Podcasts about google actions

John Campbell is the founder and managing director of the voice AI agency Rabbit & Pork, a division of TIPi Group. Previously he was head of performance marketing and SEO at another TIPi agency ROAST. The agency's start was automating the collection of answers from Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant for a variety of questions. That data led to several reports which captured the attention of brands, and from there, Rabbit & Pork began building Alexa skills, Google Actions, and other voice interactive experiences in addition to voice SEO projects. Campbell goes into some detail in our interview about how Rabbit & Pork automated voice search result collection. He also discusses where voice assistants source their answers to common questions, the strategies brands use today to improve their ranking, and approaches that do not work. In addition, we discuss how the Alexa Answers service works today, how it is evolving, and what that indicates about voice search. Beyond search, Campbell goes through the differences in building for Alexa versus Google Assistant and how Google's pullback from the third-party Conversational Action ecosystem has impacted how brands are approaching voice assistants today. We conclude by discussing a variety of industry use cases for voice and chatbot solutions.

It's time to reveal this year's voice tech research from Vixen Labs! The Voice Consumer Index 2022 is now available for download, revealing the latest stats around the usage and behaviour of voice assistants in the UK, US and Germany. In this episode of Talking Shop, Vixen Labs CEO James Poulter gives an overview of the UK and US usage stats. We also hear from creative strategist Rich Merrett as he explains more about Google sunsetting Google Actions, and some new use cases for synthetic voice.   Rich's news links... Google sunsets Google Actions Google Duplex launches in Brazil Discord launches text to voice channels Krafton reveals virtual human, Ana Conversational AI therapy startup Wysa earns FDA breakthrough certification Hit like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you don't miss the next episode of Talking Shop Download the Vixen Labs Voice Consumer Index 2022 Follow us on social media @Vixen_Labs on Twitter, Vixen Labs on LinkedIn and @vixen_labs on Instagram.

In this episode Vixen Labs' strategist, Scot Westwater exclusively reveals what we can expect from this year's Voice Consumer Index research. The VCI 2022 data will hit your inbox on June 21 if you're signed up to our mailing list (head to vixenlabs.co/newsletter to make sure you are!) We also hear from Vixen Labs CEO James Poulter about the importance of voice search and Rich Merret gives a run-down of the latest voice tech news, including this week's announcement that Google is to sunset Google Actions. JP's presentation to The Like Minds Nudge Ideas Festival Google sunsets Google Actions   Don't forget to... Hit like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you don't miss the next episode of Talking Shop Follow us on social media @Vixen_Labs on Twitter, Vixen Labs on LinkedIn and @vixen_labs on Instagram.  

Dana Young founded AIPEX in 2017 to solve a problem he faced as an independent vacation rental property host. Voice assistants could provide his guests with a better experience and save him the challenge of answering a lot of redundant questions.  He started by building Alexa skills and Google Actions. AIPEX now has a shared service instance of Alexa for Hospitality which makes the solution scalable and easy to use for other property owners, hotels, and assisted living communities.   Dana shares in detail his journey building the first self-service solution for vacation rental and hotel owners, the key use cases, and evolution of the company. 

Voice Spark Live JAN 6th 9PM EST Coming @U #Voicespark Live Nick, Ben, and Emily will be talking about Alexa Skills and Google Actions that will help you keep those resolutions. #voicefirst #voicetech #voiceevents #freevoiceevents ⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎------⁎⁎⁎----- Subscribe to Voice Spark Alexa & More https://bit.ly/310VmaH

“I would say that the core driver has always been trying to enable more folks to engage, more people to be able to express themselves. So when I go back and look at all the things in my life, that seems to be the theme." --  Dr. Ahmed Bouzid   This episode's guest is the founder and CEO of Witlingo, a McLean, Virginia-based company that builds tools for publishing sonic experiences, from Alexa Skills, Google Actions, and Bixby Capsules to Microcasts and social audio products and solutions. Before Witlingo, he was the Head of Product at Amazon Alexa and the Vice President of Product at Genesys. He holds twelve patents in Human Language Technology, is an Ambassador at The Open Voice Network, an Editor at The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective (SERRC), and was recognized as a "Speech Luminary" by Speech Technology Magazine, as well as among the Top 11 Speech Technologists by Voicebot.ai. His name is Dr. Ahmed Bouzid, and if you have any interest in the future of voice and technology, this will be an enlightening discussion.  As always, if you have any questions for my guest, you're welcome to reach out through the links in the show notes.  If you have questions for me, just visit https://audiobrandingpodcast.com (audiobrandingpodcast.com) where you'll find all sorts of ways to get in touch. Plus, subscribing to the newsletter (on the audiobrandingpodcast.com webpage) will let you know when the new podcasts are available.   Better Than Computers Dr. Bouzid starts the interview by recalling his formative years in Casablanca, and his memories of waking up to the sounds of chickens on his family's villa. He goes on to tell us about his work as a software engineer and how computers still have a long way to go to catch up with human language skills.  “Language is a very fascinating problem to solve from the technological perspective,” he explains, “one of the hardest problems in artificial intelligence.” Teaching a Machine Manners We take a deeper look at the paradox of machine learning versus the human brain, how people have evolved around the use of language in a way that computers haven't. "Some people say that we are wired for language," he tells us, "that it's something that we are born with." Even something as seemingly simple as being polite can be almost impossible to program into a computer since it depends on so many cultural and social cues that we don't usually think about. The Fish and the Bird Next, we talk about Witlingo and the challenges facing voice-first systems like Alexa and Siri.  Dr. Bouzid explores one of those challenges with a story he calls the Fallacy of the Fish and the Bird that illustrates the temptation to judge a new product using the same metrics that we used for the older ones, even when they don't make sense. As he put it, “the metrics of the fish don't apply to the bird, and, also, there are a lot more fish than there are birds.” Thinking Like a Bot The first half of our interview focuses on the advantages and limitations of chatbots, the uncanny valley that an almost-human voice system can fall into, and his approach to making AI voices and voice-first interfaces more accessible. “I subscribe to the school of thought that says we should not try to have the bot emulate the human being,” Dr. Bouzid explains. “The conversation between a human being and a bot is different than a human being to a human being.” Episode Summary Dr. Bouzid's early childhood in Morocco Why humans are better at speech than computers The challenges of teaching an AI language Witlingo and the metrics of voice-first software How we talk to and interact with voice AI Connect with Dr. Ahmed Bouzid Witlingo: https://witlingo.com/ (https://witlingo.com/) The Fish & the Bird: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ahmedbouzid_voicefirst-sonic-sonicmarketing-activity-6818992542961438721-2Dvl...

