Today marks the last day of our weeklong series on Google+ with ideas on Hangouts brought to you by technology director, Ryan and Jr. experience designer, Michelle. To recap, this week we’ve talked Circles and SEO in response to last week’s Business Insider article, More Hints That Google+ Is A Deserted Wasteland by Matt Rosoff. 

For our final post as part of our Google+ series, we wanted to look to the future and give readers a few ideas we had on Hangouts. There’s been a lot of chatter around our offices on the advertising opportunities Hangouts provide, as well as some discussion on what works and what wouldn’t. That being said, here’s what we came up with:

Celebrity Hangouts
Let your users, enthusiasts and brand advocates interact directly with your brand either through your celebrity spokesperson or a big name at the brand. Google has hosted celebrity Hangouts (like this one with David Beckham), but we have yet to see this happening on behalf of brands. This would be an effective and direct way to interact and connect with people. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with the Geico Gecko, the Old Spice guy, the Travelocity Gnome or The Most Interesting Man in the World?

Debuts or Sneak Peeks
Give people a chance to look at your products before they go to market. You can just use your camera for physical products or the real-time screensharing for everything digital.

Exclusivity
Use the 10 person per Hangout limit to your advantage and create an air of exclusivity. It’ll make your Hangout event more desirable and worthwhile.

Contests
Live contests are way more fun and engaging than their current social media counterparts. Be sure to utilize the video capabilities to keep your Hangout contest from feeling slow or stale.

Tech Support
This could be the next evolutionary step in the “live chat” thing available on just about every tech company website. But this time you have built-in screen sharing, eliminating the need of awkward or lengthy descriptions of what’s wrong.

Live Events
Events in real-time, Hangouts are real-time…this is basically a no-brainer. If the Dalai Lama can participate in a live event through a Hangout so can you.