I have covered previously how Google Hangouts on Air can be used by musicians and also by the entertainment industry to promote and sell tickets and products, and today One Direction, the boy band, hosted their Google Hangout On Air to promote their new album and tour.
Unfortunately it was not without it’s glitches. If you head over to the Google Plus event page for the Hangout On Air you will not find the archive of the recording. It seems they must have had a problem with the event as it started late – unfortunately they forgot to announce the new link on the Google Plus event page, though it is referenced through their other social media channels.
What I did like about their post on Google Plus is that they had three hashtags that people could use to post their questions and they mentioned these could be used on Twitter or Google Plus. The idea of having three hashtags is not an approach I have noted before but it is an interesting idea to help event organisers curate questions by topic. The three hashtags they used were #MyFOURQuestion, #MyTOURQuestion and #MyBANDQuestion.
There did however seem to be some confusion with the hashtag for the everall event as they used #1DFourHangout in some posts on Google Plus and Twitter and then changed this to #FourHangout – it is important to determine and keep with a hashtag for your live events to avoid confusion by people watching the event.
In the week up to the live event, they promoted the Hangout On Air on their social media channels including Twitter.
And the Hangout On Air was promoted on their Facebook Page.
On the Google Plus event page it looked as though they were planning to use the Hangout Showcase App where they linked to their YouTube account, their Google Plus account and where to buy the new album on iTunes, but because the original show link does not work you can not access the replay of the Hangout from there.
You can watch the recording of the Google Hangout On Air below or on YouTube.
However there are a few things we can note as Hangout On Air producers and apply to our own shows. Here are four things I noted about how the team working for One Direction promoted the Hangout On Air using Twitter.
1. They consistently used Twitter to keep their fans informed and also a number of the band members also shared the event.
As a Hangout On Air producer what are you doing to ensure that your guest also promote the forthcoming Hangout On Air when appearing on your show through their networks?
2. When there was a problem with the Hangout On Air they mentined this on Twitter.
As a Hangout On Air producer if you have a show that is not starting on time how do you inform people of the glitch?
3. They tweeted quotes from the Hangout On Air sharing a link to the YouTube video so people could watch live.
As a Hangout On Air producer how could you share quotes and link to the Hangout On Air live stream during the live event to help build views of the live show?
I am sure this approach meant that they increased the number of live views – I watched the event with one of my daughters and we saw the number of live viewers increase to over 317,000.
4. At the end of the live Hangout On Air they posted thanks to their fans for watching the live event on their social media channels.
As a producer and promoter of Hangouts On Air how do you thank people for watching your show?
What ideas does this give you for using twitter to help you promote your Hangouts On Air?
If you need support, training or consulting for using Google Hangouts On Air in your business you can either consult with me over at Google Helpouts or contact me about my services to support you using Hangouts On Air for marketing your business.