Team from Voice Spark Live - Nick Sawka, Emily Banzhaf About Emily Emily is a conversation designer, voice designer, one of the hosts of Voice Spark Live, and a member of the Open Voice Network, working to develop standards and ethical guidelines for voice experiences. She was part of the winning team of the Digital Assistant Academy's Hackabot. Before transitioning to the voice field, Emily was a professional violinist, performing all over the world with various ensembles. About Nick Nicholas was recently brought on at Wanderword as their Chief Evangelist. Nick will represent Wanderword in the US in sales, networking, gathering product testers as well as improving the use/onboarding of Fabula, Poptale and entertainment production. Nick found his passion for Alexa back in 2015 when she was first released and was part of the initial Beta program for the device. In 2017 he made the jump to development and has been involved with creating over 400 Alexa Skills. Further, Nicholas has experience with working on and creating Google Actions. In addition to his love for Voice First tech he is an experienced Chief Of Operations with a demonstrated history of working in the military industry, with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Management from University of Phoenix.

The first minute of this episode explains the huge opportunity in podcast creation tools: making true ease of use to create great sounding content. This exists in video (see TikTok, Instagram Stories), but not really, not widely, in short form audio from a podcasting perspective. The second part illustrates exactly why we need shortform audio broadcasting from mobile or anywhere that sounds just as good as you Shure mic (watch my video review of my version of Joe Rogan's Shure SM7B setup here.) The question is: how do we add more content to this burgeoning platform? Internet history rhymes. Book a voice marketing consultation with Emily Binder: https://emilybinder.com/voice-marketing/call/. Subscribe free or leave a review.Voice marketing encompasses recorded audio, sonic branding, and voice AI experiences like Alexa Skills or Google Actions. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Paul Hickey, is the CEO and Lead Developer of Data Driven Design. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. He recently founded The Voice Designer, The Voice Event, the Nashville Voice Conference, which focuses on introducing opportunities for all businesses to increase efficiency, effectiveness and relevancy via integrating voice-based applications like Alexa Skills and Google Actions into their digital presence.⭐️ IMPROVE YOUR DIGITAL PRESENCE NOW!

Ilya Gelfenbeyn was the founding CEO of API.ai. He and his team were true pioneers in the voice AI industry and were rewarded for those efforts through an acquisition by Google in 2016. API.ai was the development environment that most of the first Google Actions were built upon along with tens of thousands of chatbots. It is better known today as Dialogflow after a rebranding in 2017, and is one of the most widely used solutions for building conversational AI experiences. What you may not know is that API.ai was preceded by Speaktoit which was known as the Siri of Android. Speaktoit amassed over 40 million users for the app-based virtual assistant. The experience taught the team a lot about the tooling required to deploy a successful conversational assistant. That ultimately led to the creation of developer tools and the pivot into API.ai which we discuss in today's interview.  Gelfenbeyn later was a founding member of Google Assistant investments where he was involved in direct funding of several prominent voice AI startups. Today he leads an angel syndicate called The AI where he invests in AI-related companies.

A great way to start 2021 is to make sure your website is equipped with all the right SEO tools and strategies to improve your rankings. In today's interview, Aleyda Solis joins me as we discuss pruning your website of low-quality content, expanding your presence by creating Google Actions, optimizing your videos on YouTube for better search performance, and more. Aleyda is an International SEO Consultant and founder of Orainti -a highly specialized boutique SEO consultancy. She's also a blogger, speaker, and author. So whether you're an entrepreneur or running a website, this episode is full of smart strategies that can help improve your sales and conversions. Tune in! The show notes, including the transcript and checklist to this episode, are at marketingspeak.com/273.

