I've blogged about why businesses need Alexa Skills. I think most people think of businesses needing Alexa Skills under the context of creating some new app to sell to consumers, and that's great, there is and will continue to be a growing market for that. The data shows it. But to me there's an even simpler more, utilitarian version of why businesses need Alexa Skills - COMMUNICATION.

Let's say you have a particular internal committee, or user group, a large sales team or frequent company announcements. A simple Alexa Flash Briefing Skill can internal way of communicating with one another. When publishing an Alexa Flash Briefing Skill, you can actually keep it internal to your organization if you want.

But we're working on a much larger B2B Alexa Skill that we'll be officially rolling out in 2019. The First Voice Based Business Intelligence Dashboard, known internally at Data Driven Design as FVBBID, is currently being set up to make it super easy for Marketing Directors and Small Business Owners to simply say, "Alexa, Ask Data Driven Design How My Web Traffic Is Doing."

As seen in this video, Alexa responds with "Okay, let's talk web data," and lists things that you can ask.

• "How is my web traffic?"
• "Is my web traffic up or down?"
• "Where is most of my web traffic coming from?"
• "How is my overall site bounce rate?"
• "What are my top viewed pages?"

Simple, to start, but like most good custom software companies, we'll be adding features as we go, and making it easy for executives, analytics and marketers to save time from digging into Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google My Business, Shopify, WooCommerce, Facebook Ads and more, and we'll be allowing them to simply "Ask Data Driven Design" ... One day sooner than you think, you'll all have Alexa-enabled devices on your desk, in your car, in your ears, etc. and this will be a HUGE business time saver for you.

This will make it MUCH easier for you to spend your 30 minutes a month in Google Analytics. 🙂

For now, if you're interested in being one of the first businesspeople to save time by simply Asking Data Driven Design how your web traffic is doing, email me at paul@datadriven.design

What Is An Alexa Flash Briefing Skill?

A Flash Briefing Skill is an audio RSS feed file that can either be published to the public in the Alexa Skills Store, for use by anyone with an Alexa Enabled Device, or it can be protected for use by specific U.S. Businesses Only

Any user with an Alexa Enabled Device (and access to the Flash Briefing Skill if protected) can find it in the Alexa Skills Store and add it to their “Flash Briefing.”

The process of a user finding and adding an Alexa Flash Briefing Skill is best explained here.

Additionally, each Alexa Skill is given a “deep link” so that it can be easily promoted. For example, our Data Driven Daily Tip Alexa Skill can be found in the Alexa Skills Store and added to a Flash Briefing, or it can be added easily by visiting www.datadrivendaily.com, where you can see the deep link in the URL address bar.

Once added, an Alexa user simply says “Alexa, play my flash briefing” or “Alexa, what’s in the news?” and your content will be heard.

Thanks for reading, watching and listening, and have a great day!

KEEP MARKETING!

Paul Hickey, Founder / CEO / Lead Strategist at Data Driven Design, LLC has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 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 and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.