Voice Search, Voice Marketing, and the Lawrence Podcast Network

March 31, 2021

Transcript

Miles: [00:00:00] Hello world. My name is Miles Bassett, and this is Ask Wildman.

All right. Hello everyone. My name is Miles Bassett. This is Ask Wildman an open Q and A put forward by a Wildman Web Solutions. That is a digital marketing agency based here in Lawrence, Kansas. We specialize in working with small businesses and helping them to leverage technology, to grow and achieve their goals.

We started putting out this show about a year ago kind of beginning of COVID times here. We’re getting a lot of questions about people getting their businesses online for the first time. And so, we started streaming live every week to our different social media channels and answering your questions. We’re going to keep this up as there still are a ton of questions out there. And I don’t think any of the changes that we’ve seen over the last year, at least in digital marketing and doing business online are really going to go away anytime soon. So, we are here to answer your questions. If you have any questions or want to jump in the conversation. Put your questions in the comments below. We are live streaming right now to our Facebook page, YouTube channel and Twitch channel. So, pick your poison there. And if you’re catching this later, you can still get in on this action by emailing us your questions at askwildman@wildmanweb.com.

I do have that address scrolling below me in this little ticker here. So, grab that and email us your questions. We’ll get to those answers next week. As we do this every week, Wednesdays at 11, make sure to check in. Also, a little shameless plug here. If you like what we’re doing, you think we’re providing valuable information you can help us to reach more people, answer more questions and be more of a resource to our community by engaging with this video somehow. Like share, follow, subscribe, you know the deal depending on what platform you’re watching this on. Please just engage with us comment, share whatever you can do to help us reach a broader audience and answer some more questions.

I keep saying “us” here and that is because I am only half of this coin here and I’m bringing on the other half. And Mike, there you are. Hello, Mike.

Mike: [00:03:51] Hello Miles. How in the heck are you doing this morning, sir?

Miles: [00:03:56] I’m doing good. It’s a beautiful day. I got my coffee, and we are ready to speak to the people.

Mike: [00:04:01] Let’s do it.

Miles: [00:04:04] All right. So as promised, we are going to have a little bit of a theme today and that is voice. We are talking about voice. Not just that we like the sound of our own, but how voice interacts with your digital marketing strategy what you need to know about marketing and voice searches, home assistants, and other voice technologies that are coming out there as it’s just been growing leaps and bounds over the last couple of years and even the last couple of months. When we say voice we’re talking, not strictly just about voice searches when you ask Siri about something, but also those home assistants, Amazon echo and Google assistant we’re also talking about listing services.

We’re also talking about more audio only mediums, things like podcasts and new social media platforms as Mike loves talking about Clubhouse. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a little bit about that today. So yeah, if you’ve got any questions, if you’ve tried to start leveraging voice, if you don’t have a voice strategy or you’re trying to build one, please throw your thoughts in the comments below and we can make this a little bit more of a two-way street and less of a lecture up here. I see we’re getting our comments come in.

Mike: [00:05:10] Yeah. And if somebody has another question, unrelated to voice, we can certainly take a timeout and ask or answer that. I don’t know if we need to take the whole hour here on this, but yeah.

Miles: [00:05:22] Yeah, well we’ve been getting a lot of questions about voice search and we’ve kind of referenced it a couple of times here on the show when people like to follow up with that. So, we wanted to take a little bit more of a deep dive into that subject, but yes, this is an open Q and A, you have any questions about technology, business, marketing, advertising, or you just want to say hi put it in the comments below.

Hello, Jeff. See, he’s already hopped in and commented. Follow Jeff’s lead everyone.
All right. So again, with voice, we want to start with that and then we’ll kind of get to your questions as they filter in here. So, feel free to jump in those comments there. So, I think that we should just kind of start, start broad here, defining what we’re talking about. Why do small businesses specifically need to start looking at if they haven’t already developing a voice strategy? Mike, do you want to take that first? And I’ll follow up.

Mike: [00:06:22] Sure thing Miles. Maybe you could help me out here because I was just getting ready to pull it up. But I did write an article, I think it’s up on the website. Hopefully it is about the topic last week. So, I’ll reference back to that probably a couple of times, that came out in our newsletter last week. So first if you haven’t signed up for the newsletter. Do that, and I’m sure Miles we’ll put that up on the screen as well, but yeah, let’s just take it from 30,000 feet. Why is voice important? Why is it probably the most important emerging technology out there?

We’ve talked about this a few times, but it always bears repeating. First, as we give constant examples of on the show, speed wins. And usually, it’s easier for me to say something than it is to go and type it or write it. If I can just speak and have something happen, that’s going to save me time. And as we’ve noticed about human behavior over hundreds and hundreds of years is that usually if they can do something faster, and still get it done, reasonably as well, they’re going to choose that option. And so, the market is going to decide that this is a thing that increases productivity and therefore, more of these devices, more of these tools are going to pop up.

Not only in things that we’re gonna talk about today, but in things that we can’t even fathom right now in the next 10 years or so because of this principle of speed. And just the ability to do more quicker. And so that’s the fundamental thing that we all have to understand of why this is a tidal wave that’s coming that, it’s just like the internet, it’s not going to be a fad.