For 2020, we decided to have a voice developer-specific year-in-review episode to make sure we spent sufficient time focused on the events that were the most impactful for developers. We were lucky to get three very experienced guests to discuss topics ranging from voice on mobile and the rise of custom voice assistants to voice for customer support, the rise of audio, the hype/utility disconnect, messaging, COVID-19, and much more. Michael Myers is vice president of product and head of development at XAPPmedia. XAPP has brought more than 1200 Alexa skills and Google Actions live for several hundred companies. More recently, the company has introduced its machine teaching technologies for complex intent models and custom assistant development. Michael was honored as a Voicebot Top Leader in Voice for 2020 in the technologist category. Also joining us is Voicetech Carl. Carl Robinson is host of the Voicetech Podcast and CEO of Rumble Studio. He has hosted over 80 episodes of his own podcast but this week shares his thoughts as a guest commentator from his home in Paris. He talks a bit about Rumble Studio and its podcast interview automation technology as well as the news of the year. Carl was also honored as a Voicebot Top leader in Voice for 2020 in the influencer category. Steve Tingiris is CEO and founder of Dabble Lab, a leading developer of conversational AI-based experiences across numerous platforms. Dabble Lab has more than 200 YouTube video tutorials about developing voice interactive experiences on Alexa, Cortana, Twilio, Jovo, and more, with more than a million views combined.  Steve is also a beta user of GPT-3 which we get into today.

In this presentation at Project Voice 2020 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I talk to marketers about why I started educating businesses about Voice Technology. Specifically, Alexa Skills and Google Actions can help businesses become more efficient and effective with their everyday business practices, as well as reach a whole new target audience that are using voice devices over mobile phones and desktop computers. The proof is in the data. As of this writing, more than 500 million people are actively using Alexa and Google Assistant. I started the Nashville Voice Conference in 2019 (https://nashvillevoiceconference.com) and The Voice Event in 2020 (https://thevoiceevent.com) to give businesses owners free resources on how to expand their overall digital presence into voice. The Voice Series (https://thevoiceseries.com) continues this. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

Voiceflow is an amazing no-code Voice Design tool, that allows Voice UI Designers like myself to author voice apps and deploy them to both Alexa and Google Assistant. However, sometimes, Google Assistant has other plans. :) Recently, Google made some updates and it kind of ruined the process for uploading Voice apps to the Google Actions Console from Voiceflow. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

"Hey Google, how do I make one of these?" Technologists Judith & Rushali explore building a conversational experience with Google Actions. They break down the voice interface design terminology and walk through their experience getting started. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/hotnewtech)

When it comes to Facebook Business Manager, Instagram Business Accounts vs. Personal Accounts and more, there is a lot to know, and a lot of details “under the hood” that Business Owners and Marketers need to be aware of. At times, it can get very frustrating and overwhelming to try and hook things up correctly between the two platforms. Particularly, Facebook Business Manager being one of the more convoluted digital marketing tools I’ve ever used. Granted, it is free, so I’m not complaining, but I digress. The point is that business owners and marketers really only should care / only do care about the following things, which are EXACTLY what this video shows you how to do: – Be able to connect your Instagram Business Account To Your Facebook Business Manager Account so you can run Instagram Ads via your Facebook Ads account. – Swap your IG personal account to an Instagram Business Account so that you can advertise via the IG app AND – Connect IG and FB so that you can post from IG and have it go directly to your Facebook Business Page. This is particularly useful for IGTV video uploads that you can send directly to your Facebook Business Page. Thanks for reading, watching and listening, and have a great day! KEEP MARKETING! Paul Hickey, Founder / CEO / Lead Strategist at Data Driven Design, LLC and founder of Nashville Voice Conference, has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 15 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing, Email Marketing and most recently, Voice App Design and Development – Alexa Skills and Google Actions. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

This is a time-limited preview. To hear the full episode, and access the full catalogue of episodes and bonus content, become a Voice Tech Pro Braden Ream is the CEO of Voiceflow, a collaborative design platform for voice app development. Voiceflow is currently responsible for powering one million conversations a month and 6% of the world’s Alexa Skills are built on their platform. In this episode, we discover how to build Alexa Skills and Google Actions without coding, using Voiceflow’s drag and drop interface. First off, we dive into conversation design on Voiceflow, the difference between using flowcharts and stateful design, the limitations of Voiceflow versus coding from scratch, and how Braden views the parity gap between what their platform can produce and what you can produce on the core platforms.We also get into industry topics such as what it is like to build a voice startup in the context of today’s funding, competition, and timing challenges; whether Braden considers voice to be an interface or platform; and his thoughts on the discovery issue and how it can be improved.You will also hear Braden’s predictions for 2020 – specifically the rise of intent-less voice app structures, the debate about whether apps are the right model for voice interfaces, and then he shares how he has managed to build such a strong community.For the Voice Tech Pro listeners, there are a number of bonus questions that reveal more about Braden’s background and the advice he has for newcomers, so be sure to sign up as a Voice Tech Pro at voicetechpodcast.com/pro.Highlights● Available at http://bit.ly/voicetechpodcast-ep063 Quotes from the show[05:56] Designers can collaborate right from the start[25:26] The industry is more collaborative. It doesn’t make sense for two startups to compete.[32:30] Monetization is a symptom of poor discoveryLinks to clickVoice Connected Business EU conference

