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How to Grow Your Alexa Flash Briefing Audience
You’ve published your Alexa Flash Briefing, and you understand why voice is important.
Good move: smart speakers are the fastest growing consumer technology since the smartphone, and Amazon has market share.
Amazon Echo Dot was Amazon’s best-selling product site-wide, across any category during the 2017 holiday season. (Source: Slate) Photo by Andres Urena on Unsplash
Before you start any of the below tactics, benchmark where you are now - what gets measured gets managed.
Record how many listeners you have using the Amazon Developer measure tool.
Then track the increase you’ll see over the next month as you implement these steps.
Read on for the best ways to grow your Alexa Flash Briefing audience.
Alexa Flash Briefing Terminology
Alexa: Amazon’s virtual voice assistant which powers millions of devices like the Echo family of devices.
Skill: Like apps on your phone, Alexa provides skills enabling customers to create a personalized experience. Skills provide weather, traffic, news, trivia, cooking, exercises, etc. There are now thousands of skills from companies and organizations like Domino’s, Starbucks, NPR, and Uber and individual creators (like you).
Flash Briefing: A quick overview of news and other content such as business or financial advice, music, comedy, podcasts, and sports. Customers hear their Flash Briefing by asking their Alexa-enabled device, “Alexa, Flash Briefing” or “Alexa, tell me the news.” Flash Briefing comprises at least one Flash Briefing skill.
Flash Briefing Skill: This is a type of skill. It provides content for a customer’s Flash Briefing (typically composed of several Flash Briefing skills). Anyone can create a Flash Briefing skill. In this post, I often refer to a “Flash Briefing” to mean your particular briefing (AKA skill) because this is how most people talk about it.
So, how do you get people to listen to your Alexa Flash Briefing?
Cadence and Content
Publish your Alexa Flash Briefing daily. Amazon wants more content. If you only publish weekly, that’s okay, but aim for daily if possible. (You could always reduce the frequency later, or split the baby and update three times per week.)
Tip: Batch recording sessions. Come up with fifteen content ideas, then record them in one sitting. Batching is an effective way to be more productive because it lets you avoid task switching costs.
Publish at peak times. Morning is key here because most listen before starting their day (it’s a routine). Publish around 4 AM ET (use tools such as Effct, SoundUp, or Storyline to automate this).
Keep it under two minutes. This is the listener sweet spot. Not only will they appreciate brevity and listen all the way through, but it’s also likely Amazon will reward briefs whose listeners don’t skip ahead or become bored and exit. (Much like YouTube rewards videos with the most watched minutes and those that keep users on the platform longer.)
Optimize Your Skill Title and Keywords
Just like a product listing on Amazon, take advantage of every field on your Alexa Flash Briefing skill’s page (it’s essentially a product detail page as far as Amazon SEO is concerned).
Title – Name your skill with a short, clear name that tells users what it is and contains at least one top search term. For example, if your brief is about local news, the title should contain your city name. This is almost better than containing “news” because you may appear in search results for anything related to your city – not just “news”, which is much more competitive.
Keywords – You can select up to thirty single words as your descriptive keywords. These and your description are important real estate. Do some keyword research and include terms that people search for related to your content or industry. If you’re lazy, type the first few words of a typical search query into Google and look at the suggestions that appear.
Share Your Skill on Social Media
Sharing on social has the best ongoing effort-to-reward ratio (it doesn’t take much time and can reach lots of people). Try it two ways:
Share with your social network (existing connections).
Write five different social posts that promote and link to your skill. Schedule them in advance with a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite. Don’t overpost, maybe 1-2 times per week on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. For Pinterest, pin once to the keyword-rich board(s).
Track post-performance. Determine which posts receive the most engagement (e.g., Twitter shows each tweet’s impressions and engagements). Keep top performing posts, reschedule them, and continually iterate by tweaking words and length to find the most effective language.
Entice. When you publish new Flash Briefings, post teasers on social. Create curiosity! For example, here is a post which creates curiosity and provides clear instruction:
“Tune into today’s Flash Briefing to hear about the greatest marketing trick of the century. How to listen: 1) Enable the Skill here: [LINK TO SKILL]. 2) Say “Alexa, what’s my Flash Briefing? on your Echo or in your Amazon app.”
Any smartphone can become an Alexa device and play Flash Briefing – no Echo needed. Source: Emily Binder, iPhone screenshot
And that last part: yes, bonus! Users don’t need an Echo to hear your brief.
Anyone can turn their phone into an Echo device by downloading the Amazon shopping app.
The circle in the top right of the app activates Alexa. Try it!
(Smart move, Amazon - now everyone with the shopping app has Alexa, Echo or not.)
