Can An Alexa Skill BE A BUSINESS, or Should It Be An Extension of a Pre-existing Business? From my interview with Amazon Alexa's Chief Evangelist Dave Isbitski It can be either for sure. Interesting Scenarios: 1. Account Linking – businesses can use their existing APIs and accounting systems, etc. to link up with a voice-based Alexa Skill. That’s how something like ordering a Pizza online works. The user already has an account, the user just says it, and the Pizza company with the Alexa Skill just charges through their pre-existing system. 2. Amazon Pay Integration – small businesses can sell things online and use Amazon Pay. Dave adds: “what’s interesting about the Amazon Pay Integration is meeting your customer in the moment. Let’s say I have a podcast about running shoes, and I could say on the podcast “would you like to buy these right now for 50% off on Amazon.” 3. In-Skill Purchasing – Games do this, selling power-ups and turns, etc. “Another interesting example is working maybe with an age demographic that skews higher,” Dave says. “Let’s say your business fields a lot of calls, and it’s a huge cost center for your business, when in fact, if they could just talk to you, that would completely solve it!” Perhaps the most interesting part of the conversation for me, happened when Dave started talking about the fact that current data and analytics from websites and mobile devices are only really based around what the brand or business has allowed the customer to do. “The top three things users do in my mobile app are these things. Right, because those are some of the only things you’ve allowed them to do. With Alexa, it’s different, you can get data around what they’re asking you about. For example, you may give your customers 100 different conversation paths. When you see a drop off at a certain point, you know your customers were looking for something that wasn’t there. You learn as you go, and you improve, in a very different way than with web and mobile apps.”

As always, the proof is in the data. Your business will need an Alexa Skill sooner than you think, which is why Data Driven Design is bringing the first ever Voice Conference to Nashville. LEARN HOW TO IMPLEMENT ALEXA SKILLS, GOOGLE HOME ACTIONS AND PODCASTING TO MAKE YOUR BUSINESS MORE EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE. 43% – the lift businesses see nine months after launching an Alexa-enabled product 53% - the percent boost businesses see on average almost immediately after incorporating an Alexa Skill into their current product 54% - the percent of professionals surveyed that say they’d use Alexa in the workplace to increase productivity 30,000+ - the number of Alexa Skills globally 50 million+ - the number of smart speaker users in the world; increasing 15% each month Find out more at NashvilleVoiceConference.com

Have you ever scheduled a post in WordPress that didn’t go live? Maybe you were on vacation and scheduled a blog post, and then when you checked, there was a “Missed Schedule” message next to it? It’s happened to me frequently, but not consistently. Basically, it has happened randomly. And thanks to http://dominiquej.com/wordpress-misse… , I finally know why. One of our clients experienced this problem, and after looking into it, we’ve found the solution! Using one of these two plug-ins should do the trick. https://wordpress.org/plugins/schedul… https://github.com/sLaNGjI/wp-missed-… I explain in this audio.

Alexa Skills are starting to make more and more sense for any kind of business to have. Data Driven Design is getting asked to brainstorm how many of our clients can partake in building a voice-based extension of their product or service to be available on Alexa, Google Home, and other "smart speakers." A great question recently came in from a subscriber, who is a Wedding Singer. He wants to know how his business could benefit from a custom Alexa Skill. I took the opportunity to answer his question in our weekly Q&A session, live on Facebook at 9:15 a.m. ET on Mondays.

During one of our weekly Data Driven Q and A sessions with partners and clients, Gaye Lynn Wilson, VP of National Pro Fastpitch, asked a great question - how should our business leverage TikTok to promote an upcoming event?  In this case the event she was referencing is the 2019 NPF Draft, scheduled for April 15 in Nashville, TN. First of all, to set the stage for my answer, I talk about TikTok. What is it, exactly? Well, if you had heard of the lip syncing app Musical.ly, TikTok purchased Musical.ly and now basically is Musical.ly. TikTok, according to Variety and courtesy of FangDigital.com, has more than 80 million US users, and almost 800 million users when you include its international audience. Reference: https://fangdigital.com/using-tiktok-to-promote-your-business/ And if you remember the six second video app Vine, TikTok is like Vine, combined with Carpool Karaoke (a short on the Late Late Show with James Corden). Service providers, like Dentist - Dr. Chithra Durgam DDS have used Musical.ly, now TikTok to promote their businesses, and Sports and Entertainment companies like NPF can definitely leverage their assets in terms of players, mascots, cheer squads, coaches, etc. to create short, fun videos with music that are relevant to their brand. The example I talk about in this video refers to using the players "at bat" song or future "at bat" song, in the case of NPF draftees, and having them create short music videos where they lip sync to their future at bat song. What I don't mention in the video is that it could also be used to take highlights and simply chop them up in post production to make them shorter, like top 10 plays, but only showing 1-2 seconds of each play. I think the biggest thing to remember though is that leveraging TikTok is just like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google My Business, Pinterest and others.... IT'S ABOUT CREATING THE CONTENT CONSISTENTLY and making it relevant and native to the audience on each platform. It's not about simply "being on a platform to check the box." It's about meeting your audience where they are, with a message that's relevant to them and doing it consistently over the long term. The actual question is: How can you repurpose your current content to consistently make it relevant to an audience on TikTok that you're ready to engage with over the next 24-36 months?

