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Voice in Canada Podcast

Voice in Canada Podcast

Teri Fisher

In this weekly podcast, Teri Fisher from Voice in Canada and The Voice Den, reveals all of his top Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Samsung Bixby, and other smart speaker strategies, skills, actions, capsules, shortcuts, news, power tips and tricks for Canadians. Discover how you can get the most out of your conversational AI voice first service so you can have the time and freedom to make your life more organized, relaxed, stress-free, entertaining, and fun!


Teri interviews the top leaders - the Voicefluencers - in the voice-first industry, and we cover it all - from Echo, Nest, Home, Homepod, and iPhone devices, to personal digital assistants, smart home automation, flash briefings, voice recognition, natural language understanding, and artificial intelligence (AI). We talk about everything that works (and doesn’t work) to help you better understand how to get your digital assistant working for you.


Voice in Canada is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, or any other company.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Top 10 Voice in Canada Podcast Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Voice in Canada Podcast episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Voice in Canada Podcast for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Voice in Canada Podcast episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Voice in Canada Podcast - The Voicefluencer Show with Brandon Kaplan
play

02/09/21 • 26 min

In this episode of The Voice in Canada podcast, Teri interviews Brandon Kaplan who is the CEO and Founder of Skilled Creative, a full-service voice agency located in NYC.


Brandon got the inspiration for his company back in 2016 when he went to an Amazon workshop and was introduced to voice. Brandon was always obsessed with technology and even as a child, he loved taking electronics apart but did not have an interest in putting them back together. Back when Brandon was running a content marketing agency, he got introduced to the service industry. His passion was unpacking people’s problems and helping them find solutions.



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Voice in Canada Podcast - Live Podcasting on Alexa with Ian Utile of Attn.Live
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05/20/20 • 53 min

In this episode, Teri does a live interview with Ian Utile, the founder and CEO of Attention Live, a live streaming podcast platform he has created for YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Apple iTunes, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft Cortana.

Welcome, Ian Utile!

Ian is an innovative strategist, business development executive, entrepreneur, optimistic tech futurist, and keynote speaker. He is also the co-founder of Kukui Corp, a company ranked by Inc 500 as the #1 fastest growing private organizations in San Jose (#76 in the US). He specializes in starting software tech companies and is a partner in different non-tech projects.


He is the founder of WMVAI (We Magnify Voice for Attention and Influence), a B2B SaaS platform to automate posting content to Amazon Alexa which will in future include Google Home/Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri, and Samsung Bixby. His hobby is supporting large international non-profits. Teri did this live interview with Ian because they’re discussing live audio on Alexa.

His Vision for the Future

  • He highlights that we as humanity are most likely to benefit from machine learning (AI) in voice technology, and feels that it’s logical that the current technologies will end for the good of humanity.
  • He refers to the different science fiction movies and TV shows that dive into future predictions of technologies and how they will impact humanity, with a lot of them predicting the doom of technologies like AI taking over the world.
  • But Ian sees voice technology as a great tool that people can use to improve their lives.

Attention Live

  • Through the thought process of creativity and innovation, Ian spent the last few years building Attention Live.
  • His idea was to build one thing (some kind of device on any platform) that he could speak to/through and what he would say would go out on all voice devices, social media platforms, and other channels. This is meant to solve a huge problem for content creators, and also enable consumers to access and consume content much more easily.
  • Attention Live is the only software in the world that enables people to livestream to Amazon’s Alexa devices in real time. They are also the only software that can livestream to YouTube with audio in real time.
  • Attention Live will decentralize things for creators and their consumers because they won’t have to go through platforms like Facebook or YouTube that hinder them from achieving their core goals.
  • That is a big part of what drives Ian because he believes in a decentralized future with voice-first not touch-first.
  • Attention Live will basically be a platform where people can create their content, stream it live to all platforms, and have proven ownership of the content they will produce.
  • That will therefore enable the content creators to easily make money from their content.