Join and Share with Interest Groups
Reddit hosts communities with people who have an interest in Amazon Alexa and Echo.
Publicize your skill in a few of the top groups.
But remember, don’t just self-promote.
First, help others. Try their skills then leave reviews on Amazon.
Interact, introduce yourself, and ask people to enable your skill and provide feedback.
Here are some general Echo and Alexa groups on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Alexa_Skills/
https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/
https://www.reddit.com/r/alexa/
Find niche groups based on your topic. For example, if you focus on meditation, you could hang out here.
Look for similar interest groups on Facebook. Then rinse and repeat.
Make it Easy to Share
Create a shortlink to your Alexa Flash Briefing Skill (use bit.ly, Googl, or a custom-branded one, which is even better). Try Plink for an automatic 1-click podcast listen experience (if your briefing is available on podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts and Stitcher).
Do this immediately to reserve the shortest and clearest custom link.
Make the shortlink easy to read using words that easily separate. Make it easy to type and use all lower case (shortlinks are case sensitive). For example, mine is bit.ly/beetleflash (for Beetle Moment Flash Briefing).
You can then easily share the shortlink:
In your social bios (i.e.-Instagram, Twitter, and your email signature)
You can do this verbally if you plug yourself on a podcast or other interview. Save new listeners from searching – make enabling your skill a one-step shortlink process.
Share Archived Briefs
Use the same formula from above and give people an accessible, easy way to hear your content anytime.
Copy any MP3 URLs from your past briefs and add to blog posts with clear titles and ideally a bit of introductory text.
Ratings and Reviews
The faster, the better.
Begin to rank for your keywords before the Alexa ecosystem becomes more crowded.
Join a Facebook group related to Flash Briefings. If you want to join our private #FlashBriefing Slack channel, contact Emily and send a link to your briefing.
Or use reddit groups to connect with others who might review you.
We all operate on the reciprocity norm.
Leave reviews for new contacts from these groups or fellow creators you’ve found on Twitter.
It’s easy to reach out to almost anyone through Twitter or LinkedIn.
If you enjoy a briefing, tweet the creator and let them know. That puts you on their radar, and they’ll be more likely to return the favor after seeing your review.
Archive and host past briefings on your website or blog. I recommend Pippa to make embedding audio on blogs and social easy. (Get a $25 Amazon Gift Card when you sign up for a year of Pippa hosting for your Flash Briefing or podcast here.)
Benefits of doing this:
SEO
An evergreen place to send people to hear your content
Your hard work won’t disappear
A convenient way to entice reviews. End with a CTA like this: “Please rate and review so others can find this skill! [LINK TO SKILL]
Have a page of your website called Alexa Flash Briefing and post each brief or a handful of your best ones.
For example, here’s my Alexa Flash Briefing page with some of my favorite briefs.
If you publish daily, this could get cumbersome, so feature the top ten.
Put a big clear button or link to “Enable this Flash Briefing Skill” at the top and bottom of the post(s).
Use your skill icon, make it clickable to your Amazon skill or your episode archive like mine below, and you’ll be on your way to showcasing your Alexa Flash Briefings and gaining a wider audience.
This post originally appeared at spinsucks.com in August 2018. It was updated for this blog in May 2019.
Sonic Branding: Facebook and Instagram's Huge Miss
Do you know what Venmo is doing right with sound in their app? Facebook and Instagram have some catching up to do. Press play for this 1-minute Flash Briefing:
On Alexa
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Transcript:
🔊 SOUND ON 🔊
1
00:00:02.506 --> 00:00:06.806
Facebook has no sound. Instagram has no sound of their brand.
2
00:00:07.126 --> 00:00:08.426
This is a huge miss.
3
00:00:08.766 --> 00:00:14.752
There should be an audio mark that plays when certain things happen or even at least when you open the app. Let's talk
4
00:00:14.803 --> 00:00:17.566
about just Instagram for a second. If you think about Venmo:
5
00:00:18.306 --> 00:00:24.375
There's a cash register cha-ching sound when you receive money. And you actually have a physical reaction to that where you get a
6
00:00:24.425 --> 00:00:28.306
little dopamine rush, you feel good, it's a positive sensation - good association - with
7
00:00:28.626 --> 00:00:29.026
money.
8
00:00:29.766 --> 00:00:30.266
Facebook and Instagram
9
00:00:31.106 --> 00:00:38.070
have a lot of things going on in our body, a lot of reactions in our brain, major hormonal and neurotransmitter shifts
10
00:00:38.131 --> 00:00:44.006
happening as we scroll and like and see comments and get those emotional strokes (ego strokes).
