Sports Card Strategy Show

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 ann...

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 bec...

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...

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 unauthoriz...

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 o...

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?...

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...

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...

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...

This episode is me getting PUMPED on an Instagram Story about the launch of a shiny new Alexa Flash Briefing for entrepreneur Danielle McGee and her business Black Business Boom, highlighting Black-owned Businesses in Middle Tennessee. Enjoy!

Hey Alexa, Open Nashville Voice Conference. The Nashville Voice Conference has launched the first ever Alexa Skill dedicated to communicating with attendees of an upcoming event, as well as speakers, staff and media. “I believe we are the first, but I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong!” said Paul Hickey, Founder of Nashville Voice Conference and CEO/Founder of Data Driven Design . “If yo...

In this episode I talk about how I tested my first custom Alexa Skill right on the Amazon Developer Console, a great tool. Tune in to learn more.

As a kid I loved Hip-Hop and Basketball. Listen to a snippet of my story on how those two passions have helped my career in business. And there's a special treat at the end!

Do you know what Alexa For Business is? Do you know what a custom Alexa Skill is? You probably only think of Alexa for playing music at home or playing games, but you need to think of it for your business. Specifically, how you can train your large organization using a custom Alexa Skill only available to particular employees of your company. Listen in. I promise it's good.

Do you know what Alexa For Business is? Do you know what a custom Alexa Skill is? You probably only think of Alexa for playing music at home or playing games, but you need to think of it for your business. Specifically, how you can train your large sales force using a custom Alexa Skill only available to particular employees of your company. Listen in. I promise it's good.

This is the fully detailed, step-by-step version of Episode 214.  Starting from nothing, in Segment 1, I show you how to create a Gmail account.  In Segment 2, I show you how to use that Gmail account to create an Anchor.fm account, then create your podcast, your first episode, and get your podcast published on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and more. In Segment 3, I show you h...

I had no idea if building my first Alexa Skill was going to work . But it did. Like a freaking charm. It never happens like that. And when it does, it kind of feels like serendipity. There are already more than 40,000 Alexa Skills in the Alexa Skills Store within the Alexa App (how you set up / customize your Echo, Echo Dot or other Alexa-enabled device like the Roav VIVA or Sonos Speaker), but no...

In this special edition of the Data Driven Daily Tip Podcast, I talk through an important concept that all business owners and entrepreneurs need to fully understand - the Minimum Viable Product. The tendency when building a software application or even a website, is to try to include everything all at once. To prioritize everything, which basically means you're prioritizing nothing. How do you bu...

My reflections on why we're building Alexa Skills at Data Driven Design.

I love WordPress, because you don't have to be a hardcore web developer to do cool, tricky stuff, like make a main navigation menu link open in a modal window, also known as a lightbox. How To Make A WordPress Main Menu Navigation Link Open In A Lightbox  In this video, I show WordPress Content Managers how to implement this sweet functionality free of charge, by using two plug-ins, one calle...

Small Business Owners and Marketers, are you looking to have a form on your website that gathers email addresses that you later want to turn around and send automated or manual email marketing campaigns to? An amazing trio of tools is Mailchimp with WordPress + the Gravity Forms Plug-in. Gravity Forms offers dozens of add-ons for email marketing platforms, including our favorite - Mailchimp. This...

I've used just about every single WordPress website hosting platform available, and recently switched to WPEngine after five years with GoDaddy Managed WordPress .  GoDaddy just had too many issues with server space, and was super slow, going down too often, and allowing too many "known issues" to take place. And at one point, GoDaddy even deleted one of my sites for no reason. The switch to...

On a rare occasion, you may not have access to an old Google Analytics account, but you're the one responsible for making sure that tracking code from the old website gets on the newly launched website. Or, you already launched the website and forgot. How do you go back and get your Google Analytics Tracking Code once your new site has launched? How do you find Google Analytics Tracking Code witho...

Anyone with a website likely doesn’t think about verifying it with Google Search Console , let alone Bing Webmaster Tools , but even though Bing only makes up 5% or less of organic search related web traffic (according to our Data Download ), it’s still super important to gain search engine visibility on Bing via verifying your website and submitting a sitemap. This video shows you how!

While it's true (the proof is in the data) that Bing only makes up about five or less percent of all organic web searches (ways that your web users find your website via SEO / organic search), it is still important to rank highly on Bing, and have solid search engine visibility on Bing, which is why, after verifying all sites on Bing Webmasters, we also take the extra 5-6 seconds to "Fetch as Bing...