Current State of Affairs with Attention Live

  • They are creating a category that doesn’t exist (live podcasting), which is very unique and ambitious, and Ian approached the go-to-market strategy differently than he has ever approached anything.
  • He decided to go out and interview every single person he possibly could in the voice tech and blockchain world.
  • He has interviewed approximately 200 leaders in voice tech and 150 in blockchain. He has also led dozens of events, helped co-produce a dozen or more events, and created thousands of hours of content.
  • That was a very unique way of going about developing the company because he realized he needed all the wisdom and insights of the voice tech and blockchain industries.
  • He cannot give exact dates on when people will be able to access and use the platform, but they still need work on it more so they can have a proper launch.
  • They currently have a beta version that they’re offering to a select few to test out.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Other useful resources:

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Voice in Canada Podcast - Voice is the next Operation System with Examples from the Drums
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04/30/20 • 17 min

In this episode, Teri will share his thoughts on voice and why he believes that voice is the next operating system.

He will be using his drums to illustrate some of the concepts by using them as voices.

Enjoy!

The Evolution of Technology

  • Technology has evolved from a keyboard as a way to interface with the computer, to a mouse, and then to a touch screen. Now we are getting to a point where we can speak to a computer.
  • There are five main reasons why Teri feels that voice will be the next operating system and he will use a concept based on the five letters of VOICE to explain that.

V for Versatility

  • According to Teri’s concept, the V in VOICE stands for Versatile. This means that when one is using their voice, they can do multiple things at once. For example, one can use their voice while driving, cooking, or doing a host of other tasks. That kind of versatility is a key concept of voice.
  • Teri will play some very entertaining drum beats, and while we are listening, we should note the fact that each of us will still be doing some kind of task. Listening to the drum beats will not disrupt us from doing what we are doing. That’s the same way that voice will work.

Omnipresence

  • This means that voice can be all around us no matter where we are or what we’re doing. One doesn’t need to be looking in the direction of where a voice is coming from to hear it or be aware of it.
  • Teri will play the drums again to illustrate how sound can be all around us.

I for Innate

  • The first way we communicate when we’re born is through our voices. When we are born, the first thing we do is cry, and we have to learn all other types of communication like read, type, and write, but using the voice is the most innate way that we know how to communicate.

C for Contextual

  • This means that when someone says something they can either sound happy or sad.
  • Voice allows us to distinguish emotions just from the sound of it. An example of what this means is when someone reads a text message or email, and misinterprets what is being said because they can’t really hear the emotion of the writer.
  • One cannot tell if someone is being sarcastic, funny, or mean from their texts or emails, but with voice, one can hear someone’s emotion when they speak.

E for Efficient

  • The average person can type about 40 words per minute and speak about 150 words per minute. That’s about a three to four times faster rate of speaking than typing. Voice is therefore extremely efficient, and when a technology is efficient, it tends to be adopted more rapidly.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Other useful resources:



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Voice in Canada Podcast - A Conversation with Bianca Phillips - The Voice of Law
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04/21/20 • 33 min

In this episode, Teri welcomes Bianca Phillips, a lawyer and leader/researcher in the area of digital health law making, and the founder of the Electronic Health Consulting Group.


Welcome, Bianca!

Bianca is also the host of the Voice of Law Podcast and she advocates for a future where telemedicine will allow for access to healthcare no matter where one lives, where wearables will allow people to predict the onset of disease before it happens, and where clinical outcomes will be improved due to precision and personalized medicine. She believes that the digital health future should balance the needs of both patients and healthcare providers by placing evidence-based approaches and civil rights considerations at the core of digital health law-making. She aims to be a prominent voice for a Digital Health School of Thought founded on these principles.

