Have you considered running webinars on a regular basis, but found the cost to be too intimidating? The cost is a huge issue when it comes to wanting to incorporate webinars into your business. On the upside though, many of these platforms do allow you to invite around 500 people and sometimes more to your event.
While this might be great for large companies and established marketers there is another solution for those just starting out. Welcome to Google+ Hangouts on Air.

Hangouts on Air allow you to hold live webinar type events that can be viewed by the public. On the actual live Hangout you can invite up to 9 guests. Each person is depicted in a small window on the lower half of the Hangout. The main speaker is always shown in the main area of the screen. As a new person begins talking the screen will flip to this person. That’s a really neat feature of Hangouts.

In order for people to attend they need to be connected via their own Google+ account. When your invitations are sent, anyone without an account will be directed to sign up for one.

Don’t let the number of invited guests stop you from using Hangouts on Air as your webinar solution. If you plan on running a live webinar simply invite others to view from their account or channel. Having guests is great if you want to add interaction to your webinar or hold a question and answer type of event.

There are many different ways to use Hangouts on Air for your business. Run small webinar events to demonstrate products or to provide your viewers with how to instructions on using your products.

After your Hangout session is uploaded to YouTube you can use this video for many different purposes. You can use your videos to promote your company, to use as a lead generation method or to add to your main website.

For the small business owner who wants to start offering webinars using Google+ Hangouts on Air is a great cost effective solution. It is intimate enough that you won’t feel nervous about hosting a webinar and your invited guests can help provide interaction and feedback.

If you have been sitting on the sidelines about using Google+ and Hangouts then stop wondering and start doing them. YouTube gets a ton of traffic each day and as a smart business owner you definitely want to tap into this.