11
00:00:44.686 --> 00:00:48.286
But there's no sound to it. Huge miss.
Sonic Logo: Marriott Bonvoy is Missing One Thing
Marriott International's new Bonvoy loyalty program is well-researched and globally applicable. About the name: Karin Timpone and team chose "Bonvoy" because it works in many languages, such as Chinese. This is key for a global brand. That covers the linguistic / text part. But what about the entire sensory brand?
Visual branding for Marriott Bonvoy. What about the audio logo? Marriott Bonvoy combines Marriott Rewards, The Ritz-Carlton Rewards, and SPG, February 2019.
Voice Shopping - Market Size
The voice shopping industry is on track to reach $40 billion by 2022. Companies must invest not just in how their brands look and read, but how they sound. Brands need a distinct, recognizable identity on screenless interfaces (voice assistants, smart speakers, etc.)
Ecommerce of all kinds including booking travel will happen through voice more and more, until it is primarily done through voice.
Mastercard for the win:
Recently, Mastercard released its new sonic logo, a beautiful six note sound that has variations for different countries around the world (hear Mumbai version or Cape Town below).
The sonic brand is the sound equivalent of the iconic red and yellow circles. Hear more. It will play every time someone pays with MasterCard. This will diminish the standard two-year learning curve for audio branding.
Can you guess what is missing from Marriott’s otherwise great campaign?
I don’t hear an audio mark. The background music is well done and you could say this is part of sonic branding, which is more overarching than an audio logo. (I would liken sonic branding to marketing as a whole, and an audio logo to advertising.)
Marriott in Warsaw, Poland. Photo credit: Michal Mrozek
Marriott needs a singular audio logo in order to set themselves up for marketing through voice. Reservations will increasingly be booked through voice. In-room voice will present even more opportunities to play a short song, a set of notes that capture the essence of Bonvoy.
Example - future use case: With my voice, I use my Google Assistant to book a reservation through Bonvoy. I should hear an audio logo when the reservation is successfully made. I should hear that same bit of music when I arrive in my room and turn on the TV or pick up the phone to call the concierge. It should play when I open the Bonvoy app too.
Post script from Emily:
As a travel credit card point hacker, I was disappointed to see that SPG and Marriott Club access went away when my Marriott Gold status became Bonvoy Gold Elite. Club access is one of the most beloved perks of this status granted by cards like the American Express Platinum (watch my video about AmEx Platinum authorized user benefits).
Customers in the point hacking world of TPG and friends aren’t happy. Much like Delta Sky Clubs, which are not directly profitable to maintain, the benefit of customer loyalty and delight for the premium experience is worth it in the long run. People love the Sky Club and people loved Club access at the Sheraton etc. I’d be 100% happy with Bonvoy if this Club perk transferred over to the new program without having to upgrade my tier.
Comments about AmEx Platinum Authorized User Benefits, one of which used to be SPG Gold Status with Club access. Watch the video here.
7 Powerful Stats About Voice Technology & #VoiceFirst Marketing
Last week my smart friend Michelle Excell from The Antipodean (and my cofounder at quartet.agency) asked me for some stats about voice.
Michelle is not the only one who’s asked. So let’s all share. Here are the top stats about the power and rapid growth of voice technology, voice search, and #voicefirst marketing.
Voice Marketing Stats for 2019:
Smart speakers are the fastest growing consumer technology of all time, reaching 50% of U.S. population in under five years.
Smart speakers are the fastest growing consumer technology since the smartphone (above - this is the popular chart from The Alexa Conference - see my top takeaways here).
In 2018, voice purchases increased 3x on Alexa compared to the 2017 holiday season.
Typing is very slow compared to what our brains can process through speaking and listening.
The average person speaks 110-130 WPM (words per minute).
However, we have the mental capacity to understand someone speaking at 400 words per minute (if that were possible).
We only type 38-40 WPM. Think about the implications for voice search:
Voice searches will account for 30-50% of all searches by 2020. (Gartner predicts 30%, Comscore predicts 50%).
Two stats from my most recent podcast focusing on Alexa in-skill purchasing (ISP) and high conversion rates inside skills for purchases with voice:
Early results show that voice skills have higher conversion rates for purchasing than any standard website or mobile experience. E.g.: Two skills with very high conversion rates for upsell to premium version (34-50%): Big Sky (weather) and Escape the Airplane (game). -voicebot.ai, 1/24/2019
Voice in the car - huge opportunity: twice as many U.S. adults have used voice in the car compared to smart speakers and monthly active users are 60% higher.
75% of smart speaker users interact with their speaker daily.