The Legal Perspective of What’s Going On with COVID-19

  • She’s been reading articles around how governments have been tracking and tracing people’s movements to curb the spread of the Coronavirus, and she’s also read articles arguing that the tracking and tracing is a breach of people’s privacy and civil liberties.
  • She’s been investigating all that and looking at the international covenant on civil and political rights on how emergencies like the current pandemic are supposed to be dealt with in regard to people’s liberties. She’s actually working with a prominent lawyer in the field and they will be publishing their findings soon.

Online Events and Webinars

  • She’s been taking note that everyone is now using telemedicine and she recalls when she used to talk about how advantageous it would be for healthcare, but doctors would laugh at her. People are now utilizing telemedicine out of necessity which is a good thing.
  • She’s been attending a lot of Zoom meetings and webinars, and she’s excited for what Teri is putting together with the Voice Den.
  • The Voice Den is something that Teri is creating to bring the basics of an in-person event into the online events and webinars that people have been doing. It like a reality TV Show but it will be done virtually, and it will bring on five mystery voice industry influencers, and an audience/participants. The audience will have an opportunity to ask popular questions and engage in a huge way and learn from the influencers.
  • One of the influencers will be Bianca and she is so excited about it.

Voice Technology During the Pandemic

  • She’s liked how the voice community has come together to talk about the response to COVID-19 and the role that voice is playing in it.
  • Digital health is currently coming together with the use of telemedicine, voice technologies, and AI in healthcare. She believes it’s going to be a new world after the pandemic.

Using Telemedicine

  • Teri has been using telemedicine while working from home.
  • He has come across some limitations like when he has to examine a patient can’t because they're in different locations, so they have to make some kind of plan to deal with that. The patients seem to love the telemedicine because it’s so convenient.
  • Bianca feels it’s time to move into the 21st century and utilize digital health. She has noted that there are a lot of studies being done to look into telemedicine and how it works in different contexts. There are more than 30,000 research papers and people are using that research especially during the current crisis.

List of resources mentioned in this episode

Other useful resources:

Voice in Canada Podcast - Music Options for Amazon Alexa in Canada
play

09/24/19 • 14 min

In this episode, Teri will talk about the music options that we now have available to us when using our Echo devices with Amazon Alexa.

Enjoy!

There have been some big news coming out in Canada in the last week or so regarding the music options. One of the most requested features, which Teri has gotten lots of emails and questions about, is Apple Music being made available in Canada with the Amazon Echo Devices. The feature was recently launched and lots of people are very happy about it.

The Different Options

  • When you go into your Amazon Alexa app and click on the menu icon (hamburger icon), then you will see that you have an option to click on music.
  • The options include Amazon Music, Spotify, TuneIn, Apple Music, and Deezer. The top three options in terms of popularity are Amazon Music, Spotify, and Apple Music.

Spotify

  • It’s the big goliath as far as music streaming services are concerned.
  • It has a 3-month pre-trial that one can try for free. If one chooses to subscribe, there is a $9.99 per month individual plan which means that one can only listen on one account at a time. This also means that when a user has multiple Echo devices and they are listening to a particular song on one device, no one else can listen to different music on another device. If somebody tries to listen to music on that second device, then it will play the same music on the first device, stop the music on the first device, or change it to the song that was last requested.
  • If a user is looking for more flexibility than on the individual plan, then there is the family plan for $14.99 per month, which allows up to six different people and six different devices to be playing six different things at the same time.
  • They also have the student plan for $4.99 per month.

Apple Music

  • They have a 3-month pre-trial, the individual plan for $9.99 per month, the family plan for $14.99 per month, and the student plan for $4.99 per month.
  • The offers in these plans is similar to those in Spotify’s plans.