I had the pleasure of speaking with Bradley Metrock, CEO of Score Publishing. Bradley is many things, and most certainly all things voice. Bradley has been in the voice space for several years and culminated the Project Voice event, the number one event for voice technology and AI in America. During the podcast, I had the opportunity to learn more about what Bradley does and his vision for the future of voice. He talks in depth about how businesses need to understand the importance of incorporating voice technology within small to medium size companies. If they don’t do it soon, they will quickly fall behind. Bradley is also the Keynote Speaker at Nashville Voice Conference 2020, coming up on August 7 at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. The event will focus on how all businesses can become more efficient and effective through the creation of Alexa Skills and Google Actions. Paul: How familiar do you believe businesses currently are with voice apps, Alexa skills and Google actions? Bradley: I think it varies, but in general it's pretty low. I view it as defensive in nature rather than offensive in nature. I think a business, including mom and pop gas stations, and as you get into the enterprise space, needs to be working with voice or working with groups like Data Driven Design who are working with voice on their behalf so that they are accumulating knowledge and they're getting acclimated to the space. But the bottom line is that if you're not delving into those waters, you're falling behind, and you're not understanding. Paul: Do you think businesses know that they can build custom applications for Alexa and Google assistant just like they can with websites or mobile apps and how those can actually help them be more efficient and effective? Bradley: I think some of that knowledge is there. They want to turn to professionals, and do it right. I don't think it's part of the mental calculus for a lot of companies. Like do the tools exist? Paul: You wrote a book more than just weather and music, 200 ways to use Alexa. Tell us about that. Tell us about some of those use cases that you've found. Bradley: It's profound. All the things that you can do with Alexa’s ecosystem. I always joke, you could line up a hundred Amazon employees and even they wouldn't know 70% or 80% of some of these things that are in the book. And I'll give you a couple of examples. It's called “Alexa, What am I Holding?” So four Alexa devices that have a front facing camera, like the Echo Show, and The Echo Spot. They have a feature called “Alexa, what am I holding?” Paul: If you had to come up with an idea of big or small to help any kind of business, including your own, with operations or marketing, creating a voice app, an Alexa skill or a Google action, what would it be? Bradley: We just went through that with Project Voice. We wanted to create a voice experience that you don't want to regurgitate the web. So with Project Voice, we thought, what is it that a voice experience for a conference ought to do? And what is it it can do, that's above and beyond regurgitating the web? And one of the things that we came up with that we used to great effect was having speakers talk about their sessions in their own voice. Paul: The goal of the Nashville Voice Conferences is to help people make things happen with their businesses with voice. And, you are the keynote speaker at Nashville Voice Conference 2020, and I'm very proud of that. Can you give us a little preview of what you're thinking will be valuable to the attendees on August 7th, 2020 at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center? Bradley: Sure! I'm thrilled that there is a Nashville Voice Conference, number one. I'm thrilled that it's growing. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

What makes a successful product landing page doesn't really translate to voice experiences like Alexa Skills or Google Actions. What do you do? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How The CEO of Voiceflow Turned An Interactive Children’s Storybook Into One Of The First No-Code Tools to Build Alexa Skills and Google Actions I can remember first starting to build Alexa Skills back in 2017-2018, and researching “no-code” tools to do so. At the time, coding Alexa Skills from scratch seemed like such a long journey, that I was even talking with our CTO Joe Wallace about building our own no-code tool (aka Content Management System; aka “WordPress of Voice”) so that we could effectively roll out Voice Apps for clients easier. What got me excited were a few things. First of all, at the time, as far as I knew, nobody had done it yet. I had found one blog article on Medium.com about “how to build Alexa Skills without coding” and it featured a company called Storyflow. But when I went to Storyflow.com, the no-code tool clearly wasn’t ready for real consumer use yet, which - being in software development - I totally understand. Well, about a year after I found Storyflow.com, I really wanted to start building Alexa Skills for clients, and for Data Driven Design, and I decided to Google again - “building Alexa Skills without coding.” Again, the same Medium.com article came up. I opened it, and instantly remembered Storyflow. That next time, when I clicked on the link, I was redirected to Voiceflow.com, and it was a MUCH improved experience, and not just from a front-facing marketing website perspective, but from a SaaS product perspective. I jumped right into the tool, created an account, and started building Voice Apps. Another year-plus later, after building dozens of Alexa Skills and Google Actions using Voiceflow, I sat down with CEO Braden Ream and talked with him about his journey building an interactive children’s book company into one of the top SaaS products in the world, and especially in the Voice space. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

