wait, anyways, I just turned on the comment, right? And the comments showed up and there it is. So I'm able to bring in comments from people out there in real life and let them be part of the show. That is one of the beautiful things about Hangouts on Air. You can interact with your guests and if you're able to bring the comments in, which some of the tools let you do that better than others, we're using the comment tracker which is built into the Hangout Toolbox version 1, not version 2. Yes, it keeps changing, that's why I help people. If you can bring those comments in, that interactive element just brought that person into the show, so she had a say in the show. Even though she's not in the film strip, she's still able to communicate and we're able to bring that comment not only verbally into the show but also visually, and in my mind that's one of the best ways to do that. So that's another job of the Hangout on Air host. Are you getting the idea that it might be good to bring someone else in to help you? Sometimes it is. I've done it enough that I can juggle all these things. There's other tools coming out every day, like there's a new one I'm part of the field test trial where it's called Questions, where it's built in and people can submit a bunch of questions and then others can +1 them to rank them up, and the more rankings or +1s a question gets, the higher on the list it goes, and then I can decide, okay, I'll try to address that, and I click a button It shows everybody on the outside, this is a question I'm addressing. This is all brand new, it's not even public yet, it's just in a beta field test trial. That's another level of interaction. So there's different things coming out on a regular basis that you're gonna want to keep up with or keep track of, and they're a wonderful way to bring the audience that's viewing from the outside into the show, and it's really, really cool. So all this is bringing you to the point of saying You're gonna need some training if you want to do this well. Now, if you don't want to do it well, fine, turn it on and there you go, and you're, you're live, and then fix it as you go. But you might want to think about this: when you have made a video and it's out there and it's public, people are gonna see it, and the more you have that are kinda done half-baked, the more likely that your reputation is diving, dropping. So it's a good idea in my mind to get prepped ahead of time, do your practicing, get your training Look through my free videos, contact me for paid consulting things, strategy-wise, all that is possible to help you make the first good impression, not only as a guest but also as someone running a show. And that was sort of basically my overall thing. So Chef Dennis, take her away, tell me what you want to do next.

Great advice, Ronnie. I mean, you really— I learned something every time I listen to you, and I wasn't aware about bringing the comments in. And so that's the little eyeball there or whatever on the side.

Yeah, yeah, in— there you go. And they comment, right?

And here's a question from Merrick. Can you read that? The biggest limitations with Hangouts On Air is a 480p resolution for me. It's good enough for conversations between people, but if you want to show something to the public, it would often be desirable to do 1080. Is Google working on that?

Yes, they are, but not 1080. They're working on 720. And 720p has— I've already tested it, we've already— it's kind of going on and off, it's still working on it. When I do a screen share, which I think is primarily what we're talking about for showing data with words and things like that, 720 is proving to be plenty fine. And so the screen share, like for example, I'll do a screen share right now and so you can see if you've prepped your screen shares appropriately then they look— they still look good even at the resolution that we've got right now. See, I mean, you should be able to read those words relatively clearly, even— well, the bigger ones. The smaller ones is where it gets harder to read, and that's when the 720p really does come in handy. And the 720p is rolling out. It's not done yet, it's not fully baked, let's say, but it's on its way.

Okay, great. We have a couple other questions here. Madeline Moy— now that I can do this, let's do it. Okay, Ronnie Binzer, can you talk more about surfacing live stream of Hangouts on a YouTube channel? My audience has a really difficult time finding these on YouTube.

Sure. One thing that's important is when you're on YouTube that you're gonna want to— Chef Dennis, sometimes it's hard to find that eyeball that you turned on to be able to turn it off? Yeah. Right, you might be struggling with that. Just make sure I'm blue boxed and we'll be good to go. You are. You're blue boxed. Alright, so when you're in YouTube, it does not show— in the past before the one channel design, which is what everybody has now, it used to allow us to do what's called a featured video. We could feature our live broadcast as the featured video. Nowadays you don't have that. You've got 3 or 4 areas that you have to focus on. One, is called the Unsubscriber Trailer or Unsubscriber Video. What I do is I go in before the show starts during what I call green room mode. This is part of being a Hangout on Air host, right? So I've already harvested my YouTube link. I then go to my YouTube channel and I edit the Unsubscriber Video so that if somebody just happens upon my channel and they're not subscribed to me yet, they'll see the live show. That's one of the keys. If I've got a bunch of people subscribed and they want to go there, then I'm going to need to do some fancier stuff like I make what are called sections. And in the section I use— I'm getting nerdy here, but some people will understand, the rest, that's okay, we can learn later. But you use a section and in the section you make it based on tags and the tag you should use is #hoa because automatically the #hoa is automatically added to your Hangout On Air before you ever are able to edit any of it. It's just automatically stuck in by YouTube, so, or by Google+ or what I call GoTube. So it sticks it in there automatically for you. Make a section that is looking for keywords or tags, sorry, tags that are #hoa and that'll help surface it. The other one is an evergreen link., and I'll give you that tip, but we can again— anyone that needs more details can talk with me one-on-one and we can go through sessions and help you get it all laid out. But if there's a special link, if you give people this ahead of time, it's your channel name with a slash live at the end, and that's what I call an evergreen link because you can advertise that weeks or months ahead of time, and anytime you have a live show, then if they click on that, it'll go right to the live show. Okay, so it's just one of those ways. If that's your goal, to get people to come to YouTube, then there's various ways to focus attention on YouTube.

