I've known our CTO Joe Wallace since 2011. He's one of the most thoughtful people I've ever worked with. NOT "touchy feely" thoughtful. Thoughtful about his work. Period. He - and I mean this in a complimentary way - is NOT easily impressed. And as he admits in this wonderfully done podcast interview with our very own brilliant Sr. Strategist Sonia Thalman, he didn't know what to expect at Project Voice. But after spending a week with Joe at the number one event for Voice Tech and AI in America (shoutout to Project Voice founder Bradley Metrock), he and I both feel the energy and opportunity in the voice space, more than ever. But I wanted you all to have the opportunity to hear, in his own words, why Joe thinks Samsung's Bixby could be the next big voice platform. Please listen in to this special edition of our Data Driven Daily Tips!

Getting found on Alexa (let’s call it “SAO” – Search Alexa Optimization) – At Project Voice, I asked Amazon Alexa’s Jeff Blankenburg how businesses can get found on Alexa. While waking Alexa with a phrase like “Alexa, how do I make a Jack-o-lantern” I’ve noticed more frequently over the last 6 months that if Alexa doesn’t have an answer, it will suggest Skills that do. So if we build “How to build a Jack-o-lantern” into our Carmen Johnston Gardens Skill, for example, along with hundreds of other Home, Garden, Recipe and how-to tips – users may not actually need to say “Alexa, Launch Carmen Johnston Gardens” to find that content. Alexa should start to say “I have a skill that you could try…” after the user simply says “…. How to make a Jack-o-lantern.” I confirmed with Blankenburg that nobody really knows how this formula works, but he says the more content, and the better description and keywords in the Alexa Skills Kit console, the more likely your skill is to be recommended as a result for these “voice assistant searches.” Blankenburg confirmed that partnerships are not paid currently, so any business with a skill can show. GET. IN. NOW! Jeff Blankenburg, Alexa Evangelist, shares his perspective on voice at-large. He goes into why he's excited for small-business owners in particular, from realtors to family-owned restaurants, to get into using Voice. And he ends on how Alexa-as-a-Companion is building trust.

Those of us building Voice Apps for Alexa and Google Assistant have naturally become evangelists and power users of the voice assistants and smart speakers. Case in point, I don't know anybody who knows more about How To Use Alexa than creator of Project Voice and CEO of Score Publishing, Bradley Metrock. Bradley is the author of More Than Just Weather and Music - 200 ways to use Alexa. He is also the host of "This Week In Voice" Podcast. In this interview with our friend QuHarrison Terry of Inevitable/Human and Mark Cuban Companies, We talk about his affinity for Voice, Alexa, and why he chose Chattanooga, Tennessee to be the home for the number one event for Voice and AI in America. Q and I joke about Bradley wanting to marry Alexa, but the truth is he's an amazing leader in the voice space and his passion for voice continues to pave the way for millions of people to benefit from voice as a technology. Q also asks me about my top Voice Predictions/Trends in 2020 and Bradley elaborates on Voice Branding.

The same way that our lives all improved as consumers and eventually as marketers and business owners in 2008-2010 with the advent of the iPhone and other smartphones, 2020 will be the year and certainly mark the beginning of the decade in which all of our lives improved due to Voice technology, like Alexa, Google Assistant and even Samsung Bixby and custom voice assistants. 15 years ago none of us knew what “pinching and zooming” or “swiping” meant. Now, our children are asking Alexa, Google and Siri just about everything. Students are building Alexa Skills for class projects and instructional technology directors are encouraging teachers to incorporate Alexa in the classroom. In this video, my friend QuHarrison Terry of Inevitable/Human and Mark Cuban Companies asks me: “What’s Keeping Me Up In Voice?” My answer: I get excited about the every day business owner and entrepreneur that maybe doesn’t have a huge team. They can use voice to become more efficient and effective. They can use voice to check their Quickbooks or have a voice based version of their company training. If you’re a small company with less than 10 people, you may not have a full HR team to train your next hire. You can use voice for that. Q also asks me: What’s the difference between a Voice App and a Voice Skill? So I happily break that down. Finally, Q tees up my take on what the best tools are to create your own Voice Apps (Alexa Skills and Google Actions). 1. Voiceflow – An authoring platform to create your own custom voice apps without coding. Content managers / digital strategists (non-coders) can easily build Voice apps in minutes and deploy to Alexa and Google Assistant. Voiceflow has several “blocks” that allow for advanced functionality such as replacing the robot voice, building visual screens for Echo Show devices via Alexa Presentation Language (APL). It also allows for team collaboration between content strategists and coders. Developers can layer API blocks and code blocks to extend the Voice App’s functionality beyond just a conversation. 2. The Voice Designer – I’m partial to this tool, because my CTO Joe Wallace and I built it for Data Driven Design clients. The Voice Designer is a one-of-a-kind WordPress plug-in that places an authoring tool in the backend of any WordPress website. The Voice Designer is similar to Voiceflow, but not as feature-heavy. It’s meant for marketing directors and small business owners to be able to build a voice-based version of their company website or blog and deploy it directly to Alexa and Google Assistant from the backend of their WordPress website. It is really meant to meet the marketer where they already are – their WordPress admin panel. 3. Engage By Voice – Engage is a phenomenal tool that features templates that can be customized to build and deploy custom voice apps for your business. Engage features templates that allow businesses to gather phone numbers and send text messages, deploy surveys, gather reviews and much more. Engage is a perfect tool for marketers to try voice and see how Alexa Skills and Google Actions can integrate into and support all of their other business development efforts. For more information on any of these tools, please feel free to contact me directly at paul@datadriven.design. I look forward to helping you build your voice apps! This interview took place at Project Voice – the number one event for Voice Tech and AI in America – from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Thanks to Bradley Metrock of Score Publishing and VoiceFirst.FM Thanks for reading, watching and listening, and have a great day!