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 us knew what “pinching and zooming” or “swiping” meant. Now, our children are asking Alexa, Google and Siri just about everything. Students are building Alexa Skills for class projects and instructional technology directors are encouraging teachers to incorporate Alexa in the classroom. In this video, my friend QuHarrison Terry of Inevitable/Human and Mark Cuban Companies asks me: “What’s Keeping Me Up In Voice?” My answer: I get excited about the every day business owner and entrepreneur that maybe doesn’t have a huge team. They can use voice to become more efficient and effective. They can use voice to check their Quickbooks or have a voice based version of their company training. If you’re a small company with less than 10 people, you may not have a full HR team to train your next hire. You can use voice for that. Q also asks me: What’s the difference between a Voice App and a Voice Skill? So I happily break that down. Finally, Q tees up my take on what the best tools are to create your own Voice Apps (Alexa Skills and Google Actions). 1. Voiceflow – An authoring platform to create your own custom voice apps without coding. Content managers / digital strategists (non-coders) can easily build Voice apps in minutes and deploy to Alexa and Google Assistant. Voiceflow has several “blocks” that allow for advanced functionality such as replacing the robot voice, building visual screens for Echo Show devices via Alexa Presentation Language (APL). It also allows for team collaboration between content strategists and coders. Developers can layer API blocks and code blocks to extend the Voice App’s functionality beyond just a conversation. 2. The Voice Designer – I’m partial to this tool, because my CTO Joe Wallace and I built it for Data Driven Design clients. The Voice Designer is a one-of-a-kind WordPress plug-in that places an authoring tool in the backend of any WordPress website. The Voice Designer is similar to Voiceflow, but not as feature-heavy. It’s meant for marketing directors and small business owners to be able to build a voice-based version of their company website or blog and deploy it directly to Alexa and Google Assistant from the backend of their WordPress website. It is really meant to meet the marketer where they already are – their WordPress admin panel. 3. Engage By Voice – Engage is a phenomenal tool that features templates that can be customized to build and deploy custom voice apps for your business. Engage features templates that allow businesses to gather phone numbers and send text messages, deploy surveys, gather reviews and much more. Engage is a perfect tool for marketers to try voice and see how Alexa Skills and Google Actions can integrate into and support all of their other business development efforts. For more information on any of these tools, please feel free to contact me directly at paul@datadriven.design. I look forward to helping you build your voice apps! This interview took place at Project Voice – the number one event for Voice Tech and AI in America – from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Thanks to Bradley Metrock of Score Publishing and VoiceFirst.FM Thanks for reading, watching and listening, and have a great day! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

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 Skills, and do the same with Google's voice in our Actions on Google Assistant. Case in point, these voice apps I've built for clients, use our client's voice, instead of the robot voice. We can also add effects to Alexa and Google's voice using tools like Voiceflow's SSML editor. I show you how to do both in this video. These techniques make for a much improved voice user interface design experience. 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 Voice Designer - TheVoiceDesigner.com allows you to download a WordPress plug-in that content marketers and business owners can use to build and deploy Alexa Skills and Google Actions directly from their WordPress dashboard. This is an amazing tool, and easy to use, allowing businesses to build a Voice presence that is in alignment with the content on their website. 3. Engage By Voice - EngageByVoice.com is a product that follows the "template" concept, but allows businesses to engage with their audiences via functionality such as voice-based SMS messaging, voice-based user surveys, email sign-ups via voice and even a Net Promoter Score survey. These templates are pre-built yet easy to customize. 4. Voiceflow - Allows you to build custom voice apps for Alexa and Google using a block-based, drag and drop CMS system that includes Logic. Like TheVoiceDesigner.com and EngagebyVoice.com, Voiceflow requires no coding, but allows for coders and non-coders to collaborate within the same project, as well as deploy it to Alexa and Google at the same time. It also allows Voice App builders to create Video Skills using Alexa Presentation Language (APL), developers to layer in outside API integrations, content marketers to replace Alexa's voice with audio files, and more. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

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 Voice Designer - TheVoiceDesigner.com allows you to download a WordPress plug-in that content marketers and business owners can use to build and deploy Alexa Skills and Google Actions directly from their WordPress dashboard. This is an amazing tool, and easy to use, allowing businesses to build a Voice presence that is in alignment with the content on their website. 3. Engage By Voice - EngageByVoice.com is a product that follows the "template" concept, but allows businesses to engage with their audiences via functionality such as voice-based SMS messaging, voice-based user surveys, email sign-ups via voice and even a Net Promoter Score survey. These templates are pre-built yet easy to customize. 4. Voiceflow - Allows you to build custom voice apps for Alexa and Google using a block-based, drag and drop CMS system that includes Logic. Like TheVoiceDesigner.com and EngagebyVoice.com, Voiceflow requires no coding, but allows for coders and non-coders to collaborate within the same project, as well as deploy it to Alexa and Google at the same time. It also allows Voice App builders to create Video Skills using Alexa Presentation Language (APL), developers to layer in outside API integrations, content marketers to replace Alexa's voice with audio files, and more. For this blog, I'm focusing on #1, using Amazon Alexa Blueprints to build an Alexa Skill. My 10-year old son asked me the other day if we could build an Alexa Skill together. It was like 15 minutes from his bed time, but I was like, "sure, we can use blueprints!" We found one called "Santa Letter," and away we went. This video shows the process! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

If the voice assistant can't answer a search query, it's worth creating a voice experience (Action or Skill for example) to answer it. Like the Google Actions that check the price of gold. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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 their offices with a Google Hub (device with a screen) and them needing to know how to do something (how to build a holiday wreath, or how to fix their hot water heater). They can say "Hey Google, open home improvement tips" for example, and your businesses' How To Video can appear. This video shows you a step by step process of not only how to build these voice-based applications, called Google Actions, but also how to name them so they're most likely to be found organically via an "opening invocation." This process has recently been referred to by Google Actions marketers as "whitelabeling." Here's what you'll need to get started: 1. A Google Account. 2. YouTube video content that you've created for your brand, of the "How To (do something)" variety. 3. A desire to reach your target audience in new ways that the data is showing you should (i.e.,, voice-based multimodal apps). The step-by-step process is outlined here by Google, but my video walks you through a real life scenario that is very helpful. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

SEO is making a major shift going into 2020. With schema.org, Google Actions and increased competition, you need to have a cutting edge SEO strategy. In this podcast, John Lincoln covers the most important things you need to focus on to get results.