It’s going to be a really big thing that’s going to keep expanding and keep growing throughout all different places of the marketplace. Just like the internet started first with bookstores and then it was taxi cabs and now nothing is going to escape this disruption, is what I’m trying to say. When we start thinking about this, 10, 15 years out. We always want to be looking ahead and not behind. And so that’s what we’re doing here today by really explaining this. Not all these things have really come to fruition today, but they will be in the next few years. So, the other big thing about voice in general, and now I’m moving more into the human aspect of it. Not necessarily the AI aspect of it, but there’s a lot of connectivity and voice, and there’s been a lot of research done throughout the golden years of radio and even some contemporary research as well, that when people listen to the sound of someone’s voice, it creates this trust and it creates this knowing factor that like, I feel like I know them. Even more than maybe somebody that I even watch on TV.

And so, radio personalities, this has been, case studies decade after decade after decade that people feel like they know them, even though they didn’t even what they look like, just because they listened to the sound of their voice every day. So, there’s something very, very powerful psychologically about the human voice.

And so, when we get into talking about things like podcasting and clubhouse and things like that, those are things to keep in mind as well, is that there’s something really, really, powerful about connecting with one another, just on the voice alone. So those are the big two things, I think Miles from 30,000 feet is just, the technology that’s coming out. It’s just, it’s a big speed factor. It’s a big convenience factor to be able to say something. And then suddenly it happens. And then on the human aspect of it, there’s just a really, deep, psychological connectivity, if you will, when people communicate through their voice. That’s it, like I said, from a really, big picture point of view.

Miles: [00:09:52] Yeah, you hit the same points that I was going to bring up. So, I’ll just amplify those a little bit and then jump off and do a couple of other things. But it’s a new medium, it’s a new access point to your business.

As we say all the time even if you are not necessarily leveraging something maximally or maybe it doesn’t completely make sense for you to look at a particular medium or a way of getting your message out there. If you’re not doing something, know that your competitors are.

And so as soon as you stop doing something, or if you’re not considering an entire access point to your business, like voice then know that your competitors are, and you are falling behind every moment that you’re not thinking about this. And it’s not voice isn’t completely new. It’s been steadily growing for a long time.

It’s kind of seeing a little bit of a spike in this last year as more people were at home and interacting with businesses online a little bit more, I say a little bit more, a hell of a lot more than they were prior to a pandemic time. And so, all sorts of virtual interactions have gone up, but especially with voice home assistants have gotten way, way, way, way better.

We’re up into the 90 some percent word recognition rating. They can do all sorts of fun things and collect information for you that can be useful in your marketing overall things like, both Google home and Amazon’s home assistant can differentiate between human voices. So, it knows who is talking to it so you can collect information, or they can collect information.

Then you can leverage it in your marketing to advertise to a household and differentiate your content. And the user experience with your brand is down to the individual family members within a household.

Mike: [00:11:31] Exactly Miles, and the other big thing is that it has the capability to remember who in the household ordered what products, and then reference that back to them. When we extrapolate this out a little bit, you know, it becomes really, really evident quickly. And this is something that I alluded to in that article. I don’t know if you were able to put that in the comment section for the folks, but if you did, or if you haven’t, please do, when you get a chance Miles.

But one of the things that really came about in that was a brand, and that is if I don’t say the name of your brand, when I’m searching for something and voice. There’s a huge divide between what’s going to happen. And what’s currently happening right now with, you know, the text-based search, you know, when I go to Google and I type something in, right.

Well, what happens there is I’m going to see that search result, but I’m also going to see. Maybe what, eight to 10, what are usually, I mean, I guess we include the ads probably more than that. Probably more like a dozen different results of varying businesses within that category. So, I’m going to see the competitors.

Now what happens when I search on say, Alexa and I gave this example of the pizza place the other day, and the article is that, you know, I’ve got five pizza places within about a mile of my home. When I asked Alexa the other day to send me a pizza, I think I said, Alexa, order me a pizza for delivery. It gave me the Pizza Hut on West sixth street.

And then it said, do you want me to order that now? Or something like that? You want me to call it now? I think. Now what’s going to be interesting to this. Progressive was what percent of people are going to say yes to that first result. And what percent of people are going to say, no, show me other results.

Because if you do prompt it, it will list off maybe like three or four other results, but you have to prompt it. And then, you know, and then as I buy things, right, it’s going to remember where I buy it from. So, let’s say that I buy it from Rudy’s one day and I buy it from spin. Okay, then maybe the next time I go back, it’s going to ask me if I want one of those too.

But then if I say show me something else, it’s probably going to go right back to that pizza hut, right? Because for whatever reason and Miles, I want you to get into this a little bit more on the technical side, you know, they have that listing. They have that voice SEO. If you will. You know that has put them up there, at least in my area when I do the search for it.

And you may get a different result since we’re in a little bit different area, but you know that’s going to be interesting how this whole thing plays out and just so the come back to brand for a minute. And so, to me, if I’m thinking about my business and the next five or 10 years, and this is for any category out there.

