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The moving image and marketing were made for each other. Irrespective of how you use it, a video creates a sense of instant rapport and immediacy that's hard to combat. Because it's hard to combat it has been the go-to means for audience outreach of every major brand.
The Google+ Hangouts On Air have been the secret weapon of Google's social network. Not only have they allowed Google+ members to connect, visually, with each other across national borders and timezones but they have also become the only viable shortcut that exists in terms of branding.
Yet Google+ Hangouts are also one of the most challenging mediums to work in. It requires a clear understanding of who you are and why you do what you do. This is a requirement because the medium, in order to really work, requires trust. Trust in yourself and trust in your audience and the only way you can really engender that is through the validity of your conduct and the humanity of your approach.
It seems like marketing has gone metaphysical. In a way it has. The Hangout On Air is as far from the traditional broadcast mode of marketing as it is possible to get. At its core is a very strong humanizing experience that comes with the connection one person makes with another. Nowhere is the transition from a web of websites to a web of people more felt than in a Hangout on Air.
This makes Hangouts on Air very much part of the semantic web and semantic search. Just how all this works in practice is the subject of the latest Social Media Power Talk (hashtag: #SMTPowerTalk) and discussing it with us was Yifat Cohen CEO of the Yifat Cohen Network and Kristin Drysdale of Weal Media.
They each tackle this from very different perspectives. Yifat is a veteran of Hangouts, having started this journey from the very first days of Google+. Kristin is newer to the medium and uses it in ways that have leapfrogged some of the traditionalists.
The Hangout was insightful, as usual. From "stop marketing and start educating" to "be yourself and build relationships". These are practitioners who do as they preach. Google+ has a critical role to play in audience discovery and branding. As a tool it can be incredibly powerful in building relationships that eventually lead to sales and visibility in search.
Watch the video below for thirty minutes of insightful conversation.
The Visual Power of Hangouts in Social Media Marketing
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