For almost three years I've been making Data Driven Daily Tips, useful pieces of information for Small Business Owners and Small Marketing Teams to learn Web Design and Development, Digital Marketing, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Blogging, Content Creation, Instagram Growth Strategies and more. There are almost 300 "DDD Tips" now, and they've taken many forms. Originally shot on Instagram Stories and saved down and uploaded to YouTube, and reposted in blog form on the website with written transcriptions, the "tip" has now evolved into a simulcast YouTube Video and Podcast with audio ripped down and published via Anchor.fm. The YouTube video now is post edited into IGTV format requirements to ensure omnipresence on all socials, including LinkedIn, Facebook and Medium.com This latest version of the "tip" is a first. It's our first with a guest. And this guest is an important one, so we took about 45 minutes together via Zoom Conference. Myself from my office in Valencia, Spain, and Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist for Alexa at Amazon and Alexa Marketing Employee #1, I assume from his office in Seattle. Here are the main highlights of our conversation: On helping brands figure out "what does this all mean?" - "Alexa is not a smart speaker revolution, it's about connecting with your customers." Talking about what it's like to help build a community of Alexa Developers via the Alexa Developers Console and the Alexa Skills Kit. Also, the Alexa Voice Service. - Alexa Voice Service is where you put Alexa into things. This can be done with Windows machines, Sonos speakers, Cars, Headphones, Homes, etc. So Alexa Voice Service basically extends the amount of Alexa-enabled devices that exist. Right now, I think of Echos and Echo Dots as Alexa-enabled devices.

This is a great Web Design and Development tip for anyone with a WordPress website who wants to add fonts to their theme. Downloading a Google Font and adding it to your WordPress theme is super easy with a plug-in called Use Any Font. This video shows you exactly how to ensure your branding is on point by not limiting to your WordPress fonts to the ones already in your theme. Add more fonts to your WordPress theme easily!

A while back, I posted a Data Driven Daily Tip on How To Hyperlink Directly To A Timestamp On A YouTube Video. It garnered solid feedback as one of my more "practical" and "useful" tips for anyone, regardless of role, probably because it crosses over outside of business, and into the mainstream of "anyone who ever wants to share a particular part of a YouTube video." But one of the pieces of feedback I received was "I think an even greater tip would be explaining how to embed your youtube video in a website, and then, create a (text) timestamp on your website, when a user clicks on that timestamp on the webpage, the video skips to that time in the embedded video" - so here is my version of that. :)

Google My Business is a little known platform. Even the most savvy marketers overlook it constantly. It probably gets a bad wrap, as it used to be Google Places and Google Plus, but Google has given it a ton of credence in terms of SEO value for businesses that have verified listings. In fact, businesses that post consistently on Google My Business get a HUGE SEO BOOST - the proof is in the data. But this Data Driven Daily Tip is extremely utilitarian. If you're a Small Business Owner or a member of a Small Marketing Team, you should be collaborating on Google My Business, allowing teammates to post for you, add photos to your page, update your information and look at the data. Here is how to add users to your Google My Business Account.

Back in the day (like 2005-2017), Google Adwords made it pretty hard and confusing to create accounts that allowed agencies or companies to manage multiple Google Adwords Accounts under one "umbrella" or "Master Client Center Account." In fact, it was so hard to do so, that Google seemingly dumped anyone with a Gmail or Google For Business (now GSuite) account directly into a regular Google Adwords Account when they signed up for Adwords. This then prevented them from becoming Master Client Center Accounts. If you're confused on what I'm talking about, picture logging into a Google Ads Account and only being able to manage your own account. A Master Client Center Account, now called Google Ads Manager Accounts, allows you to manage multiple Google Ads Accounts, meaning you can have multiple payment methods on file, and collaborate with other people managing the same account. Super useful. With the current version of Google Adwords, called Google Ads, not only do you not get stuck in a regular Google Ads account when you sign up, but you can even retroactively make your account a manager account. This podcast, and this link, explain how.