Ownership rates for smart speakers are nearly equivalent among people 25, 35, 45, or 55 years old. -Edison Research, The Smart Audio Report - 7/18/2018
Amazon Echo First Generation. Photo by Loewe Technologies on Unsplash.
Want more information about voice? Great resources:
voicebot.ai - the most comprehensive and updated voice stats and news
The Smart Audio Report from Edison Research and NPR, Spring 2018. (Sample: based upon a national online survey of 909 Americans ages 18+ who indicated that they owned at least one smart speaker)
This Week in Voice Podcast - Bradley Metrock’s show, part of the VoiceFirst.FM podcast network. Bradley and a rotating panel of voice technology experts discuss weekly news relating to voice technology. Get it on iTunes.
Daily news: I talk about voice marketing on The Daily Beetle Moment (daily under three minutes on Alexa Flash Briefing and Google Home)
I have guests on my weekly podcast about marketing, usually focusing on voice: Beetle Moment Marketing Podcast (on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify)
This Week in Voice Podcast - Emily Binder with Jason Fields, Voicify (Season 3, Ep. 13)
Emily Binder joined Jason Fields, Chief Strategy Officer at Voicify, and host Bradley Metrock, CEO of Score Publishing and head of VoiceFirst.FM on This Week in Voice.
Stream the episode here or click the image below:
This Week in Voice Podcast: Guests: Emily Binder and Jason Fields (season 3, episode 13) with Bradley Metrock
Listen on your favorite podcast player:
Apple Podcasts (iTunes) - This Week in Voice: Season 3, Episode 13
TuneIn: on your smart speaker, say:
"Alexa, play This Week in Voice."
"Hey Google, play This Week in Voice podcast."
Timestamps and stories (sources linked):
1) 04:15: Amazon's Super Bowl ad, featuring Harrison Ford, is already drawing positive reviews in advance of the big game
Amazon is reassuring us that they can be trusted (PR wake)
“Not everything makes the cut” re: Amazon Alexa hardware
I love this - very Bezos: Queen: “Don’t Stop Me Now” plays at the end
Celebrities and testimonial - well cast, diverse (Harrison Ford, Forest Whitaker, Broad City women, astronauts)
A little creepy
Transparency about product failure - brands can make mistakes (this is the zeitgeist we’re in)
10:35 - Amazon Alexa microwave
Clever psychology
2) 11:48 - Siri Shortcuts can be used to steal and send personal data
Moore’s Law (Jason)
15:45 - another Apple security breach with Facetime Groups - microphone on before call is answered
17:50 - is Apple’s quality decreasing?
3) Voicebot.AI Story of the Week: Walmart pulls out of Google Express and Google Shopping Actions
This is about DATA
4) BBC: Are smart speakers good for kids?
Remember Mattel’s Aristotle, a 2017 Alexa kids smart speaker that never made it to market? Because privacy concerns.
It’s complicated
5) "Can we create a non-patriarchal, unprejudiced, post-gender virtual world?"
What is “post-gender”!?
Marketing and voice tech in under three minutes a day.
On Alexa Flash Briefing and Google Home.
Alexa Conference 2019: Live Stream, Takeaways, and Most Requested Chart about Smart Speakers
The Alexa Conference just wrapped. Get top takeaways, Emily’s short livestream interview with VoiceFirst.FM, and the most popular chart of the conference.
Smart Speaker Penetration - Most Powerful Chart
Several people have asked me for this chart from my presentation, How to Crawl into Your Customer’s Ear - The Alexa Conference 2019. Bret Kinsella’s opening keynote included it too, as did a few others. I did not create the chart but I’m sharing it from the publicly available Activate Tech and Media Outlook 2018 Slideshare. If you need to convince your boss that voice is a thing, send them this:
Smart speakers are the fastest growing consumer technology of all time, forecasted in 2018 to reach nearly 50% penetration in the U.S. in less than five years. This chart is tracking to be an accurate prediction. Chart courtesy of Activate, U.S. Census Bureau, World Bank.
Livestream - Emily Binder interview with Ian Utile for VoiceFirst.FM
Click to watch (01:39 minutes) or press play below:
Best takeaways from The Alexa Conference 2019:
#AlexaConf2019
Tweet from Brian Roemmele about my best voice marketing advice: you need a sonic brand ASAP.
Katie McMahon from SoundHound shared some great info about the power of Houndify and the connected car.