Amazon Music

  • Amazon has different pricing for their Amazon Music service, but the prices depend on whether or not a user is a Prime member or not.
  • They have two levels, Amazon Prime Music and Amazon Unlimited Music.
  • If one is not a Prime member, the Amazon Music Unlimited (comparable to Spotify and Apple Music) plans are priced the same as Spotify’s, but instead of having a student plan, they have the “Single Device Plan” which allows a user to only use the service on one single Echo device for just $3.99 per month.
  • If one is a Prime subscriber, they automatically get Amazon Prime Music which provides users with access to about two million songs, but it doesn’t compare to Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Unlimited, which have tens of millions of songs. When new releases come out, they’re never available on Amazon Prime as soon as they are on the other platforms.
  • In Amazon Unlimited, the pricing is a little different. For Prime members, they get Amazon Unlimited for $7.99 per month for the individual account. Users can also get more of a discount if they pay annually ($79 per year which has two months for free). The family plan is priced at $14.99 and can be paid annually at $149 with two months free.

Setting Up a Music Service

  • Go to the Alexa app, click on the menu icon on the top left corner. You will see an option to click on music where you will find a number of services listed with plus signs that you can click on to add a service. Once you click on that, you’ll just follow the prompts.
  • There will be some account linking because you’ll have to link your account to your Alexa app.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Other useful resources:

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Voice in Canada Podcast - The Echo Ring Light Rainbow of Colours
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09/17/19 • 12 min

In this episode, Teri will talk about the ring light on Echo devices, why it’s there, and what type of information we can get from it.

Enjoy!

The previous episode that Teri did on the interesting features that recently came to Canada got some very great feedback. Alexa in Canada listeners were very appreciative of being made aware of the features, tips and tricks. That prompted Teri to enlighten Alexa users about the ring light.

What is the Ring Light?

  • It’s a light that is formed like a ring which sits on top of the cylindrical shaped Amazon Echo devices.
  • On the Echo Spot, there is a round light around the display. On the other visual display Echo devices, like the Echo Show and Echo Show 5, there is a band of light along the bottom, not a ring light.

The Importance of the Ring Light

  • Amazon put a lot of thought into developing the ring light because if a user is looking at their device, it is a way for them to get some feedback about what’s going on, and it also has some security implications.
  • One of the things that people are concerned about is when the device is listening to them. By glancing at the light that is displaying on top of the device, a user gets a hint as to what is going on with the device at any particular moment in time.

Different Colors of Lights

  • Solid Blue Light/Dark Blue Light: One might see a spinning Cyan within this color. This is the color that comes up when the device is starting up.
  • When one doesn’t see any color at all, it means that it is working (assuming it’s plugged in and everything has been set up properly) and Alexa is just waiting to hear the wake up so that she can receive a command.
  • Once a user wakes Alexa up, they see a solid darker blue color with a small area of Cyan pointing in the direction of where the sound is coming from. Alexa has the ability to figure out in space where a person is speaking from, which has a lot of implications, including that when you have multiple devices, that is how Alexa knows which device should be responding to a user.
  • Once a user has given their command, they see a solid blue and Cyan as Alexa responds.
  • Other colors that provide useful information include an orange spinning light which spins clockwise to indicate that the device is connecting to the WiFi network.
  • When there is a solid red light, it means that the user has muted the device, and so Alexa is not listening.
  • A pulsing yellow light means that Alexa has a message or a notification for the user, in which case, the user will need to say, “Alexa, play my messages” or “Alexa, what are my notifications?”
  • People can be on a phone call or drop in on other users using their devices, and this is where a pulsing green light comes up as a sign that there is an incoming call or someone is dropping in on the device.
  • A green light spinning counter clockwise means that the user is on an active call or drop in.
  • A white light indicates how high or low the volume is. When a user adjusts the volume level, they should see the ring of white light get bigger or smaller corresponding with the percentage of volume.
  • A spinning white light can also indicate that Alexa Guard is on. Alexa Guard is a way for Alexa to listen to sounds such as glass breaking when you are away. This feature is currently only in the US.
  • The purple light tells us a couple of things. A pulsing purple (or violet light) is an indication that an error occurred during your WiFi set up. A single flash of purple light after an interaction with Alexa means that “Do not Disturb” is turned on.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Other useful resources:

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Voice in Canada Podcast - The Last Interface with Brian Roemmele
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02/19/19 • 82 min

In this episode, Teri welcomes Brian Roemmele, “The Oracle of Voice” and “The Modern Day Thomas Edison”


Welcome Brian Roemmele!