You know, this is like, if you’re not packing it up, if you’re not calling it a day by like Labor Day, you know, if you’re not going to retire, like we’re talking to you, like you need to think about how are people going to search voice first world, just like we talked five, 10 years ago about a mobile first world, which we’re in now.

How are people going to search for you in a voice first world? And I would be putting, you know, 80% of my time and my energy and my dollars into building that brand and to building that brand equity, to building that top-of-mind awareness and my category. And so, when somebody thinks about my category, they have to think around me, you know, and I know I’ve used this cat, this example before, but everybody knows this example when I talk about it and that’s well, two of them, there’s one, one, that’s kind of a positive example and a positive memory for people. And one that people usually gripe about, I guess, for lack of a better term. And the first one is the pizza hut radio jingle. Right. Everybody knows if you live in Lawrence for any amount of time, even if you’ve never listened.

Does the three local commercial radio stations, you know the name or excuse me, you know, the name pizza hut and you know, the phone number eight four two one two one two calls not be too sure. I think he’s trying to say pizza shuttle there. Pizza shuttle. Sorry.

I got this local marketing campaign. I got the, at least I got the jingle part, right? Sorry. I still had pizza out of my brain from Alexa. Right? Pizza shuttle. Sorry, pizza, Joe. Eight four two one two one two calls now pizza shuttle, right? I’ve been running that same jingle for 25 plus years; brand brand brand ran wrong term and repetitive longterm and repetitive.

When you think about ordering a pizza, they have to, they, you have to think about pizza shuttle, right? You have to think around them. You have to think like even on a subconscious level that will pop into your head now.

Interesting. They don’t have that same brand equity. If we’re just talking about search, right?
So, like these people who have spent the last 10 or 15 years building up their SEO results but haven’t done the branding work on the advertising side of things. They’re going to have to start digging a new well right now, because the game has changed, right? Just like if you built this glorious website 15 years ago, but it was completely unmovable friendly.

Well, you had to totally update or probably even scrap it and rebuild it to make it mobile friendly, right? Because the whole landscape changed so same. Thing’s going to happen here and less. You also built up that brand. This is why again; brand is so F and important. Second example of this is the one that people gripe about and that is Academy cars and Lonnie Blackburn.

Right. Are you familiar with those commercials Miles? Yes, I am. Right. If you’ve listened to the radio at any time in the past 10 or 15 years, you know what I’m talking about? Because he runs these very lengthy, you know, some would say annoying car commercials all the time, and they’re a national campaign that you know, those same scripts are tweaked for different dealerships in different areas all over the country. And the reason that, that campaign and that company that does, that has been so successful because they freaking work, you know? And back when I was selling radio ads, people used to always tell me, can you get that Lonnie Blackburn off the air?

I just, stuff is so annoying, but what they didn’t know is that life was just blazing his name into their brain. And so, on a subconscious level, when you thought about used cars and Lawrence, you had to think around Lonnie Blackburn, have you ever wonder asking to have it removed? They’re asking for him by name a hundred percent. They’re promoting them as they’re saying, man, that stuff’s so annoying. Well, but it works. Okay. Again, its brand is bringing its brands, brands, brands. That’s something really, interesting that I think that everybody needs to take a little bit of time and think about and apply that to your same you’re that same business, because somebody right now could be thinking, man, I’m sitting pretty.

I have the number one ranking in all my SEO, you know, Google search terms. Even got being, I even I’m working on a duck, duck go, you know, right now, you know, like they, they really like think they’ve got it set. But what they don’t understand is that the rules of the entire game are about to change. Wilt Chamberlain is about to come and be a player on the court now. And so, we’re going to have to change all the rules because there’s totally different game. Right. And if I’m not building that brand equity at the same time, and I’m not also building up my listings in my SEO, so to speak on voice first, then I’m not digging my well, and I’m going to end up being thirsty.

Miles: [00:19:11] And I will have a couple of tips on voice search and how to modify your SEO campaign to work a little bit better with search. But that does bring up interesting. I don’t know, a side point here. And that is as far as optimizing for search or looking at how some of these different voice technologies looking at, you know, specifically at Amazon home assistant search, we don’t know how those are working yet. We don’t know how they’re prioritizing things. They have their proprietary algorithms, they have their own search functions that aren’t necessarily leveraging the algorithms that we’ve been working with, or that we as a search engine, optimizers and experts are used to it’s a whole new game over here.

And so, you said that your Alexa was recommending Pizza Hut near you. And then you could call me up someone who’s been working as a search engine optimizer for a long time. And you know, might be considered an expert in the field. And I can’t tell you why, at least not for a certain, I’ve got some ideas on the whole thing.

And we’ll call them educated guesses, but we don’t know for sure. And so, the next couple of years and. Of effort from people in the search world or kind of be going to be guessing, check, figure out what works. Maybe some of the larger platforms will start releasing some more information on that and allowing us to work with them on that.

But as of right now, there’s a big question Mark, next to the actual inner workings of voice search and the way around that, the sort of hack, if you will, is that. Branding that you are, you’re bringing up here because no matter what algorithm you’re running, if you are searching something on a respectable platform that works well.

