One question I've been asked very often since the first ever Nashville Voice Conference on July 31, 2019 is - how do I reserve my voice app's opening phrase on Google? The technical way to ask this would be "how do I create an opening invocation on Google Actions?" But that's not exactly what these people are asking. They're business owners, so they're semi-interested in getting their brand name as an opening invocation, but rather far more interested in reserving a valuable keyword as their opening invocation. This is something that business owners see as a "voice domain name" on Google Assistant. Makes sense when you think about it. If I can have my Google Action start when someone says "Hey Google, let's talk digital marketing" I can in theory drive more brand awareness for Data Driven Design by "dominating" this phrase in voice search. This is called "Google Action Whitelabeling" and this video shows you how to do it.

I love Alexa for Business. You just need an AWS account to deploy Private Alexa Skills to employees of your organization. You can also use it to manage company-owned devices and which company private skills can be used on personal employee devices.  What you'll need:  1. An Alexa Skill built and ready to deploy for your organization/employees/specific private group. Note: this can be for a private podcast, piece of content or experience between a group of people. It doesn't have to be limited to businesses. But it's GREAT for businesses, which is why it's called Alexa for Business.  2. An AWS Account.  We'll use the Alexa Blueprint Console as the example for this piece of content but the same thing can be accomplished when building an Alexa Skill from the Alexa Developer Console ASK (kit).  Here are the steps:  1. Go to the Blueprints Console to Skills You've Made - blueprints.amazon.com/skills  2. Click "Manage Access" under your Alexa For Business skill.  3. In a separate browser tab, open your AWS account (it doesn't need to be the same username/password as your Alexa account, but it can be). Under the Services dropdown, find Alexa For Business and click on it. Enable it.  4. On the left hand side menu, click "Skills"  5. On the Skills screen, click the Private Skills tab, and click "Show IAM ARN" number  6. Copy the full alpha-numeric number and paste it back into the Manage My Access section into the tab with your Blueprint Skill in it.  7. Click Add and Finish, and you'll get a confirmation message.  8. Refresh your other browser tab with your AWS account, and you'll see your Private Skill under the Private Skills tab.  9. You should see your Skill and the Status should say "Waiting on Review." Click Review.  10. Add the Skill to a Skill Group. Go to the Skills tab on the left hand menu of AWS, and under the Enabled Skills tab, check the box on the left. This will make the "Add to skill group" button orange and clickable.  11. Create a Skill Group by finding "Skill groups" on the left hand side menu under "Configuration."   12. Find orange "Create skill group" button and click it.  13. Name it, give it a description and click "Create."  14. Invite Users. Configure the details of you user invitation by clicking the User Invitation Page link in the lefthand side menu.  15. Add a contact name and email from your organization and customize your welcome message.  16. Click "Users" on the lefthand side menu. Put in First Name, Last Name and Email address and click "Send invite."  17. Click on User Invitations under "Settings" on lefthand side menu to check status of users accepting their invite.  Statuses include "Invited" and "Enrolled."   Enrolled means they've enabled the skill.

I was recently asked a question while presenting about how to build voice apps that caught my attention. The attendee asked if I thought that human interaction would change to a dulled down monotone voice with each other, because so many people are talking to Alexa, and that's how Alexa talks. My answer is NO, because as developers, we can actually replace Alexa's voice in our Alexa Skills, and do the same with Google's voice in our Actions on Google Assistant. Case in point, these voice apps I've built for clients, use our client's voice, instead of the robot voice. We can also add effects to Alexa and Google's voice using tools like Voiceflow's SSML editor. I show you how to do both in this video. These techniques make for a much improved voice user interface design experience. There are basically four main ways that I build Voice Apps (Alexa Skills and Google Actions). 1. Amazon Alexa Blueprints and Google Action Templates - these are pre-built Voice Apps that allow content marketers and developers to change and customize the content in the flow. These can include some cool functionality though, such as Business Onboarding Guides, Games and Quizzes. 2. The Voice Designer - TheVoiceDesigner.com allows you to download a WordPress plug-in that content marketers and business owners can use to build and deploy Alexa Skills and Google Actions directly from their WordPress dashboard. This is an amazing tool, and easy to use, allowing businesses to build a Voice presence that is in alignment with the content on their website. 3. Engage By Voice - EngageByVoice.com is a product that follows the "template" concept, but allows businesses to engage with their audiences via functionality such as voice-based SMS messaging, voice-based user surveys, email sign-ups via voice and even a Net Promoter Score survey. These templates are pre-built yet easy to customize. 4. Voiceflow - Allows you to build custom voice apps for Alexa and Google using a block-based, drag and drop CMS system that includes Logic. Like TheVoiceDesigner.com and EngagebyVoice.com, Voiceflow requires no coding, but allows for coders and non-coders to collaborate within the same project, as well as deploy it to Alexa and Google at the same time. It also allows Voice App builders to create Video Skills using Alexa Presentation Language (APL), developers to layer in outside API integrations, content marketers to replace Alexa's voice with audio files, and more.

