Google Hangouts are a terrific platform for melding your online video marketing with your social media. Directly connected to your Google+ account, it provides the advantage of being super easy to use, and fast. You can go online and create a Hangout, and begin broadcasting in minutes, and then after that find it uploaded to your YouTube channel for you! Sounds like a perfect business medium to me.

Not only that, they're free to use. This makes it easy to choose to adopt Hangouts at least in part for your business, even so the question remains, how? Which ways are best incorporate this platform into my marketing mix quickly and easily?

Let's look at 3 ways you can do just that!

3 Uses of Google Hangouts in your Business

Another choice for webinars – Using webinars in your small business could be cost-prohibitive, especially if you are using a state of the art platform like GoToWebinar, which can set you back over $500 if you have a decent sized audience. Hangouts, alternatively, are free to run and most of the heavy lifting is done for you, including the recording and rendering of the video. This can make it really easy to use Hangouts for webinars on the fly, customer service tutorials and more.

Give a glimpse into your business – Hangouts can be an easy way to show off your latest products, introduce new services, and give a look inside your business. Using hangouts for instruction and customer service are excellent ways to increase your brand authority and give customers top-notch service. This is especially valid if you use social media together with Hangouts to widen your reach.

Engagement and fast service – Hangouts work great for engaging with your audience, particularly a small one. Being virtually face to face with your audience is invaluable, and has a great many benefits with regards to your efforts to brand yourself in your chosen market. Hangouts also make it possible to be a participant in what is becoming known as Agile marketing, that is, the ability to quickly respond to trends and market events with answers and solutions. This type of ability on your part will resonate wide within your market.