And you asked for your business by name, it has to give you that business, right? Instead of pizza. Yeah. Instead of saying, I want pizza, you say yes. Order me Rudy’s then it has to go directly to Rudy’s here. So that is kind of that’s the work around, regardless of how all these platforms change and grow and develop.

And regardless of what information is made available to us, SEO people or, you know, what’s kept behind the curtain brand. Works, and that will continue to work. So, I think that’s still good advice though. I will have a couple of tips on the SEO side of things to make sure that you do have that organic ranking, hopefully alongside your branding efforts.

Mike: [00:21:35] Yeah, definitely Miles. I’m glad. I’m glad you brought that up. And I’m just going to expand on that for one quick minute, because this is what keeps me up at night right now, like is you’re like, what is, what keeps me up at night is what I’m about to tell you? Because what if, okay. Let’s just play with this a little bit here.

You know, Amazon just bought, well, not just bought, I guess has been a little bit, but they recently bought recent memory, bought whole foods, correct? Yep. Okay. Not so I know, not so recently, but it was a huge, huge acquisition. And I think I just read the other day; I think this is accurate. Maybe double check me on it, but I think that Kansas City is going to get a One of these whole foods slash Amazon smart stores very, very, very soon, like sometime this summer.

And so that’s going to be really interesting to see how that plays out, but you know, what if they just kept going down that road and what if they bought them their own pizza place? You know, just using the example of the pizza place, right. Or, you know, what of Google. Start, you know, started their own pizza place or whatever their own hardware stores, you know, I mean, we can just go from category to category here or what if they partner, this is probably the, even the more likely scenario.

What if they partner with existing, you know, fortune 500 companies, they can throw a whole lot of cash at them, you know? Or, you know, you could do a complete merger slash buyout, like the whole foods example and all the sudden. When you say, Alexa, give me this. Or Alexa, give me that there are no other choices, because like you just said, they, we don’t know exactly how the voice algorithms work at this point.

And we may never know. And instead of going the other way and it opens up, it may go completely 180 degrees the other way. And it may, could be a completely closed platform. Right. And the small businesses are just shut out of that. And that’s what keeps me up at night. And that’s why I’m talking about to every small business, the importance of growing your brand, because again, that’s the workaround. If I can, if I say the name of your brand, that’s how you can get around this, you know, long as you have your listing set up properly and we can help you with that, you know, but it doesn’t cost hardly anything to do that. Everybody should do that, but that’s the thing that I’m like, huh?

I mean, they could really throw a huge right hook out there and it’d be good night Irene for for a lot of folks. I’m not trying to scare anybody here, but, you know, again, we were wanting to think about all the options around the table and not take this stuff lightly, you know, not take it as grain of salt because it’s going to be here really, soon.

It’s already happening here and not just this stuff, folks. I mean, there’s all kinds of things coming down. You know, the pipes with self-driving cars and all the rest that are going to completely disrupt 99% of the businesses out there. So, we just got to stay on our toes and that’s where we’re having this conversation.

Miles: [00:24:38] Yeah, not to scare anyone out there. The thing is going to change. It’s already veins you’re screwed. So, jumping off that, I think it’s probably about time to jump into some actual actionable steps, some tips on the whole thing. Because it’s not just a horror story here. This is a very useful tool that you can start to leverage.

And some of it’s pretty..  it gets complicated. Some of it’s a little bit more extensive, but some of it’s easy. So, I think that the first tip that we can put out there that is for voice search for regular text-based search for just being a business in 2021 is that listing claim.

You have to have your listings properly claimed and optimized. At the very least, you need to have a Google my business. Listing that tells, Google everything about you, where you are, how to contact you, what you do. And it’s the very first step to showing up in any and all searches you can do as little as just claim your listings saying here’s my business.

Here’s where I am. Here’s what I’m called. Here’s what I do. Or you can really build out that listing into pretty much its own. Website, it can be something the size of your own website. You can post to it like social media. That’s where you’re going to get your reviews from. You can put tons of different information on all your different services and offerings and our changes and updates out to everyone for, I don’t know, holiday hours or COVID reactions and how you’re doing that.

A ton of different things that you can do with that. It’s a very powerful tool and it’s easy for for anyone to go out there and set up. So at least do that extending beyond that, going into more listings Listing is just getting your business information out there. Your name, address, phone number, website, et cetera.

And there’s a ton of places online where that information can reside. Of course, you’ve got the Google listing. You’ve got the social media accounts. You also have business directories out there. So, think like the old school phone book, but there’s a thousand of them and they’re all all over the net.

You’ve got apps. That have business information. You’ve got map services, you know, there’s a different directory for searching for businesses on Google maps and there is on Apple maps and Yahoo maps. And there are more industry specific sites specifically for restaurants in your area or for hardware stores in your area or whatever it is.

So, there’s a ton of different places that your information can live on the internet. You can go out there and claim as many as you possibly can manage all those things. Or there are some tools that can help you do that. We have one here that’s very helpful and mostly automated. But you know, there’s a ton out there.