There are basically four main ways that I build Voice Apps (Alexa Skills and Google Actions).  1. Amazon Alexa Blueprints and Google Action Templates - these are pre-built Voice Apps that allow content marketers and developers to change and customize the content in the flow. These can include some cool functionality though, such as Business Onboarding Guides, Games and Quizzes.  2. The Voice Designer - TheVoiceDesigner.com allows you to download a WordPress plug-in that content marketers and business owners can use to build and deploy Alexa Skills and Google Actions directly from their WordPress dashboard. This is an amazing tool, and easy to use, allowing businesses to build a Voice presence that is in alignment with the content on their website.  3. Engage By Voice - EngageByVoice.com is a product that follows the "template" concept, but allows businesses to engage with their audiences via functionality such as voice-based SMS messaging, voice-based user surveys, email sign-ups via voice and even a Net Promoter Score survey. These templates are pre-built yet easy to customize.  4. Voiceflow - Allows you to build custom voice apps for Alexa and Google using a block-based, drag and drop CMS system that includes Logic. Like TheVoiceDesigner.com and EngagebyVoice.com, Voiceflow requires no coding, but allows for coders and non-coders to collaborate within the same project, as well as deploy it to Alexa and Google at the same time. It also allows Voice App builders to create Video Skills using Alexa Presentation Language (APL), developers to layer in outside API integrations, content marketers to replace Alexa's voice with audio files, and more.  For this blog, I'm focusing on #1, using Amazon Alexa Blueprints to build an Alexa Skill. My 10-year old son asked me the other day if we could build an Alexa Skill together.  It was like 15 minutes from his bed time, but I was like, "sure, we can use blueprints!"  We found one called "Santa Letter," and away we went. This video shows the process!

Let's be honest marketers. We are creating content, and that is fun and everything, but we need to be able to freely post links. Links to resources, links to past articles, links to references, links to sign-up forms, links to products, links to promo codes, links to events, links to free trials. You know, LINKS! Instagram is an amazing way to reach your target audience and grow your brand awareness. But Instagram only gives us one Link! Unless you have Swipe Up capabilities with more than 10k followers, you're limited to one link in your bio. Not anymore. Here's how you can have more than one link in your IG bio!

Why would you want to create a YouTube Playlist? Think of it in the same context as wanting multiple categories for your WordPress blog.  Creating a YouTube Playlist (or ideally, multiple YouTube Playlists), can help you organize your video content and improve the user experience for your viewers.  I want my viewers to be able to easily see my content related to:  WordPress Development WordPress Plug-in Reviews Google Analytics Tips Google Ads Tips Facebook Ads Tips Content Creation Alexa Skill Development Google Action Development  ... and more.  The proof is in the data. Creating regular video content for YouTube improves your organic search ranking and quality traffic generation, and creating playlists enhances your audience's overall experience.  This keeps them coming back, and helps new users find you!

This one is really just as simple as it's title. It gives you an amazing overview of YouTube Analytics, and proves that YouTube is a HUGE part of your business ranking high over time on Google Organic Search by putting out consistent content. But it's real purpose is to show marketers and small business owners how to install Google Analytics on their YouTube Channel Page.

Most people running Google Ads campaigns don't realize this, but there are some simple ways to optimize your campaigns to target people that are more likely to engage with your product or service, not simply click your ad. One I've written about, spoken about and implemented religiously, is setting up Google Analytics Goals, and linking Google Analytics with Adwords to import the GA Goals as Conversions in Adwords, then selecting the "optimize for conversions" instead of "clicks" in Google Ads. But that was a few years back, and Google is actually making it easier for smart and savvy marketers to set up a similar type of situation. Google is calling these "Smart Lists." Smart Lists uses Machine Learning. A Smart List is an audience that Google Analytics creates for you automatically. Using advanced machine learning, Analytics predicts which of your website visitors are most likely to convert in the future and adds them to an audience that you can then re-engage with Google Ads. Analytics generates your Smart List using insights about your visitors and their activity on your site. Your list updates on a daily basis, so that visitors are automatically added and removed based on the latest available signals. This enables you to show ads to your highest potential customers, which can result in more conversions without an increase in budget. This video shows you how to get started setting up Google Analytics Smart Lists to drive more conversions via your Google Ads Campaigns.

Stats and Data are meaningless if there's not a takeaway. We all love data, but can get easily caught up in it if there's not a "next action" associated with it. This is why I love Google's new metric, "Relative Mobile Conversion Rate." It is simple, and it uses a percentage breakdown to tell marketers and small business owners responsible for their website, when and what to do to increase their mobile conversions. This is obviously in response to data that shows mobile traffic share is increasing about 25% - 35% for "the average website" year over year. So if you're wondering how to make your mobile website convert better, and start with real data to examine your situation, watch this video.

So this was a super interesting one, that after using Google Analytics (well, practically living in it) for 12 years, that was new to me. The story goes that we had just inherited a new client (common for us) and were doing our initial data due diligence. We noticed a huge spike in web traffic over a several month period of time, and could not attribute the traffic to any referral source. So we dug deeper into Geography, and found that the new spike was due to traffic coming from Boardman, Oregon. Looking at the fact that all Boardman, Oregon traffic was spending 00:01 on the site, and had a 90% bounce rate, we knew it was bot/spider related, and not some interest in our clients' business in a new city. As it turns out, we were right, and this is actually a more common issue in Google Analytics than many realize. I'm calling it The Boardman, Oregon Issue. This video shows how to filter out bot and spider traffic from Google Analytics (aka how to fix The Boardman, Oregon Issue). This is important, because the first step to using data to drive results, is having accurate data. :)