Implicit Invocations Zijn de SEO van Google Actions. Hierdoor Maak je Jouw Google Action Vindbaar via Voice. Leer Hier Exact Wat Implicit Invocations zijn en Hoe Je Deze Toepast.

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 Nashville Entrepreneur Center is playing a critical role in the Nashville Business Community. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

Michael Antaran and I have a lot in common. We were both born and raised in Michigan. We both left jobs in the corporate world to create our own start-ups. We’re both building software on a consistent basis, and we’re building Alexa Skills and Google Actions (voice-based apps on top of Alexa and Google Assistant) and integrating everything into one overall experience. Watch the entire video or listen to the podcast while you’re working, running, walking the dog, whatever and you’ll hear all of that, but the key points are here… Michael is the CEO of CARROT Wellness, a mobile app that rewards you for walking. Period. That’s it. Super simple. But how he got to where he is today isn’t as simple. But it is really freaking cool. Michael is a software engineer who worked for Chrysler. A dream job since he fell in love with cars growing up in Motor City. But when his first child was born, he was up in the middle of the night tending to the baby, and couldn’t fall back asleep, so he started coding mobile apps (remember, the iPhone had JUST come out). A gamer, he coded games, and turned these 80 hour work weeks into a successful mobile app gaming company that was so successful he left his full time job to pursue it. Four years later, he pivoted. Not for business reasons, but for personal reasons. And there was nothing wrong in his family health wise, thank God. But, there was something wrong, in his wife’s opinion, with the negative impact she thought his company was having on the youth of America. “I was helping kids get fat,” says Antaran. Having a moral issue with this, he decided to take a year, and change the way all of his mobile games let users buy more lives and power-ups. Instead of charging money for them, he made users walk to earn them. Yep, he tapped into the pedometer on smartphones, and rewarded gamers for walking. “You have to do the work. You can’t fake it or enter your own information,” he adds. This story quickly got the attention of major health systems in Michigan back in 2015, and CARROT was born. CARROT is now mainly a B2B app that companies can use to promote health and wellness among their employees, but there are consumer facing versions, and Alexa Skills integrated as well. CARROT is a full experience. “It’s all about engagement,” says Antaran. “Without engagement, you can’t improve.” Why did CARROT’s four person team of software engineers add Alexa Skills into the experience? “The data,” said Antaran. “Start-ups can’t live without it.” Which brings me to maybe the most important thing Michael and I have in common – making data driven decisions. I highly encourage you to listen to this entire episode. Thanks and have a great day! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

I've built several Google Actions and Alexa Skills recently, and while Alexa seems to be pretty straightforward in terms of finding and adding Skills to your devices via the Alexa app / Skill store, the Google Home situation with Google Assistant isn't as straightforward. To be honest, there still appears to be some "friction" in this experience that is eventually supposed to be "frictionless." I will tell you, like most Google "situations," the answer is actually pretty simple, it's just not easy to find it. So nevertheless, once you know which app to use to add your Action via, there will be no problems. That's just it my friends, don't look in the Google Home app to find your actions, look in the Google Assistant app! It's that easy. This audio explains what I mean. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

Alexa Skills and Google Actions are voice applications built on top of Alexa and Google Home / Google Assistant. The next generation will expect businesses to have Alexa Skills. Watch this video or keep reading to find out why. You can build these apps for just about anything. For example, in this video, I demo what would happen if I forgot my entire Nashville Voice Conference introduction, but I built a voice app to help me. I'm really excited because we are at the very beginning of something that is going to shake the way businesses are run. If you remember, back inn 1999, not that many businesses had websites. Well, by 2003, it was pretty much unheard of for businesses NOT to have websites. That is what we are going through now in 2019 with Alexa Skills and Google Actions related to businesses. Whatever our role or responsibility, whether a Small Business Owner, Entrepreneur, Marketer, Product Owner, Developer or Operations person, we can all benefit from voice tech. While voice tech is still early and new, the data shows it is actually going to be expected that businesses have Alexa Skills in the next 12-36 months. A perfect example is Dan Winterberg, a 10 year old from Georgia who attended the Nashville Voice Conference with his father Bill, because Dan builds Alexa Skills for his class projects in elementary school. So when Dan enters the workforce in 10 years or so, you can bet he'll EXPECT that the company he works for will have 10-15 Alexa Skills, including at least one that allows him to access the voice-based version of the company intranet. This is happening now, and if you want information on building these kinds of voice-based apps for your business, please email me at paul@datadriven.design. I've worked with a ton of small businesses, a ton of small business owners and marketers, and I've experienced the behavior that comes from being overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the ever-changing aspects of digital marketing, design, branding, websites and digital strategy. I know this seems like "just one more thing we all have to do," and I'm very empathetic to that. But I really want everyone to think this is the beginning of using voice apps to make your lives easier. Don't just think of it as one more thing you have to do. Let's work together to integrate it into what you're already doing to make your work life more efficient and effective. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/paulhickey/support

