The 4 Step Strategy For Building Your List Using Google Hangouts

Google runs the world.

Or at least the Internet.

Unsatisfied with simply being the most visited website in the world, and the world’s largest search engine, Google has decided that they want to run everything from social media networks to shopping.

Google’s struggles to break into the social media industry have been well documented most notably with their 4th attempt the ill-fated Google +

But Google + did give us one powerful tool for growing your list and getting your content out around the world...

Google Hangouts.

Google’s brainchild is actually less of a new product and more of a combination of products that were available separately into one system they are calling Google Hangouts.

What is Google Hangouts?

It’s essentially a multiple use communication platform, which allows users to communicate through a variety of ways from video to chat.

Google Hangouts essentially sought to combine the features of Google Talk, Google + messenger and the “hangouts” system which allows you to video chat with up to 10 different users.

The most important thing Google Hangouts allows you to do is broadcast live streaming video:

What does all of this mean for your business?

It means that there is a great opportunity in front of you to produce high quality LIVE video content and use Google Hangouts to grow your list as you do it.

Let’s look at the benefits of live streaming video content.

Benefits of live streaming video content:

• Live streaming content can generate bigger audiences by making your content available worldwide.
• Live content is seen as being more urgent and important because it’s happening in real time and viewers can miss out forever.
• Live streaming is often free (like with Google Hangouts)
• So now you might be thinking “ok, that sounds good but how can I use Google Hangouts in my business?”

I’m glad you asked.

3 Easy Ways to use Google Hangouts in your business:

1. Replace Webinars.
2. 
   Are you currently hosting webinars? What about teleconferences? Any sort of large-scale way of interacting with your prospects and clients?
   
   If so, you might want to consider canceling your teleseminar account and bringing all that content over to Google Hangouts who will host it for free!
   
   
3. Host panels or Q and A discussions.
4. 
   Another excellent use of Google hangouts is to host Q and A discussions (which you can tack onto your existing courses as big money bonuses as the retail value of a 1 hr. “Ask me anything” Q and A session is at least $200).
   
   You can also host a weekly Q and A session where you let prospects or those who are unfamiliar with what you teach ask you questions and use it to move them further down the sales process.  
   
   
5. Interview Clients and other experts.
6. 
   Last but certainly not least we get to the focus of this article and what I believe to be the best way to grow your email list with Google Hangouts and that is by harnessing the power of the joint venture and interviewing other teachers, coaches or executives in your niche who will add value to your viewers and bring their own viewers with them.
   
   That’s what we’ll be spending the rest of this article discussing.

What you’ll need:

• A Google Account
• Webcam and Microphone
• Specialized Free Offer specifically for your Google Hangouts followers
• Email Marketing service + Landing Page connecting your free offer to your autoresponder (the good news is that Kajabi comes with both - get your 14 day free trial here)
• The Courage to "cold email" celebrities and successful speakers/bloggers and executives in your niche or related niches.

Ready to get started?

Let’s jump right into:

The 4 Step Expert Interview Strategy For Building Your Email List Using Google Hangouts!

Step # 1: Approach Experts in Your Niche Or A Similar Niche

The first thing you’ll need to do to use the expert interview strategy is identify the top 25-100 experts in your niche.

If your business is very niche like selling information on training a specific type of dog, you may need to chunk down and try to interview all types of dog trainer rather than just focusing on the two or three other experts focused on the same type of dog.

Lucky for you, experts WANT to be found, and there are a lot of resources for doing so such as Buzzsumo, Help a reporter out, and MyBlogu. You can also start by making a list of the common blogs you read, and experts you follow advice from.  

Once you’ve got your list of at least 25 different experts you’re going to have to compose a cold email!

This is normally where people freeze up because it can be scary to email a complete stranger out of the blue, let alone to ask them to do a favor for you.

But don’t worry because I’m going to make the whole thing a lot easier for you by posting a template for cold emailing people for expert interviews that has worked for thousands of business owners just like you.

All you have to do is copy, make a few changes and send.

The Cold Email Template:

Hi {Name},

My name is {your name} and I’ve been reading/watching {their site} for the last X years.

The first thing you did that really caught my eye was {specific post or video title and at least 2-3 sentences on WHY you liked it}

The reason I emailed you was to first thank you for creating so much great content and being such an inspiration to me, but also to ask if you’d be interested in doing a Q and A interview on my Google Hangouts page. I have about {number of followers} but my email list and social media following is much bigger and I’m sure you’ll see a bump in email signups to your {lead magnet}.

I’ll set everything up and at the end you can pitch whatever product or coaching you want.

