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Welcome to Season 3 of Data Driven Tips! We kickoff with overall episode 150, where I share three solid audio clips from either Facebook Live / Instagram Live Question and Answer Sessions with my audience, or Live Access Sessions for Members of the Data Driven Academy. Question 1: What's the difference between Facebook Ads and Facebook Boosted Posts? Question 2: How to NOT be salesy in your Facebook Business Posts. Question 3: What happened to my ability to post content to my business page via the regular Facebook App on my phone? Why did it go away after adding my page to Facebook Business Manager? Listen in. Thanks, Paul

Big news for all businesses and personal brands out there hoping to get the elusive blue checkmark on their Instagram profile.  The blue check mark signifies "verification" which comes with it a respect level that until recently, only Instagram has been able to dole out to specific profiles.  Now, however, any Instagram account, regardless of how many followers, can request verification.  Warning, it's not for the faint of heart. Seriously, this video shows only the first step. Props to Alex Tooby for her video here, that goes into more detail about what happens after the initial verification request.

"Hey Alexa, help my business" isn't necessarily a phrase you expected to hear when the smart speaker became available on June 23, 2015, and it's still probably not a phrase many expect to hear into the future, but I do.  The same way I've stuck with my Amazon Echo device that my mother-in-law bought me for my 34th birthday back in 2015, I've decided to stick with the idea or concept that businesses can use Echo, Echo Dot and any other Alexa-enabled device to improve their business.  It was when I realized there are these things you can add to your device called Alexa Skills - apps for Alexa, basically - except voice apps - but added the same way you add something from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store - that things changed for me related to my Echo.  I realized I could not only add Spotify and podcasts, but that I could also develop these skills myself, or with my team of developers at Data Driven Design. Boom, then I was in. Alexa For Business: The Data 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 30,000 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 video 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. 

Why do all businesses need to start posting daily or at least regularly and with a consistent purpose on IGTV?  The proof is in the data, Instagram has just launched a new "share preview to feed" feature when uploading IGTV videos longer than one minute.  This video not only shows you the feature, explaining what it does, and how to use it, but also talks about the data proving that these kinds of organic posts are bringing in the most visibility, even more so than Instagram posts with hashtags, or even many paid placements.

Data Driven Daily Tip 268 - Google AdSense is the other side of Google Ads.  It's for publishers that post blogs or news often, and are working to build up traffic and monetize their site.  Google AdSense allows publishers (websites) to run ads, and get paid when users click their ads. AdSense has so many different placements, sizes, and features.  This video is Part 2 of how to run Google AdSense Ads on your sites, after your site is verified and approved to run ads.  Between parts 1 and 2, you'll have all the instruction you need to start monetizing your site with ads. Here is part 1.

WTF Google? You're changing Google Groups? What's with these emails you keep sending to Small Business Owners about changes to GSuite?  Our clients have asked several times for clarification on what these messages mean and what they need to do. So I'm breaking it down in this video.  What do these changes to Google Groups mean to business owners?

Have you ever been working in a Google Doc, Google Sheet, or Google Slide, maybe collaborating with another co-worker, and changes were made to your document that you didn't want to have happen?  The document autosaved and you can't go back! Oh No!  This video shows you the revisions feature in all GSuite / Google Drive Documents.  You can go back and see all of your previous document versions and restore them It's an amazing productivity tool for Small Business Teams.

I know what you're thinking Small Business Owners and Marketers, you don't think you have time to post on YouTube, and you're not even sure why you should or what you should post about.  The proof is in the data.  If you can film yourself or your teammates going through your day, attending events, or even doing daily tips and how-to videos related to your industry, you will see the return on your time investment.  It will take consistently posting for a long period of time, like between 8-12 months, but you will build a following and a community of people commenting on your videos. Reply to every comment, and you will gain momentum and it will generate business for you.  Have a helpful attitude to your content, and expect 10-20 subscribers for a long period of time, but once you consistently post, and reply to every single comment, and once you get past 100 subscribers, you'll start gaining 2-5 more per week.  While this may not seem like much to your business, it really helps your SEO and organic visibility, which means your business gets found for searches related to your products and services, which helps your website come up at the top of Google Searches, which is what most marketers and Small Business Owners care about.  As well they should, because the data shows that Google Searches still make up more than 65% of web referrals.

Google updated its API requirements for Google Maps embeds on Websites, but many websites still have broken Google Maps / Location Finders. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there could be a simple fix. To use the Maps JavaScript API, you must get an API key which you can then add to your mobile app, website, or web server. The API key is used to track API requests associated with your project for usage and billing. To learn more about API keys, see the API Key Best Practices and the FAQs. This video explains how to get a Google Maps API Key.

This is a great follow-up Data Driven Daily Tip, from a fellow agency owner in Croatia, who saw this video ... Her question is: My question is, how should we manage our clients on Facebook. Should we create one Business Manager for our Agency and them create Ad Accounts to our clients and give them Admin access so they could add payment method? Or should we create a new business manager for each client separately? Or something else? Could you help me with that? All great questions. And I answer them all in this podcast.