You may have heard of voice search, or use of voice-activated assistants such as Alexa which is the assistant for the Amazon Echo smart speaker. There is also the Google Home Assistant or Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, and other others. You may have also heard the older phrase of "voice attendants." As people gravitate towards voice for search, it has brought about a marketing niche that is often referred to as voice search marketing.  Voice has been referred to as the next big thing. The data is showing that it IS the big thing we need to be preparing for in business and marketing of our products and services. Here are the topics addressed by host, Vickie Maris, in Episode 10 of Agile Digital Business: 2:24 Voice is the next big thing 2:38 Statistics on smart speakers, and basics of voice in blog posts available at Pragmatic.digital/blog 3:12 Reference to llama training and the teenage students' uses of voice-activated assistants 4:17 Should B2B businesses leverage the use of voice? 4:50 Voice search or keyboard and screen search? 5:28 Can the media find your company in voice search? 6:03 Vickie's prediction about SEO and on-screen searches 6:23 Attending Podcast Movement 2019 in Orlando, Florida 6:48 "Voice" panel discussion at Podcast Movement 2019 7:42 Alexa Skills and Google Actions 8:06 Voice search marketing and voice search 8:16 Talk given on smart speakers and voice search marketing by Vickie Maris at the Social Media and Digital Marketing Institute, Minneapolis, MN 9:02 Updating digital content so that it appears in results 10:06 Request that you grab a screenshot of this episode and share the episode in your favorite social media channels 10:54 Definitions of voice search and voice-activated assistants as well as voice search marketing 11:56 Interest in marketing of a book was what led Vickie Maris to explore and learn about voice search marketing 12:18 Publishing a book in digital (ebook for Kindle), paperback and audiobook format 12:42 ACX and Audible (This is Vickie's referral/affiliate link to Audible. You can use it if you would like to try out Audible for listening to audiobooks. The URL below for Self-Publishing School, which Vickie Maris participated in online in 2018, is also an affiliate link.) 12:55 Self-Publishing School 13:04 Pew Research data on audiobook consumption 14:19 Recommendation to listen to Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn; Episode 437; 9 Ways That Artificial Intelligence Will Disrupt Authors and the Publishing Industry 16:44 Voice-first mode of using a smart speaker 17:37 Position zero in search results 18:33 Listening to voice of our customers 18:53 Adjustments to improve function of website and web content 20:22 Poll on Patreon account about possibility of homework assignments in future episodes of Agile Digital Business to prepare for upward trends in voice search 22:00 Email your ideas for upcoming episodes in Season 2 of Agile Digital Business to agiledigitalbusiness @ gmail dot com  22:26 Quote about leaders from E.J. Smith Let's continue on this journey to Teach. Inspire. Connect.  

Episode description:The voice space is much bigger than just Google and Amazon, and there are many ways to develop voice applications. What’s missing in the voice design space? A simple markup language. Dr. Andrey Esaulov is the CEO of SmartHouse Technologies and co-founder of BotTalk. SmartHouse Technologies specialises in consulting and development of voice applications and mobile apps. The company’s BotTalk product is a platform for creating Alexa Skills and Google Actions with a simple markup language.From this conversation you’ll learn that you don’t need to be a developer to build sophisticated, context-aware voice applications that can benefit your business, or even become your business.This is a time-limited preview. To hear the full episode, and access the full catalogue of episodes and bonus content, become a Voice Tech Pro https://voicetechpodcast.com/proHighlights from the show:What was the core problem? Alexa and Google developing similar voice apps/solutions.What were the major concerns? Direction of API dialogue flow and internal Alexa tools.What was the solution? Simplified multiple platforms into easy-to-use programming tool to build and launch complicated apps.Birth of SmartHouse Technologies: Inability to recreate dialogue API.Birth of BotTalk: Simple markup technology was missing in voice space.What are BotTalk’s features? Multimodal, templates, API integration, session management, and direct deployment.What are popular case studies and demos? myNoise and The Floor is Lava!What are similarities and differences between BotTalk and Storyline? Voice experience, Google actions, write once to deploy, and session management.What are voice development options? Conversations, slots, and entry points.What are the dos and don'ts when creating a skill? Maintain focus, attention, and engagement; don’t include too many questions/paths, or build too much into voice apps.What to expect in the future? Voice-only apps, multimodality, and less frustration.Links from the show:Manning Books: https://www.manning.com (40% off books with code: podvoicetech19) Best voice-first podcasts: http://bit.ly/2RYSG8tSmartHouse Technologies: https://smarthaustech.de/BotTalk: https://bottalk.de/BotTalk on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bottalkJob Finder in Germany: https://vimeo.com/281597058React Native: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/JSON: https://www.json.org/YAML: https://yaml.org/myNoise: https://mynoise.net/Storyline: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/storyline-7Jovo: https://www.jovo.tech/The Floor is Lava Game: https://www.amazon.com/Voice-Apps-That-Rock-Floor/dp/B07G2QFJ6DSubscribe to get future episodes:Apple iTunes: https://apple.co/2LqW4olGoogle Podcasts: http://bit.ly/voicetechpodcast-googleStitcher:

Donn sits down with Buffer Android Lead, Joe Birch. Joe is a GDE for Android, Google Actions, Flutter and Google Pay. In this episode Donn and Joe talk about Clean Architecture, what it is, and why you might want to use it. They break down the concept of what Clean Architecture is in a manner that is easy for even a beginner to understand. Enjoy.

