Sports Card Strategy Show

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 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 u...

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 digita...

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 o...

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 th...

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 b...

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,...

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 a...

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...

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...

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 V...

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 awarene...

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 Developm...

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 Conve...

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 m...

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 du...

Alexa Skill Development is a skill set that is becoming more and more recognized in the mainstream. I recently met a community college professor at a speaking engagement in Nashville who is trying to build a Voice Design / Voice Development program at his school. PHENOMENAL. This will happen. SOON. And as it happens, project managers at digital agencies and Q/A testers will need to test the crap o...

As the world of voice apps continuously changes, one of the latest ways you'll want to consider garnering awareness for your business is to build what's called a "How To Video Action" on Google Assistant. This is a voice-activated way that users can bring up VIDEO content on their devices, like Google Hub, and phones with the Google Assistant app loaded on it. Picture your audience at home or thei...

Before I get into defining Alexa Presentation Language (APL), I have to define "Multimodal Voice App." What the heck is a multimodal voice app? By now, we're all somewhat familiar with what we can ask Alexa to do. Some of us way more familiar than others. And by now, we should at least have some level of familiarity with what "Alexa Skills" are. They're simply applications built on top of Alexa, t...

What's up everybody? I'm going to show you something I've been really excited to do myself. This is how to create an animated GIF (I pronounce it JIF like the peanut butter), then add it to Instagram Stories, so that anyone can stick it to their stories on Insta.  This is complete branding arbitrage, because it costs NOTHING.   1. You just create a GIPHY.com account, apply to have i...

The first step towards creating your Alexa Skill or Alexa Flash Briefing for your brand, start-up or small business, is to create an Amazon Alexa Developer Account.  It's one of the easiest possible steps in the entire experience of building Alexa Skills, but it still feels good to get started and know that you're in the right place.   First, go to https://developer.amazon.com . It...

I sat down for an awesome podcast interview with my good friend Brynn Plummer, VP of Community Relations and Inclusion at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center.  We had a great conversation about Voice Technology, and how businesses will be expected to have Alexa Skills and Google Actions in the next 24-36 months.  We hit on how Entrepreneurs can get resources in Nashville, and how the Nashv...

I want businesses to know that you don't need to have an Alexa Skill or a Google Action that does everything for you. You need it to just be integrated with / enhancing your current experience. Michael Antaran, CEO of CARROT Wellness, explains how CARROT started simple, and then integrated Voice based apps like an Alexa Skill to enhance the experience and increase user engagement. "When we started...