Thanks for taking the time to read this

Sincerely,

{Your name}

Once you send that email 1 of 3 things is going to happen:

1. They’ll ignore it and you can choose to move on or try being persistent by sending a follow up.
2. They’ll respond with follow up questions, at which point you’re halfway home.
3. They’ll tell you they are interested right away.

So let’s assume you send out 100 emails and get a 25% response rate (which is about average for a first timer, as you get better and customize the email you should get an even higher response rate)... If you book an interview with 50% of those experts who responded, you'll have 12 interviews scheduled down!

What do you do next?

Step # 2: Help Them Drive Traffic To Your Hangout

One of the keys to making this strategy work is to make sure that the expert you’re interviewing gets something out of this as well.

The easiest way to do this is to promote the Q and A everywhere you can and then make it super easy for him/her to drive followers and subscribers to the Q and A.

The first part is easy; you’ll want to promote your Q and A's EVERYWHERE! To your email list, your social media accounts, your personal Facebook page, your local meet up groups, message boards like Reddit and Quora and more.

Leave no stone unturned when it comes to promoting your Q and As because it achieves two purposes:

• You get more traffic to the Q and A giving you a greater chance to grow your own list.
• The expert sees that you are working hard to promote them and becomes more likely to work with you and promote you to their list in the future.

After you do everything you can to promote the Q and A, you want to make it super easy for the expert to promote it to his/her social media accounts, and email list by creating and giving them templates or “swipe” copy.

The idea is pretty simple: in the the same way that you tweaked my cold email template above, you’ll create 1-3 emails templates and 1-3 social media updates for the expert to use on their email list. That way, you aren't asking them to do much work.

Will every expert use them?

No.

But the fact that you provide them shows that you are competent and capable.  It makes it more likely for the expert to promote you again in the future, and word will spread of how easy it is to work with you, leading to more experts lining up for interviews!

Step # 3: Grill Them About Everything

Step # 3 is vitally important because this is what’s going to make your Q and A's appealing to both your audience and the expert’s audience.

You’re going to GRILL them on everything they teach like a well-done steak.

You’re going to want to make sure that the expert knows you’re going to grill them by sending them a list of the questions you’re going to be asking.

Spend some time coming up with REALLY good questions.

A few easy ways to come up with GREAT questions:

• Look at the Frequently asked questions on the expert’s blog, and social media
• Look on Quora for the most commonly asked questions about the niche
• Ask your list or followers what they want to know
• Watch as many previous interview with the expert as you can find

Lastly, make sure that you get at least one tactic that could be applied by the viewer today!

This is really important and you want to emphasize that they can take this one tactic and start getting results today.

You’ll want to make sure you use the power or repetition and repeat the tactic at least 3 times to make sure it sinks in throughout the Q and A.

Step # 4: Swap Free Gifts At The End

The payoff of the Q and A for both you and the expert is going to come at the end when you both exchange free gifts you put together exclusively for each other’s subscribers.

Whether or not you actually did put together this gift specifically for the subscribers or not, it’s important to tell them you did and make them feel important.

Really sell the value of the free gifts in REAL dollars by saying this is usually a $197 value but it’s yours free just for being a subscriber of mine.

Once you swap free gifts you’ll want to follow up with the expert in a week or two to see how many subscribers he got and compare it to your own totals.

As you can see the expert interview strategy is a low cost, high reward way to drive thousands of new leads to both your list and the lists of experts in your industry ensuring good will and sharing in return.

While this system might seem complex it’s actually fairly simple if not easy.

Let’s re-cap exactly what you need to do to take advantage of the system...

First we discussed how Google runs the Internet and is trying to expand into things like social media and live streaming video.

Then I shared some of the benefits of streaming video:

• Live streaming content can generate bigger audiences by making your content available worldwide.
• Live content is seen as being more urgent and important because it’s happening in real time and viewers can miss out forever.
• Live streaming is often free (like with Google Hangouts)

After that we discussed a few different ways to use Google Hangouts in your business before going in-depth on the expert interview strategy.

The 4 steps of the expert interview strategy are:

• Identify 25-100 experts in your niche or a closely related niche.
• Help the experts drive traffic to your hangout
• Grill them about EVERYTHING!
• Swap Free Gifts

Before we go I want to say one thing about confidence.

As you read this right now you might not feel confident about approaching well-known and established experts and asking to interview them.

If this is a problem for you, first off understand that it’s not your fault!

Especially if you’re just starting out.

My advice to you is to ACT confidence. If you act confident and you and email confidently, other experts will assume you are confident.

Also don’t be afraid to get out of the way during the interview and let the expert do their thing. Remembering that you are just the interviewer can be enough to take a lot of the pressure off!

You now know everything that you need to know to build your list using Google Hangouts, the only left to do is make it happen!

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