Do a little bit of research and find one that works for you and get your information out there. Get your listings out there because that is the first step. And it’s so easy and so affordable. It’s an absolute must in 2021 is the first step to getting found on regular search on mobile. And of course, now in voice search then I want to go into a couple more specific things on just voice search as it really has changed the name of the game for SEO for search engine optimization. The big change is that people are using more natural language. It’s actually kind of a reversion back to early searches because when the internet was first coming out, we got our first search engines. People were asking full language questions. They would actually end the question with a question mark.

They go, dear Google, where is the thing near me? Question Mark. No, we use that as a joke now, but people really were typing in long form questions. And so, in order to show up in those results, you would have to optimize your content to answer those long form questions. And then as people got a little bit more used to the internet and used to searching, they realized they only needed to put in a couple of keywords.

You’re not asking for a full question of where’s the nearest pizza place to me, please. You’re saying pizza Lawrence, Kansas. Pizza near me, whatever. And then it spits out those results. Now, when you come to voice search, people are going back to asking those entire questions and those questions are being converted into text form, and then put through some form of search algorithm. And so, you now have to revert back to that old school way of doing things and optimizing your content for natural language and for long tail keywords, full phrases So a quick and easy way to do that is to think of some of those questions that people might ask. And, you know, put that actual question in your content.

If you’re writing a blog, if you’re doing social media posts, have the title of that be where’s the best pizza place in Lawrence, Kansas. And then write a bit about that and why you’re amazing and better than everyone else here. Those kinds of questions and those long tail keywords those natural language searches are now going to be the name of the game.

And I say that because voice search is a huge portion of the search market, depending on where you’re looking and what data you’re pulling here. It can be anywhere from a third to half. The searches on the internet are done through some sort of voice interaction. So, if you are not. Thinking about this with your SEO strategy and you don’t have more natural language in there, more longterm keywords, you’re not catering to this type of search, then you’re missing out on a gigantic chunk of the market.

Mike: [00:29:48] Yeah, definitely. Miles there’s a status. I saw that 90 million people in the United States used voice search last year in 2020. And a recent survey with consumers said that 70 more than 70% of them would rather do a voice search than traditional search when looking to buy something so hugely important.

Miles: [00:30:10] And you also have to think about, we always say, know your audience, know your medium, know the technology you’re using. Think about how people are using voice search because it is a little bit different. One of the biggest changes, one of the biggest differences between voice search and, we’ll call it traditional search, is that people are much more likely to be searching for something local.

Through voice. If they’re searching for something that could be nationwide, it could come from anywhere they’re going to go text-based searches. But if you’re asking Alexa to do something to search for something, if you’re asking your Google assistant or Siri, whatever it is, you’re most likely for looking for something near you or something that you can interact with directly near you.

So that’s another tip on on search engine optimization. When it comes to voice optimize for local searches. If you are a local business, you have a physical location, then make sure to throw in those location tags in their site, your city all the time in all of your content, if you have multiple locations or your national business, instead of looking at doing one vast national campaign, do a bunch of smaller ones that focus on each one of those locations. So, you’ve got all your long tail keywords followed by the city that you’re in to make sure to have those geographically based keywords in there because voice search is local.

I think the last point that I had here was just trying to keep things concise. And, still looking at those kinds of question form searches. I mean, think about it. If you’re interacting with Alexa, you’re interacting with Google. You ask a question; you want to say the answer to that question is this and then you move on with your day. You don’t want it to read you a novel. So, think about that kind of question. And then at the very top of your content, very top of your article, your website, page, whatever you’re putting out there, put the answer at the very beginning in the most concise and clear and keyword heavy way that you possibly can because that’s where these voice assistants, these home assistants are going to be looking for the answer.

They’re going to look for an article that has the title of that question. And then they’re going to find the article that has the answer right then and there in the most concise, clear, and accurate way possible. And they’re going to deliver that to consumers. And that’s going to count towards traffic towards your site.

That’s going to make you rank higher in whatever sort of ranking hierarchy these things are using. And it’s going to establish you as an authority in your space. If you are the one that you know, Siri goes to for answers all the time. So be concise. Think about questions, think about things in form of natural language and keep it local. I think those are going to be my voice search tips of the day.

Mike: [00:32:50] I love it, Miles.

Miles: [00:32:54] All right. If you guys have any questions on this, or you just want to jump in on the conversation, please comment below again. This is not supposed to be a lecture we’re basing this content on your feedback and the questions we’ve gotten over the last couple of weeks here from you, either in the comments here in our personal interactions, in our email in the, Ask Wildman email at askwildman@wildmanweb.com.

So that’s where we’re getting all this stuff from. So please keep it coming, everyone. But I did want to go into sort of another aspect of ways before we, we move on to anything else. I mean, it’s cool for search. It’s very convenient. There’s a lot of people using it for search, and we need to think about that, but that shouldn’t be the entirety of your voice strategy.

As you kind of started to talk about at the very beginning of this mic voice has. A unique way of interacting with people. We posted a little while back, I think earlier this week or last week that quote that you said last last week on the show, I think that voice is the organ of the soul.