I recently asked my good friend QuHarrison Terry, head of growth marketing at Mark Cuban Companies, and co-founder of the amazing content creation company Inevitable/Human, what he thought I could do to improve my overall content strategy.   Being familiar with my love for being a practitioner in the technology space, and teaching my audience everything I know and learn related to digital marketing, web design and software, Q made a great point: "tell more of your story," he said.  "Tell your audience more what it's like to live in Valencia, Spain and run a small U.S. based digital agency."  This is tricky for me, because like most content creators, I don't necessarily like to get super personal. I'd rather stick to my "how to tips."  But Q is right. To truly engage my audience, I need to be more vulnerable and open up more.  The reality is, I have the same fears about creating content that everyone else has. Will my audience care? Will they like it? Will they relate to it? Will I come across the wrong way?  Since Q is pretty much a genius content marketer, and I spent the week with him at Project Voice, I decided to take advantage of the fact we had his crew with us. I asked if we could sit down and talk on camera, so I could practice telling my story a bit, rather than only focusing on how-to tips.  This conversation is what resulted. I had a chance to talk about my strategy of going super micro, and providing value to clients by being practical and tactical rather than big picture dreamy.  Opening up to Q made me take a deep look at why I do what I do, and why I do it the way I do it.  I talk about how I deal with emerging tech, the importance of doing what you said you were going to do, instant gratification, how I got around not wanting to party as a teenager but still make friends and be social, and why and how I moved to Valencia, Spain and run my company from there with 6 teammates and nearly 100 clients in the U.S.  This is a special interview to me, and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks to Q. Hopefully is the first of many with him.

I'm a big fan of time saving tips. The Google Site Kit WordPress Plug-in is a huge time saver.  It's purpose is to connect four main Google Digital Strategy Tools that we always use for ourselves and our clients:  1. Google Search Console 2. Google Analytics 3. Google Page Speed Insights 4. Google Adsense  What I like most about it is that once it's all set up and running, instead of having to log into all four platforms to get your data, you just log into the backend of your WordPress website, which you should be doing daily anyway to add/update content!  This video shows you how to get Google Site Kit all set up on your WordPress website, connect your data, and become more efficient and effective with your digital marketing!  What Google Site Kit needs to add next is Google My Business Integration. :)

When clients ask me if we support business Email hosting and management, my answer is - "yes, but only GSuite," nothing else. This is because it is so simple, efficient, effective and user friendly to host your business emails through Gmail.  In fact, it's so easy, that I decided I wanted to show all of you how to do it yourself!

I'm usually trying to figure out how to push the boundaries of all social media platforms. On Instagram, for example, I want to know what the best way is to gain legit followers. The same goes for Twitter.  In the process of following new people on Twitter, I got a little excited about learning about Voice, and started to rapidly follow people in the Voice Community to try and connect with them.  Not trying to be a "follow me - follow you" (and I'm not talking about the old Genesis song) type of marketer, but rather to gain access and knowledge to the community quickly, as they're all on Twitter.  Twitter is a great tool for growing awareness and gaining real champions for the Nashville Voice Conference, and I've even picked up a few clients on Twitter lately for WordPress Design and Development services.  I digress. In the process of pushing the "I'm going to follow as many people as I can today on Twitter" boundaries, I found out about the Technical Follower Limits on Twitter, and I think they make a ton of sense.  This video explains what you'll run into on Twitter these days while trying to take part in community discussion.

Google Analytics can be an amazing Business Intelligence Dashboard, if you set it up properly.   While setting it up to track eCommerce Conversions is one thing, which I've shown you here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wgJJAV3BP4&feature=emb_title - setting it up to track leads - and assign a monetary value to those leads, is another.  For example, let's say each time your business gets a new lead from your website, you're 10% likely to close the sale. If the average sale is $50,000, this lead might be worth $5k to your business.  Assigning a value to a lead is easy, and I show you how to do it in this video.  When you assign a value to a goal completion, you can easily attribute it back to a referral source.  For example, let's say you've run $1k in Facebook Ads in the last month. You'd want to know how much value in leads you've generated from that ad. This tip shows you how to get that all set up to use Google Analytics as a Business Intelligence Dashboard for your website.

I was talking recently with a good friend of mine, QuHarrison Terry, who is the co-founder of Inevitable/Human and the head of growth marketing at Mark Cuban Companies. He was asking me about why I thought the Alexa Skills Store would be the next $46 billion App Store. My answer, that Amazon does an amazing job incentivizing developers to build Alexa Skills - full-fledged voice-based applications, vs. Apple not really opening the door to developers to build full voice apps on top of Siri, sparked Q to ask me my take on Siri Shortcuts. As of this filming/writing, Siri Shortcuts are TOTALLY DIFFERENT than Alexa Skills. This video explains further.