I decided to run Google Adsense ads on Data Driven Design. First of all because we're publishing so much content on our site (1-2 new pieces per day), so technically we're a publisher in addition to being a digital agency. Secondly, because as a leading web design and development company, we need to stay up to date with all of the new changes to Google Adsense so that we can implement it properly for our clients. Recently, while logging into my Adsense account, I realized that there was a critical message at the top. It read - Earnings at risk - One or more of your sites does not have an ads.txt file. Fix this now to avoid severe impact to your revenue. What? No email warning, and my "revenue" might be impacted, that's not good! This video walks you through what steps I decided to take to attempt to resolve this matter. All publishers should listed and read this documentation... Declare authorized sellers with ads.txt  Ensure your ads.txt files can be crawled

Voice User Interface Design is so new. It's so hard to think through every scenario of what a user might want to say to Alexa or Google Home, which is why this particular use case I think is a good one to share with you all. I recently built an Alexa Skill using Voiceflow, which allows you to map out your entire conversation with Alexa. So for example, my Alexa Skill is to let attendees of the Nashville Voice Conference know about their roles and responsibilities at the conference. At one point, after you identify who you are, if you're a featured facilitator, it asks you about if you'd like to know about Parking, Timing or your specific event preparation. One of the featured facilitators used the Skill and told me it didn't work, because he had tried all variations he could think of using "my specific event preparation".... Turns out, I hadn't accounted for the word "specific" in my synonyms in Voiceflow. So, it was an easy fix. I anticipate much of Voice User Interface Design (VUI) being like this.

We build 99% of our websites in WordPress. There's just very rarely no reason not to. It's the most "non-technical content-management friendly" platform available, and it doesn't have the brick walls that SquareSpace does or the Theme Limitations that Shopify has. And, security should never be an excuse with WordPress. You can lock it down and get a good webhost, and you'll be all set. But one annoying thing is comment spam on blog posts. Every WordPress site, regardless of how many blog posts it has, will surely get comment spam. The good news is that the spam won't be visible to your audience, but it will go to your email inbox if you're the site admin, and it will just be well, flat out annoying. This simple video shows you how to turn off WordPress comment alerts. :)

Mailchimp is an amazing platform. It continues to evolve every day. My prediction is that it becomes one of the top overall marketing platforms and even CRMs on the world in the next 5-10 years. As a result, I have a ton of Mailchimp content at www.DataDriven.Design But I digress. Today's Data Driven Daily Tip is How To Create A Segment In Mailchimp. The reason you'd want to do this would be because Mailchimp doesn't let you "exclude a tag" ... Tags are a way of organizing your audience within one list, so that you don't need to duplicate the same user onto multiple lists in your audience. It's super smart, but when you go to send a campaign, you can only INCLUDE users that have a particular tag, for example - if I wanted to send an email to all attendees of the Nashville Voice Conference, that's easy. I just select that tag when I'm starting my campaign. But if I want to send a blast out to my entire Audience but EXCLUDE people who have already signed up for the conference, I have to create a segment. This video walks you through how to get that done. :)

This video / podcast / Alexa Flash Briefing with my guy Will Acuff, co-founder of Corner To Corner, is a perfect example of how Small Business Owners and Marketers need to be creating multiple pieces of content out of one simple business conversation. By watching this 23 minute video clip, you can see that the following pieces of content are being created by Will and I. 1. a blog for me 2. a vlog for me 3. a podcast for me 4. an Alexa Flash Briefing for Will (none of the above using anything other than a laptop computer) 5. a podcast for Will 6. a blog for Will 7. a vlog for Will 8. a promotional video for Will All small business owners stuck on what to talk about or how to create content for your business, take a page out of Will’s book. Just jump on a Zoom Conference with another business owner you respect, and record it.  KEEP MARKETING! Paul Hickey, Founder / CEO / Lead Strategist at Data Driven Design, LLC has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via Podcasting, building Alexa Skills, SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.