It’s a very personal way of interacting with someone. And it’s something that we don’t really get in a lot of other online content and marketing content. It just doesn’t get across in any kind of text-based solutions. Right. You’re listening to the human voice is a really special way of communicating with someone and allows you to have a more personal, more meaningful connection with your customers. And used properly, these technologies surrounding voice can allow you to expand on your content marketing strategy, get some more stuff out there and really engage with your end users in a unique, very meaningful way that your competition may not be doing very likely is not doing, especially on the scale of business that we were talking about.

We’re looking at some cool content marketing plays that some of the bigger businesses have done over the last couple of years. I’ve got a list here. I mean, some of it is just providing resources and looking at Campbell’s and Nestle, both created skills for Alexa to read to people, cooking instructions and recipes while they’re going through the entire thing so that they will promote their products and those things, of course. But also, it’s just having people engage with that brand regularly and having recurring positive interactions. If you’re asking Nestle every night, how to make dinner, and then it’s talking you through the entire thing, that’s a very personalized, very meaningful interaction that you’ve had with that brand.

Yep. Patrones got one out there for making different cocktails of course, telling you to use Patrona tequila. You’ve got a PayPal integration with Siri so that you can tell Siri to send money to friends and family and other businesses that are using PayPal. Of course, you’ve got, you know, Domino’s and other big pizza places allowing you to order directly from your couch and having that be very personalized or remembers what you ordered last time and asked you if you want to do the same thing.

There are other educational skills being built out there. Regardless though that the point here is that it’s everything that we’ve been saying for the last couple of months on content marketing and providing value to your end users, to your audience, but in a unique, very engaging, very personalized way that allows you to have very meaningful conversations and regular engagements with your audience that, you know, maybe you couldn’t do before. And most likely that your competition isn’t doing.

Mike: [00:36:20] Yeah, definitely Miles. I mean, it’s a great new technique that’s been emerging on the platform, you know, as just a way to provide somebody value. And and again, you know, you’re, you know, you are just the one who’s facilitating that.

And so, it’s a beautiful example of content marketing merging with this new technology. And I think that even the smallest of businesses should be looking at, you know, can I make an Alexa skill either in that way or even internally, you know, as a way to basically streamline their business, make it more efficient.

You know, that’s something else that we haven’t really touched on. Yet, but you know, there’s a lot of things out there that are already built and there’s like something like 80, I think, thousand Alexa skills at this point, you know, and they’re growing all the time. I mean, that’s going to end up looking like a small number here in a few years.

Go and explore what is already out there, but then yeah. Also take a look at, Hey, is there something that I could build you know, either again as an external, you know, kind of content marketing piece or a way to help people bring value to people or internally as a way to streamline your operations, make yourself more efficient.

You know, even if you’re just a solo preneur, I would be looking at these kinds of Alexa skills that allow you to Have your inbox read to you, you can do all of your mail by voice. You know, you can have Alexa book your appointments for you and manage your calendar.

You know, same with Google, you know, I mean, all of these things that can just, you know, end up kind of being like a personal assistant to you. You know, would be very helpful for most of the small businesses and certainly the solo entrepreneurs out there that we know. There’s a wide range of skills out there.

And like I said, it’s growing all the time, but you know, the examples that you gave as a way to do content marketing through it, I think is absolutely beautiful. And it’s the future. Yeah. I mean, it’s the now of marketing, but it’s just going to continue to grow and be the future of our country for not only big brands like that, but for small businesses like us.

Miles: [00:38:21] Yeah. A bunch of utility bunch of automations that you can build into the whole thing. But overall, it just allows you to have, and to create. More natural and seamless engagements with your audience and encourages retention brand loyalty. It’s kinda what we were talking about. I think in we were talking about chatbots for this particular point but saying that the chat bot isn’t really meant to replace a human or anything it’s meant to facilitate that interaction and get them to a real human in a faster, more meaningful.

Way so that the entire experience is a little bit smoother. It’s a little bit faster. It’s more convenient for the end user is more pleasant. And if you can have that sort of seamless transition from pure technology to true human interaction, then that allows the the end user and your audience member to interact with your brand in a much more meaningful way, a much more engaging way, and one that’s going to stick with them.

So, voice is just sort of an extension of that. You can really make a. A very powerful experience and a very customized experience with, like I said, the information that we gather from these these technologies, they know who they’re talking to in a household, you can completely personalize your message and have this little artificially intelligent talking box in the corner, spouting your brand spiel exactly to the right person at exactly the right time when they wanted to hear it, and then giving them an access point directly to your business. Yeah, that is immensely powerful if leveraged properly.

Mike: [00:39:59] Definitely. And that’s why everybody needs to be thinking about how can I and how should I create content in a voice first world? And, you know, you just gave some great examples of how to do that, but you know, podcasting is another way.

Clubhouse is another way and there’s going to be more emerging voice first platforms coming down the pipeline very, very soon. But that, that’s a way. That people are gonna, you know, going back to what we talked about a little bit last week, that’s the way that people can get to know like, and trust you in a deeper, more consuming way than just reading your posts online, or even, you know, reading your blog, or even watching video and people may think, you know, video’s kind of been King the last five or so years. And I don’t think it’s going to go away, but I think it’s going to change. And I think that voice is going to take that driver’s seat. And just going back to what we talked about at the beginning of the show, and that’s because of speed and the fact that when I’m engaging with a voice, a piece of content I can multitask, right? When I w when somebody sits down and watch it, and they probably don’t sit down and watch us Miles, because we’re not much to look at, but when somebody sits down and watches a normal video or a live presentation, you know, they’re watching it almost as much as they’re listening to it.

