Try it — it’s not only a little fun but it takes your offsite relationships to a new level. It’s adding a little WOW to your connections with people.
First, you need a Google+ account. Second, you need an iPhone, iPad, Android (and the free app for one of them) or a webcam on your computer. Finally, you need someone offsite to talk to… and the list is growing.
Offsite or outsourced headhunters, IT, accounting or bookkeeping staff, marketing staff, document production people and even CLIENTS.
It’s no different than scheduling a phone meeting. And even with local people who could come in for a meeting, consider the topic, if it isn’t a sensitive topic requiring physical contact or serious time… try handling brief meetings on a hangout. It’s free, it saves gas and time, there’s no need for a lot of idle chatter walking a vendor to the conference room. It’s efficient and shows you’re up with the times.
The person scheduling your meetings can simply ask if they have an iPhone or webcam and if they’d be comfortable connecting via Google Hangout. Get the contact information, confirm all the parties by email with instructions you draft once that can be used each time… and away you go!
We’ve been using Google Hangout at the Academy for about a year now, maybe more. I’m not the most technical person in the world, and even I can handle getting a meeting started (most of the time).
With a growing number of our staff working from around the country for our SEO services, software support, membership recruitment, legal education as well as a wide variety of programmers and virtual assistants, it works out great! People offsite feel like they’re connected to the group. People onsite feel like the offsite people are just down the hall.
Not only do we get to see the people talking and laugh with them as though they’re in the room — we can screen-share a document and work on it collaboratively as well as conduct it as a “live broadcast” and save the hangout on YouTube. The latter gives you the chance to record that training session or even include family members who aren’t local in an office meeting.
This isn’t an ad for Google Hangout as much as it is a tip for staying connected.
Does anyone else have experience using Google Hangout?
Jennifer Price
Chief Operating Officer
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (800) 846-1555
www.aaepa.com
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