Excellent. Okay, we have another question here from Stephanie Red Cross, and I think we're answering it by showing these little clips. This is, how do you handle answering questions when people are watching on all these places? I find my eyes are moving over the screen to look at questions on YouTube website, Google profile. So Stephanie, you're seeing it now, the Comment Tracker makes all this possible.

Yeah, it's also a little tricky because Comment Tracker doesn't always grab comments from everywhere, so you might need to have multiple screens. Like, you can take your Hangout window, make it a little bit smaller, put it over to the side, or at least I would suggest you move it up close to the camera because then when you're looking at the video, you're closer to looking at the camera. Then it looks like you're looking at the audience instead of looking over here all the time when you're reading a comment. So that's important, but also the comment tracker— I'm working with some people, the guys that write the program, as well as some people are trying to make it even do more, to try to bring in other comments into the comment tracker that aren't currently able to be brought in. And so we're trying to make that as large a reach as possible. Right now it's limited to YouTube and Google+ activity, which means including the event, which by the way is a royal pain, and you gotta work with me to help get that fixed. Chef Dennis, I fixed it for him, okay? So trust me, it's not gonna work until you figure out the secret sauce, and I gotta walk you through that if you want to learn it. The other part is Twitter used to be available and now it's not, but it is. It's kind of one of those some extra things you gotta do. So the, the comment tracker is really cool, and the ability to bring stuff in like this is really handy, and I'm really amazed that my little custom graphic is still there. Dennis, Chef Dennis, do you see my custom graphic on top of that as well?

I do see it, looks great.

Wow, okay, so I guess it's good I formatted it the way I did.

Absolutely. And we have a question right above Rebecca asked too. Bring it up for you. And do you have to set up lower thirds each time, or can you create a default one?

Right, good question. My great learning makes it harder for me to give a simple answer. What I do is I set them up and then I save them. You can do that now with version 1 of the Comment Tracker as well as version 2 of the Comment Tracker. So you can make custom things or the standard things and then save it as a preset so it's always available. All you gotta do is go click a button. But what she's asking in the question maybe goes a little deeper. With version 2 of the Hangout Toolbox, we're actually going to be able to— I don't know if it's activated or not yet because I'm using version 1 because it lets us do the comment tracker. Version 2 does not yet, so that's why I'm still focused primarily on version 1 of the Hangout Toolbox. But if you're using the Hangout Toolbox version 2, when it's activated Some of you can tell me if it's activated already. It allows an auto setup so that not only can you save a preset, but you can, when you join a Hangout, set it so that it automatically turns on the Hangout lower third without you touching a thing. So that's the future of these Hangout apps, is the automation for you to say, I want this to be my environment already set up, ready to go every time I come into a Hangout. So yes, it's coming if it's not out there right now.

Great. I think we're going to find that as more and more people use these Hangouts too, there's going to be more and more third-party apps, don't you think, that they're going to come up with tools for us?

Definitely. And there's a lot of them right now that people just aren't aware of. And so that's another function I give, or I help, is when people say, "I need it to do this and this and this," then I'll say, "Well, try this app. It does it." And when I do training, this is going to be odd, but a lot of people will tell me for a while, here's all the things I want to do with this tool and that tool and that tool. And I try when necessary to just listen. Actually, it's always necessary to listen, but I try to listen and then eventually say, look, what is your goal? What do you really want to get done? Forget all these tools, forget about telling me all the things you think you need to use. Tell me what you want to get "Done." And from then I build them a list of the things they need to do and we're done. You know, it just moves on faster that way. So just, just a tip.

Thank you. There's one from Peter. "Is it possible to have a kind of a private Hangout on Air? I would like to have a recording of my language classes for our members." That is a question I've been asking for, a feature I've been asking for.