Whereas with a podcast. I don’t have to sit down and engage with that. It doesn’t have to consume all my attention. I can be doing other things. I can be you know, answering texts, emails. I can be traveling, and it can be doing things around the house or the office or wherever while I’m also consuming that.

So, what happens is I end up consuming more of it. You know, we mentioned clubhouse a few times. Like, I guess we’d get into it now, but you know, that app is now set to record. According to the Apple app store for the longest screen time in history, across its user base. And it’s not screen time at all.

When you think about it, it’s ear time, you know, it’s speaker time. That’s why people are consuming such massive levels of it. And they’re on there for three, four, five, six hours a day is because it’s much more digestible to consume audio than it is anything else. It’s much easier to do it and then texts in much easier to do it than video.

And so that’s what we have working in our advantage is that people can consume long form stuff, easier. We can get into the minutia, you know, in the details and really talk to somebody and really tell stories and really explain things and correct misconceptions and you know, and things like that. And part of the beauty of a platform like clubhouse is that it’s interactive and it’s not one to many. It can be one to many, or it can be many to many, and you can have people join you right there, interactively and ask questions and give feedback. And. You know, that’s an incredible medium to be to be exploring of how your brand can fit into that.

And we do have a little bit of news on that front for everybody who’s been waiting on the Android side of the world is that they did mention in their town hall on Sunday that they are anticipating. Now take this with a grain of salt. They’re anticipating that they’re going to be ready to launch Android sometime in the next four to six weeks.

So, I think a lot faster than most of us. Had anticipated, but they do have a demo version of it right now. And it does work, and they’ve just added a third developer on the Android only teams. It should be very soon that clubhouse goes on the Android and the course that will just explode the size of that community, which has already been exploded.

And then like, we’ve talked about before, Facebook is working feverishly right now to launch its own voice only app platform, which coincidentally at the moment looks a lot like Clubhouse.

There may be some loss. That’s a great idea. I’ll take. Yes. And and Twitter has been working on their own version as well. This is all going to be greatly exponentially expanding from where it is now. And so that’s why it’s a good thing to be looking at this, you know, now and figuring out your strategy.

And then in course there’s just good old-fashioned podcasting, which, you know, it seems like now at this point it’s been around for a little while, but it’s still what we would consider an emerging platform. It’s still not too late. Well, you know, to jump in and start doing a podcast. And I would highly recommend that every business out there looks at doing a podcast.

Because again it’s a really great way to connect with somebody to build that know like and trust factor and to do deep dives tell stories you know, give explanations and things that you can’t really get across in that short. Term short attention span world that people are usually into when they’re consuming media online or are in a social platform.

And so, it’s really a great advantage to do that. Yeah. And along those lines, Miles, I’m going to put you on the hot seat right now because. We have our Ask Wildman podcast set to come out sometime very, very soon. And I just got word from Anna that she has done everything she possibly can to get that thing ready to launch. And we are just waiting on you. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, you got to tell the people right now when the Ask Wildman podcast will be launched.

Miles: [00:45:31] I have to figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing. And as soon as I figure out what I’m supposed to be doing, I will do that thing. Okay. All right. Good.

Mike: [00:45:39] It’s coming real soon, folks. And along those lines, sorry to put you on the hot seat there Miles. I was just having some fun, but. Along those lines. We are, we’ll also be launching a podcast network Lawrence podcast network coming down the pipeline very, very soon. So, if you are a podcaster or you’re getting ready to start a podcast and you’ve just been like, ah, I need a little bit of help or I don’t want to do this.

And then nobody’s there to listen. Talk to us DM us. The Lawrence podcast network is going to be all about cross-promoting each other and and building each other up. And so that’s what we’re here to provide. So let us know how we can help you grow your podcast and start your journey into voice first content.

Miles: [00:46:22] Yeah, we are practicing what we preach here. So, I think there’s a lot of people that probably just interact with this show. On audio, I know I’ve talked to a couple of our regular listeners and Jeff right now has commented on how he does not. He doesn’t look at us while he’s working on stuff.

That’s probably a good idea. Jeff we’re really, we’ve got some faces for radio over here. But yeah, we are going to be putting this out on a podcast apparently as soon as I can get my act together. And then yeah, we are going to be launching the Lawrence podcast network. We think that audio really is where things are going.

And, you know, the Lawrence community has really been lacking on that side of things. So, we want to help to get that platform out there and give people a vehicle to start creating content and putting it out there for our community to enjoy. There’s going to be a lot of benefits to working with it and using it.

Hopefully it will allow people to cross promote. We’re going to be a hosting podcast, taking care of all the technical side of everything, the marketing side of things and helping you to grow everything there. Like Mike said, if you’ve got an existing podcast, we’d like to talk to you, or if you just thought about doing something like that, you thought about putting something together.

