TJ Walker explains why Google Hangouts matter for business: they let you connect face-to-face with customers and employees for almost nothing. He hosts monthly office hours and invites you to join live on Wednesday, October 7 at 1pm.
Questions this video answers
Wednesday, October 7, 2015.
1:00 pm (local—he says "it's today at 1pm").
Once a month (he calls them "office hours").
Chapters
You may have heard about Google Video Hangouts. What is it all about? Is it something you're missing out on? Or is it just another one of these little trends that's gonna get talked about for a while and then disappear? I'll have an answer for you in a moment. I'll admit I avoided this for a while. I try to wait and see if there's some form of social acceptance before hopping on the latest social media bandwagon. But this is one that I do think is truly significant for not only small businesses, but Fortune 500 companies, governments as well. And it's the ability to speak live in video to customers, clients, prospects. Google, through its platform YouTube has this thing called Hangouts. And you just have to have a Google plus account. You can get that for free. But what it allows you to do is to essentially broadcast to an unlimited number of people in real time. They can see you, hear you, they can type in questions. Some of them can actually appear on the screen if you want. But for me, the real application is to be able to talk to your clients, customers, prospects, where they can see you, hear you, talk to you, ask questions, and it's all in real time. Now I know a lot of you say, well tj, I'm not a TV guy, I'm not a public speaking expert, I can't do that. Ask yourself this for the most important interactions you have with clients, colleagues, customers. Isn't it typically face to face? I don't care if you manufacture consumer products, electronic products or high end consulting services for the really big deal. You kind of have to be there in person. People have to see you, hear you, talk to you. Well, that's the beauty of Google Hangouts. By the way. I sound like I'm a spokesperson for them. They're not paying me a cent. Okay, But I've recently started doing Google Video hangouts once a month and it is been received well by my clients, customers, product people who buy my products. What I do is just have one hour a month. I call it office hours like I'm a professor. So for my public speaking students, trainees, it kind of has that academic feel, but you don't have to call it that. And I don't plan this big formal agenda. I don't spend hours and hours and hours of prep. I simply make myself available to answer questions from clients and prospects and customers. And I do talk about, I come prepared to talk about a few issues I think would be of topical concern to my clients and customers. Now I do want to invite you I have one today. If you're watching this on Wednesday, October 7th and it's today at 1pm, I'm putting a link below. If you tune. If you watch this before the air date, you can watch it live and you can put forth your questions. You can still click on it after the air date because Google stores any Google Hangout video you do on your YouTube channel, so it can be a reference point for later. So why else would you want to do this? I know a lot of large businesses where the CEO is constantly traveling all over the world. I'm not saying this will eliminate the need for travel, but if you talk to your customers and your clients and prospects regularly, whether it's once a month, could be once a week, could even be for five minutes a day, imagine if that would reduce even one international trip a year. I mean you could save $50,000 just, just on saving and eliminating one trip. Wouldn't that be worth it? If you're a small one person business? If you can build trust and confidence with a prospect who's on the other end of the country and get them to the point of signing you without you having to fly across the country, that could be a significant savings for you. Now let's look at the reason why people don't do this. For starters, they think it's technically hard. Well, let me tell you, here are the technical requirements you need to do in order to put on a live video Google Hangout broadcast to the whole world. You need a computer. You already have that, otherwise you wouldn't be watching me. Now you need a high speed Internet connection. Well, you probably have that or you wouldn't be watching this right now. You need a webcam. What you can get for $10 at a grocery store or Amazon if you don't already have one built in, that's really about it. Now you can look at me and say, well tj, easy for you to say. You have this big professional studio. Guess what? I'm in a closet in my home right now. This is just a little closet. Now I do have a little fancier video camera. It's a couple thousand dollar camera. You don't have to use that. Just any high definition webcam, less than a hundred bucks, you'll be in great shape. I have what appears to be a big studio. It's just a TV screen with a video loop behind it that I bought for $48. You don't have to have that. Just use your office. If someone in your industry came to you and said, hey, we're going to have 50 of your biggest prospects. They're all going to be at a hotel right next to your office. We have a free slot for you to speak at lunchtime where you can talk about anything you want to people in your industry. Your clients, your customers, your prospect. They're going to be there and all you have to do is walk out your door, walk five feet, walk to the hotel next door and talk for however long you want. 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes. Would you do it now? I don't know many people who would say no to that. But guess what? Every single day, you're not doing a live video YouTube Hangout. You're essentially saying no to that. So I hope you give some thought. Check it out. Go to YouTube, go to Google or just Google Hangouts and you can start to learn a little about it. It's really not hard. Believe me, I'm no technology genius. I do it on my own. And please click on the link below and stop by Live Today. And it's Wednesday. October. I think it's October. Yes, it's October 7, 2015. You can watch it live and if it's after that, you can see it on demand. And by all means, send me questions. Type in questions. If you're there, live about any aspect of hangouts or public speaking or media training or crisis communications, because those are my areas of expertise. But also just get a sense of really how simple it is and how you could use it in your own business as a tool for really large companies. It could be a great way and a faster way of connecting just with your own employees around the world rather than your own internal system. By the way, you can make it private. You don't have to put the video on YouTube for the whole world to see as well. You have control over all of that, so please keep it in mind. Many people avoid this because they say, oh, well, you know, I don't like to be in front of the camera. Get over it. If you're comfortable speaking to a prospect or client face to face, you can do the same thing on Google Hangouts. Please check it out.
