One of the more popular tech trends in recent years is the increasing adoption of video based communication. Many are familiar with products like Skype which allow face-to-face communication from anywhere there is an Internet connection. Did you know that Google has baked video conferencing into their newly released Google Hangouts? If your company uses Google, this could be a great marketing tool. The only question is, how exactly can you leverage it?
Below are four ways you or your business could use the video conferencing capabilities of Google Hangouts.
1. Provide customer support If you have a product or service, you have likely had clients contact you with questions or concerns. When customers are having problems, they normally prefer to talk face-to-face with a real person. The problem is, you may not be where your customers are, or they may not be able to reach you.
Hangouts provides you with an ideal channel where customers can contact you, see your face and discuss problems they may be having.
2. Product demonstrations Have a product that customers have been asking how to use, or would like to know more about? Why not host a Hangout? This is a great platform that allows you and up to 10 customers to interact. You can show them how the product works, how it can help them and answer questions all face-to-face. If a participant would like to learn more, you can then host a one-on-one Hangout.
3. Conduct team meetings There are two useful Hangouts features that could be a boon to productivity. The first is the ability to share your screen with participants and the other is built in compatibility with productivity apps like Google Drive. This allows you and your team to collaborate on a document, spreadsheet or even presentation.
Hosting a Hangout is also great if you or a teammate is away. You can still work together because Hangouts is now Google's main chat app with integration across desktop and mobile devices. As long as you have an Internet connection, and a device with a camera you can join a Hangout. Imagine having someone out in the field with a tablet talking to colleagues who are on their desktops. This will make your team and company more productive.
4. Launch a new product or service Google Hangouts allows you to live stream events on both Google+ and YouTube. This could be useful if you are launching a new product, or service and want to enable people who can't make it to the event to take part. You can even record the event so people can watch it later.
While still relatively new, video conferencing and webinars are quickly becoming one of the most popular ways for small businesses to really connect with their customers regardless of their location. If you are looking to learn more about Google Hangouts and how they could be used in your business, please contact us today.

One of the more popular productivity oriented programs on the market today is Microsoft's Office 365. Based in the cloud, this platform offers business users a way to increase productivity of their whole organization while making communication and sharing easier. A lesser known feature included in Office 365 subscriptions is Office Web Apps. Microsoft aims to make this a more prominent feature and has recently announced two new updates that could make it more useful.
Cyber crime has been around since the very early days of the Internet and has it has become an increasingly serious problem as the number of Internet users has increased. This trend is likely to continue, and you can be guaranteed that you'll continue to see news about websites being hacked and valuable information exposed. One of the latest sites to be hacked is LivingSocial.
Take a moment and think about your business and if you are prepared for a disaster. If you are like most business owners or managers you have some form of backup and maybe even a basic disaster recovery plan. While this is a start, recent big disasters around the world have proven that a simple backup is not enough. If you feel that your business is under prepared, there are steps you can take to fix that.
Apple, once written off by many experts, has been making massive inroads in the technology world. The company's name has become associated with products that are easy to use and simply work. One of the more important products is their operating system (OS), OS X. OS X has many features that make it easy to use. One is the Finder, which while easy to use, can be made even better with a few tweaks.
Internet giant Google didn't become the company it is today by creating one product and not changing. It's quite the opposite, really. They are constantly introducing new products or making changes to existing ones to make a user's experience better. One of the latest changes made by Google is a small, yet potentially important, one to the search results page.
An interesting tech trend of the past couple of years is the increasingly diverse services offered by large companies. Take Microsoft for instance: You have email, Office, cloud storage, Xbox, Windows Phone, etc. These services are about as different as they come, but are all linked by your Microsoft Account. But having all of your eggs in one basket could pose a security threat, especially if your account has a weak password. This is why Microsoft recently introduced a two-step verification to make it harder for hackers to gain access to your Account.
Tech is always changing and evolving; devices seen as futuristic only a few years ago are now mainstream and in everyday use. And one of the more outlandish tech devices of the past year has been Google's augmented reality project Google Glass. This device has had some impressive media coverage, with many wondering how exactly it will work. Now that the first, limited edition has been released, we can finally answer that question...kind of.
To many smartphone owners, there are really only two systems: Android and Apple. But there's another system that is slowly gaining ground: Microsoft's Windows Phone. Phones that run the Windows Phone operating system offer a solid system that conveniently links with other Windows systems. Because of this, business owners and managers are becoming increasingly interested in moving over to this system. To aid them, Microsoft has recently released an app for Android that makes this transition easier.
Marketing is an integral element of any business strategy, and social media is largely seen to now be a large part of any company's marketing initiative. If leveraged correctly, various social media platforms could give your company a marketing boost that few other campaign types could. But, did you know that social media could also help other business functions or departments?