Join us as we discuss Google Actions. How to be the answer for a Google question

The sun is shining in South London! And Geraint and Will are talking about Voice again. Coming up: - Skill of the Week "Paloma's Bedtime" - Voice Assistants and Audio Content - Siri Acquires Pull String - New Forecasts about Voice Commerce - Stats About 3rd Party Google Actions (or lack thereof) ...and of course our weekly Head-to-Head.  Don't miss out. 

This one is for devs of Google Actions. What are built in intents, how can you use them, why do they matter. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Google has an announcement in their Google Actions on Google about repurposing android mobile apps into actions. We reflect on it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Although voice search is getting a bad rep in the industry due to the 'hype' it's definitely not something to ignore.  Nick Wilsdon, with 18 years experience and working for Vodafone, goes through numerous ways to make the most of the voice opportunities, from Amazon Skills and Google Actions to customer service, searching using voice and big data. Forget about 50% of people using voice search by 2020 and realise that by next year 30% of businesses will be using voice devices, skills and actions to compliment their user journey.    Show notes & SUBSCRIBE to newsletter. Email me: seowithmrsghost@gmail.com Tweet me: @MrsAlinaGhost If you like the show please rate, write a review and tell your friends and colleagues!

You decided to enter voice tech and smart speakers market. You want to be ahead of the game and you took the leap to create Alexa skills and Google Actions, now what? How are you going to use the data you get to your strategic advantage? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What are the most popular Google Assistant Actions and Amazon Alexa skills and what does it means for you as a creator or brand. What people is choosing to engage with it's the ultimate metric. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In today’s episode! What ‘link equity’ might mean in a mobile-first index world Why you don’t need a URL to be indexed anymore Language & Keyword Indexing vs Entity Indexing What chatbots have to do with voice search Google Actions and Google Assistant Listeners questions answered (PWA’s, AMP, Google Posts, Mobile Site Speed) Why the […] The post 092: Mobile First Indexing: A Whole New Google w/Cindy Krum appeared first on Evolving SEO.

Episode 39 of The Redirect Podcast: Google makes moves to monetize off of voice search with the release of Actions for Voice Shopping ads. While this does not impact organic search (currently) it most certainly can be a look into the future of “eyes free” shopping via Google and what big retailers could be planning. Plus, fresh off of SMX West, there is a lot of talk around optimizing for voice search in 2018; but do you really need to be approaching your SEO strategies differently? Wrapping up this episode with great action steps on combating negative reviews and Google's steps toward auto flagging certain types of negative reviews. This and much more on The Redirect Podcast. Show notes at https://blacktruckmedia.com/podcast/redirect-podcast-episode-39/

Alexa Skills and Briefings, Google Actions and Apps - what’s it all about?

In this episode, we're talking about voice first user testing, why it's so imperative and how you can get started doing your own voice user testing.Why voice first user testing?Although usability testing graphical user interfaces is as common as a trending tweet, it's a seed that’s yet to be greatly sewn in the world of voice. There are many services that will provide technical testing, but those specifically offering voice first user testing in person with real users are few and far between. Enter, Userfy.Whether you create Alexa Skills, Google Actions or any other voice user experience, this episode will help you make sure that your voice user interface (VUI) works for the people that use it through teaching you how to approach a voice-based user testing project.We’ll cover things like:The current state of user research in the voice industryWhy is usability testing important?What kind of users should you test with?User testing processes and planningHow to approach a voice-first testing projectValidating assumptionsThe difference between graphical and voice user testingWhat tools and equipment you needIntroducing Sam HowardOur guest is Sam Howard, co-founder and Director of user research agency, Userfy, which specialises in user testing. Sam has a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction and a degree in Psychology. That, mixed with a love of technology and a passion for helping people, puts Sam at the forefront of the user research field.Links:Sam Howard on TwitterUserfy websiteUserfy on TwitterSam's 'Usability challenges facing voice-first devices' article See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Continuing my drive to spread the City Cinema film schedule as far and wide as possible into cyberspace, I’ve got a “Google Action” all ready to go. It’s working, in private “preview” mode, on both my Google Home device here in the office, and in Google Assistant on my Android phone. I’ve reached a stumbling block with getting it approved for public release by Google, though: when I try to use “City Cinema” as the “invocation name” I get an error about a “reserved brand name”: I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do to under “Connected Properties,” and I’ve been back and forth several times, fruitlessly, with the Google Actions support. I’ve submitted another request today, and hope I’m more successful. In the meantime, here’s what it looks like:

Mike reviews his Google Home and we discuss Google Actions, Fitbit buying Pebble & the usefulness of some of these products. Plus Mike adopts a new philosophy about remote workers!