I call it a limited broadcast or Hangout on Air limited broadcast. Feel free to ping Google+ Help or send feedback and tell them you want limited broadcast because the more times they hear it from people other than me— they're tired of hearing me ask for it, I promise you, I promise— the more times they hear that, the more they know people really want it. So the ability to do a limited broadcast that's for more than just 10 people, you know, those in the film strip, but a lot of people can watch live is very, very important, I think, especially in a business environment. And we just don't have it. So there's tricks. I can help you learn some of those tricks if you want to talk with me one-on-one, but bottom line is no, there is no limited or private Hangout on Air broadcast per se. There's tricks, and I can help you with the tricks. Great.

Well, if there's any other questions out there, now is the time to ask them while we have Ronnie Binzer here helping us. And if you don't have time now, if you're watching this as a recording watching the recording later on YouTube, like Ronnie said, contact him and he'll arrange a time to work together with you and you can tell him what your goals are and he'll work out a program to help you meet those goals. And I'm telling you, sometimes it's a lot better to have someone that knows what they're doing do it for you than all the time you invest rather than to pay, you know, an amount of money that comes out to be a lot less in the long run than all the time you'll spend trying to get it done on your own. I speak— say that from experience, Paul. Believe me.

Yeah, and I'm kicking around the idea, in fact some people might be able to just leave some comments if they're interested. I'm kicking around the idea of doing a private community inside Google+. It's a paid-for community for those that want to learn the guts and learn and keep up with it because it keeps changing, right? I mean, this stuff keeps changing. I'm on it all over it because this is my job. But if you're trying to do other things and monitor it, it can get a little bit overwhelming. So I've got some other products that should be coming out into the public realm soon but they're more niche. Focused and they're focused for people outside of Google+. What I'm considering strongly is building a membership environment where you can actually be part of a Hangout. I think the name, the latest name I've been playing around with is calling it Hangout— what's the one, I've got too many in my head— Mastery, Hangout Mastery. Go ahead, steal it if you like, but I'm still going to do it probably. But the idea there is It would be an environment— I still have another place that's free, it's called the Hangout Helper community or Hangout Helpers. You can come in there and I'll try to answer questions if you like, but at some point I get to the point where I need to get paid for my time and that's what this environment was going to be for. And we're going to do private sessions where I'll make recordings of it and the rest of the group can see it when it's appropriate for them. And we'll be going over the how-to to make sure you do it right.

That'd be a great time saver. I'd be looking for that, Ronnie. So when you do get that going, let me know for sure.

You bet.

Yeah, big thumbs up. Alright, doesn't look like we have any more questions right now. It's been a really informative session as usual. You provide an awful lot of advice and suggestions and tips on how to use Google Hangouts, and they are ever-changing. So that's the important thing, you know, learn to use them basically now. So when the changes are made, you can adapt a little more easily to them because if not, you know, you'll just be batting your head against the wall trying to figure out how to use them. Going over, when you watch this, take some notes and go over how to be a good guest, how to be a good host, because those things are really, really important. Okay, and help us help you, as Jerry Maguire would say, right?

Yeah, so if they want to find me, they can go to thehangouthelper.com.— and there's a services area there. You can see services I offer as well as a contact form and send me a note. The other option is you can just go on Google+ and look for The Hangout Helper or look for Ronnie Bincer and I should pop right up there.

We have one last question here from Stephanie and she says, what's the best way to convert HOA viewers to long-term relationships?

HOA viewers, meaning Hangout on Air viewers, when someone's just watching, how do we convert them into long-term relationships? I would ask them to do things, you know, simple things like, when you're done with watching this video, give it a thumbs up, would you? And then why don't you leave me a comment to let me know what you thought about it and the particular part that was the most intriguing to you. And that'll allow me— I'm not the host in this case, but I'm part of it, right? That would allow me or Chef Dennis to go and know you were A, interested, and B, that you're willing and able and ready to interact, and that level of interaction starts the ball rolling, which then can turn into a long-term relationship. That would be my guess.

Sounds like good advice, and it's all about engagement, you know. And so whether you engage with people, whoever, wherever they are, and getting them to engage back with you. So if you can get them to leave those comments and plus ones and stuff, then you'll start it like Ronnie said. Well, folks, Thank you so much. We're gonna come to the end of this session. We have two more left today before we close out our virtual conference, first annual, and the next one coming up will be at 4:30, and that is our Pinterest, or as I like to call it, the other social media. Okay, and it's a good source for traffic, especially for food bloggers, and it's a lot of fun for a lot of other people to go on just to pin things and find a lot of great ideas for their home or everything else in general. Today we were here with Ronnie Bincer, the Hangout Helper. Thanks so much for joining us and all that great information, Ronnie.

It's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I'm glad that the Hangouts are here so we can do these virtual conferences. It's pretty cool.

Absolutely. A little groundbreaking territory with these and I'm sure we're going to see many more after them. Thanks for coming and I will see you all soon.