You’ve got something interesting to say. But you just haven’t. Yeah. I didn’t know how to do it or haven’t really had the ability to that yet. Then reach out to us as well. Cause we’re, we are here for that. Okay. Okay. Over at the comments over here to see if we’ve got anything to talk about this week, we’ve got a couple of points.

I think we’re probably going to hit those. I want to hit these things next week. We are going to be back live on April 7th next Wednesday. You said earlier that you had a voice article. Coming out. We do not in fact have that up on the website yet. So, if we find it well, we’ve got a bunch of new articles coming up there.

I know I’ve written a couple. I know Anna has written a couple and we’ve got some more coming from you as well. I think we have that one scheduled to drop soon, but I’m not entirely sure when regardless, this is a good opportunity for you to sign up for our newsletter because you do get this stuff earlier than anyone earlier than the public and some of that stuff never goes out to the public and it just exists in that newsletter. So, sign up for it. I’ve put the link in there, or you can just go to our website. There’s a sign-up form on. I think pretty much every page, something pops up and ask you to sign up for the newsletter at this point.

So please put your email in there. It’s not spammy at all. We’re really just putting out value. It’s very much like this show here. Give that a thought or if you have someone else that you think would benefit from that and they can’t tune into this show for whatever reason, then, you know, maybe that’s a better medium for them.

Okay. Well, I think that’s pretty much it for today. Mike, you want to wrap up? We’re coming up on an hour here. I think they’re probably tired of listening to us.

Mike: [00:49:07] Oh, I don’t believe that for a minute. They’re just going to get warmed up for that 50 plus hours of podcasts that are about to drop folks. Yeah. When we do launch the podcast we’ve got, I think, 50 episodes in the bag. And so just, you know, just a real quick point about that, because. You know, we talk a lot about making content in the course, you know, small businesses out there, you know, they’re busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest.

And the reply we usually get is “oh, Mike I would love to do podcasts. We’d love to do more content. We just don’t have the time to do it.” Well, you have to have a system. You know, and so that, that’s the first thing. And then of course, you know, the other thing people have is a little bit of a stage fright.

You know what? I’ve never put anything together. I’ve never put content out. I’ve never, I hate the way my voice sounds, you know, all of these things. And you know, we just have to remember that nobody was going good. It’s something that when they first started doing it and that, you know, through doing something and through practicing something and failing is how you get better and it’s how you excel.

So, you had just have to take that first step and start doing it, you know, is Zig Ziglar says, you know, anything we’re doing is we’re doing poorly until you’re able to. Learn to do it right. That’s what you have to do when you put out content, but you know, you also have to have a system.

This shows an example of how, you know, too busy guys like us. Can put out regular content is we have a system in place where every single week we take an hour, Wednesday at 11, and we do this show. And then from that, we rip the audio and we’re going to turn that into a podcast and then we’ll have Anna clip certain sections of the video, and that’s going to be Instagram content or Facebook content or LinkedIn content, or we’re going to take a full-length article in out of something that we talked about here on the show, and then turn that into little micro pieces of content for micro blogs and social.

We may take a piece of an audio and do an audio gram and clip that. And then there’s another piece of content. So, from one hour a week, we can then siphon off multiple pieces of content and really get a week’s plus worth of content to be able to serve from that hour. And of course, you have to have a great team.

You have to have somebody like Anna, who’s our queen of content on the backend be able to do this for you, you know, but. That’s the system that you have to get into place, and you have to be consistent about it, that’s the other golden rule here. So, I’ll leave you guys with those tips, but do you have any other questions, please reach out to us. DM us. Everybody have a safe, prosperous, healthy week. Happy Easter and see you next time.

Miles: [00:51:51] All right. Thanks Mike. Well, you’ve heard it from Mike work smarter, not harder. We can reuse content. You can use content multiple ways, cut up different mediums. I think that really is a common thread that we hit on this show and that is just You know, as small businesses, we get caught up doing so many things, trying to run our business, trying to work on our business while working in our business.

And it can be a little overwhelming sometimes. Any tips or tools or systems that you can develop to work smarter, not harder to reuse content and to have one thing turn into a hundred things, that’s probably going to be a good option for you there. Yeah, so that is it for today.

We will be back with another episode of Ask Wildman next Wednesday at 11, if you haven’t already, go to our website at wildmanweb.com, we’ve got tons of resources there. We have the archives of this show. So, all of the shows that we’ve done in the past are on our livestream archives page, along with the transcript on anything.

So, in case we at some point said something smart and you want to go back and find that, that’s all available for you. We do have our blog, tons of articles there on everything that we’re talking about here. And a bunch of other resources. So again, make sure to check out wildmanweb.com and sign up for our newsletter for premium content.

Before we ever posted to the website and some stuff that we never put out there for public use. It’s and I know I’m a little bit biased here, but the team over here has really been doing an awesome job on those newsletters that they’ve been coming out. Just put one out at the beginning of this show.

If you are subscribed, check your inbox. All right. That’s it for me. Thanks everyone. And I’ll see you next Wednesday.

 

Let’s Get Started

Ready To Make a Real Change? Let's Build this Thing Together!

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from the Wildman team.

Success!

Share This