Business Owners, IT Professionals and Entrepreneurs - what is Gmail Confidential Mode? You may have received an email from Google / GSuite lately regarding Confidential Mode.  The subject is - [Action Required] Gmail Confidential Mode launching default ON for your domain The body reads: What do I need to know? When Gmail messages are sent in confidential mode, it helps protect from unauthorized access and recipients don’t have the option to forward, copy, print, or download their content or attachments. Senders can also set an expiration date for messages sent with confidential mode and revoke access to them at any time. What does this mean for my organization? From June 25, your users will have the option to send emails with confidential mode, unless you disable this feature. As an administrator, you can determine whether your users can use confidential mode by selecting from the following setting options: Disable: This option prevents users in your domain from sending emails with confidential mode. Enable now (beta): This option will enable confidential mode, which is currently in beta. However, the feature will remain enabled when it enters into general availability on June 25, 2019. Enable when the feature is in general availability: This is the default option and will enable confidential mode when this feature becomes generally available on June 25, 2019. What do I need to do? Please ensure that you select the appropriate option in the Admin console for your organization before June 25, 2019. You can find this setting in the Admin console by navigating to Apps - G Suite - Settings for Gmail - User settings If you do not take action before June 25, your domain will automatically have confidential mode turned on for your users, meaning that users will have the option to send emails with confidential mode. My contacts and our clients at Data Driven Design have a history of getting confused by messages like this from Google / GSuite - and rightfully so. The most recent example is what happened with Google Groups. Well, I try to stay ahead of these things and help you, answering your questions before you even have them, so here goes. Please watch the video / listen and let me know if this helps!

Data Driven Daily Tip 316 - The data shows that WordPress is the number one most used content management system in the world, according to Wappalyzer. :) Yoast SEO is a plug-in that has more than 5 million active installations. That means this video blog post is worth my time. :) Many businesses will have this problem with WordPress, Yoast SEO and Google Search Console. It's a weird quirk in one of the latest releases of Yoast (Yoast has multiple release updates weekly - and we keep all of our webhosting clients on the most current version). When you submit a sitemap via Yoast SEO, the Category and Tag URLs aren't indexing properly, and are causing a coverage error in Google Search Console. The fix, is super easy. Listen. And you're welcome. :)

As you may know by now from following my content, I'm very passionate about using Alexa and other voice assistants like Google Home, for business use.  I'm also passionate about teaching all other businesses how they can become more efficient and effective, as well as reach their target audience better via Alexa, Google Home, other voice assistants and even podcasting. But why Alexa so much? How many people use Alexa? How many businesses use Alexa? What is the most used Voice Assistant?  What are the trends? Well, we have to give props to Voicebot.ai for these great stats around Amazon Alexa. As of January 2019, Amazon Alexa makes up 62% of the Smart Speaker Market, with Google Home at 24%. Watch the video for more of the stats we see as relevant and why. Also, according to SEO Tribunal - More than 50% of searches will be voice searches by 2020. and...Business.com, VoiceCon by VaynerMedia and Dave Isbitski of Amazon Alexa for these great stats around Alexa For Business. During 2018, 22% of Americans had smart assistants in their home, up from less than 1% in 2017. That’s huge, people. This is the next way to get your audience’s attention. In 2019, there are more than 50 million smart speaker users in the world; increasing 15% each month. Not only that, but there are now more than 90,000 Alexa Skills, with businesses reporting a 43% lift businesses nine months after launching an Alexa-enabled product, and a 53% a percent boost on average almost immediately after incorporating an Alexa Skill into their current product. 54% percent of professionals surveyed say they’d use Alexa in the workplace to increase productivity. This podcast covers the top five ways businesses can use Alexa to increase productivity in the workplace, courtesy of Business.com. Nashville Voice Conference 2019 To learn more in person about how to use Voice Technology like Alexa Skills, Google Home Actions and Podcasting to improve your business, please visit NashvilleVoiceConference.com.

Whether you realize it now, or realize it years from now, your business needs an Alexa Skill. If not to reach your target audience, then to do business more efficiently and improve operations. A year or so ago I found a tool called "Storyline." It promised building Custom Alexa Skills without coding. It didn't work. In the last year, it has rebranded to Voiceflow and now works like a charm. Other Data Driven Daily Tips show how to use Voiceflow to create and test your Alexa Skill. But when it came down to actually publishing the skill live to the Alexa Skill Store, I still wasn't ready to throw a party. But it worked, and now I am not only throwing parties, but I'm challenging myself to build at least one new Alexa Skill for business per week. Here's how.

What is Voice User Interface Design or VUI? It's a new buzz word in the design world, and it has to do with thinking through and planning out the user experience related to a voice-based application, like an Alexa Skill, Google Home Action or a Chat bot of some kind.  While I suppose it could include AI (artificial intelligence), it actually really just can start with designing the experience behind a simple scripted conversation with the user. A really nice software platform to build custom Alexa Skills and Google Home Actions (in Beta) without coding is Voiceflow. Voiceflow has a great testing capability, where you can easily run through simulations and conversational scenarios to experience your Alexa Skill or Google Home Action before you publish it.  The Alexa Skills Developer Console also has a really cool testing feature. After you publish from Voiceflow to the Alexa Skills Developer Console, you can validate that it will work with Alexa by using your microphone and saying actual prompts, and hearing Alexa's reply.