Breaking the Webinar Mold with Google Hangouts

Background:  Organizations are under increasing pressure to produce video content while also facing financial constraints. According a report from Google searches related to "how to" on YouTube are growing 70% year over year while 67% of millennials agree they can find a YouTube video on anything they want to learn. In order to capitalize on this growth, organizations need to create videos and make them searchable.

Program background: 

APHA champions the health of all people and all communities. We strengthen the public health profession. We speak out for public health issues and policies backed by science. We are the only organization that influences federal policy, has a 140-plus year perspective and brings together members from all fields of public health.

A key method of strengthening the public health workforce has been through the use of webinars. Webinars provide a virtual stage for us to discuss breaking public health topics, disseminate research and highlight recent events. Many of APHA’s webinars follow a predictable format used by many organizations in which there is an introduction, two to three presenters take viewers through their powerpoints and then whatever time left is open to audience questions. Often times the information presented has gone through review and highly scripted. Additionally, they can cost anywhere between $350-$6,000, not including any marketing costs.

To break the mold of these traditional webinars and find a solution that was also a low cost alternative, APHA began using Google Hangouts. Hangouts are free, have no caps or viewer constraints, allow up to 10 presenters via live video, and they have many of the same features of paid webinar platforms such as chat. The ability to toggle between a powerpoint presentation and live video gives APHA the chance to display not only the information contained on slides but also the passion of and interaction between the presenters. As a bonus Google Hangouts are able to be viewed on a variety of platforms. There is a hangout page where people can rsvp, links to view on YouTube or share on Twitter and Facebook, or code to embed the video on your website. The YouTube video is where APHA has seen the greatest impact.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  APHA has measured the success of these hangouts by the number of live viewers and the number of overall views of the YouTube videos. With fewer resources dedicated to marketing these events the live views were fewer than our webinars that used the ReadyTalk platform. However, 74% the Hangouts were viewed via a replay compared to just 17% of our ReadyTalk webinars.

Conclusions:  Using Google Hangouts is not only a free alternative to webinars, it gives organizations visibility on the second largest search engine.

Implications for research and/or practice:  There are many reasons to use a paid webinar solution but Google Hangouts are a relevant alternative that should be explored. While there are pitfalls and drawbacks to Hangouts, their benefits can boost the reach of an organization's message.