Our friends from Nebo Agency came up from Atlanta. Read Founder Brian Easter’s article: The Next Disruption: Voice Tech and the Buyer Journey
“When we have diverse tech teams, racial profiling and gender bias won’t even make it to production.” -Kesha Williams, Senior Software Manager, Chik-Fil-A (overall keynote speaker)
Brielle Nickoloff with Witlingo gets it: we have a pristine, quiet place with voice right now - so take advantage with marketing your brand early. It will get crowded like the bloody red sea that is the rest of the internet - fast. Brielle and I did a live audio Castlingo from the conference - enable the Emily Talks skill then say “Alexa, launch Emily Talks” to hear it.
Jen Lehner shared one of my favorite pieces of content via Brian Roemmele: David Bowie predicting the future in 1999. Powerful.
Notice that Alexa (Echo) isn’t the center of this photo. It’s in the upper corner. Peripheral. That’s where we’re headed: ubiquity of voice assistants. (My reflection on this slide from Paul Cutsinger of Amazon at The Alexa Conference 2019 - Chattanooga, TN).
#VoiceFirst Community and Thank You
It was great meeting so many of the smart, forward-thinking people who make up the #voicefirst community. It is one of the most exciting, supportive, diverse, and pro-women communities in tech. Thank you to Bradley Metrock, Peggy Kilburn, and the VoiceFirst.FM and Score Publishing teams for putting this event together. See you soon!
Keep Listening - Short Voice Marketing Shows to Enjoy:
Stay up to date on voice marketing on my weekly marketing podcast and daily <2 minute Flash Briefing.
Get my daily Flash Briefing about marketing, voice tech, and career
What’s the Sound of Your Brand? VoiceFirst Marketing
Packaging will take on new meaning for brands, expanding from visuals into sound. Logos and text won’t be enough in a voicefirst world.
In the next couple years, the visual look and feel of a brand will not be enough to compete. Packaging will be more sensory and holistic. It will feature sound. Marketers will compete for mindshare and attention in a new way: beyond the screen, in the air.
Visual Packaging
Brands have spent billions on visual identities. For marketers, zeroing in on the ideal look for our brand has been paramount. We’ve rebranded and focus grouped or crowdsourced new logos or containers, meeting with delight or vitriol (everyone’s outraged these days). We’ve designed and tested retail packaging with great attention. Smart brands have realized that the packaging that helps you compete when placed next to a competitor on a shelf is often overkill for ecommerce packaging. Similarly, sonic packaging must be approached as a different animal for a customer at a different point in the funnel.
The impulse to buy operates on fundamental human instincts. It’s ultimately simple and deeply rooted in the brain. Help customers avoid loss to survive (best) or achieve gains to thrive (still good).
Let’s talk about packaging. As voice becomes more prominent as the way in which we interact with machines, a brand’s package will need to be increasingly sonic. This goes beyond your audio logo or the person you hire to be the voice of your brand. Just as users scan a website and have an emotional response within milliseconds, we process audio even faster than visuals. Sound moves through our brains faster than any other sense – it is our first sense.
We process sounds in 0.05 seconds. That is ten times faster than the blink of an eye.
You are reading this right now but if you were listening to my voice, you would perceive richer meaning and you’d process it faster and more naturally. All of this is to say that your sonic brand packaging will require great creativity and care. The sound of your brand will be instantly judged on a level that humans are hardwired to process fast.
If you thought marketing became more challenging in the last decade due to competition for attention on multiple screens with flying newsfeeds and short attention spans, wait until we begin to compute more with voice and less with hands.
We will shift away from the manipulative, ad-supported revenue models that social media companies (including this platform) have relied upon with unwitting users’ data as the product. People are tired of shrouded privacy policies.
Engaging customers will require more creativity and true brand strategy as voice takes precedence.
And voice will take precedence. Smart speakers are the fastest growing consumer technology since the smartphone. In 2018, voice purchases increased 3x on Alexa over last holiday season. Voice assistants are 1.0 today. Just wait. They’ll get smarter, more anticipatory, and more contextual in a way that a screen just can’t. Until now we’ve been computing in computerese, as Brian Roemmele put it. Typing is not natural or easy for us. Our brains are lazy by design – we gravitate toward ease of use. Your customers want hassle reduction and less friction. Meet them there, and start now.
In a voicefirst world, tactics won’t be enough. It will be harder to trick clicks because we won’t be clicking so much. Deeper strategy including true assistance will make the difference.
“Join the conversation” will become literal
“Personalized” and “intimate” will take on a whole new meaning when we go beyond passive visual consumption and start having a literal conversation. Tap, type, and swipe will become talk, listen, and solve.
Get the Daily Beetle Moment:
Daily Beetle Moment available on Alexa Flash Briefing and Google Home
On Alexa or Google Play Music (Google Home). A briefcast about marketing, voice technology, career, and more in 3 minutes or less. Hear samples.