Brian is the consummate Renaissance man. He is a scientist, researcher, analyst, connector, thinker and doer. He is also referred to as the “Oracle of Voice” and is actually credited for having come up with the term “Voice First”. Over the long, winding arc of his career, Brian has built and run payments and tech businesses, worked in media, including the promotion of top musicians, and explored a variety of other subjects along the way.


He actively shares his findings and observations across fora like Forbes, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Slate, Business Insider, Daily Mail, Inc, Gizmodo, Medium, Quora (An exclusive Quora top writer for: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013), Twitter (quoted and published), Around the Coin (earliest crypto currency podcast), Breaking Banks Radio and This Week In Voice on VoiceFirst.fm that surfaces everything from Bitcoin to Voice Commerce. He recently spoke at the 2019 Alexa Conference about where voice technology is going and introduced some of his incredible ideas.

Where Voice Technology is going

  • The talk he did at the Alexa Conference was dubbed “The Last Interface” and was based on the term “What if?”
  • The Last Interface refers to the last interface that we will have with technology.
  • We type to computers because they cannot understand our volition and our intent.
  • Computers are already intelligent enough with current technology to take a user’s context and present to them the information that they are searching for. That’s the premise of The Last Interface.

Intelligence Amplification

  • Brian presented this idea by searching through history how we developed the concept of why we speak (why we developed language). He found that we did it because our brain got too large.
  • Humans had to offload memories into archival systems which became known as writing. Typing is an example of an extension of an archival system which means we are storing the things that we can’t pass on generationally on an offloaded system. Computers took over that and now we archive in systems and places like websites, Google, PDFs, and others, but it’s still an archival system and it still doesn’t transmit the volition and intent of an individual. The short term aspect is what Brian calls “The Intelligence Amplify”
  • He doesn’t fully believe in the concept of AI (Artificial Intelligence) because he doesn’t think we can fully define what intelligence is in humans and where it comes from, and therefore, we cannot artificially create it in any way, shape and form that is human like.
  • We have been trying to amplify our intelligence by archiving our world and our stories, whether they be allegorical, mythological or “factual”. Factual is as we see it today. All of our facts today will 1,000 to 10,000 years from now look allegorical to people because they will not be facts any longer, they will be seen as primitive.
  • The Intelligence Amplify takes in everything around us. How this works; in this world, with the technology that exists today, the moment you’re born to the moment you die, is a device that will have a camera and a microphone. Assume that it has the highest security you can ever imagine and it never goes on the internet (it has no internet connection). It’s recording everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever read, every comment you’ve made, every comment you’ve heard, and everything is archived. All those things will be presented to you as the basis of your AI to derive context and to understand not only your paradigm (how you make you as you because you are the sum total of the experiences, good and bad, that define us as human beings), and so it starts amplifying your intelligence.
  • During his talk at the 2019 Alexa Conference, he pointed out that the human being discards (exformation) over 99% of everything that comes through our senses.
  • With The Intelligence Amplify, the best of us can be amplified.

The Wisdom Keeper

  • When we die, everything is thrown away, but not in the world of The Last Interface, because the next stage is called The Wisdom Keeper.
  • The Wisdom Keeper (your Wisdom Keeper) is important because it is the sum total of all of your experiences, the essence of your experiences. Every human being has some wisdom to contribute to the world.
  • A person’s Wisdom Keeper will be their testament, who they were.

Listener Questions

  1. Do you feel that society is actually ready for what Brian has described (The Last Interface, The Intelligence Amplifier and The Wisdom Keeper)
  2. Will we ever be ready for the scenario that Brian is describing?
  3. Will this happen by default (is ...
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Voice in Canada Podcast - Design for Voice with Jeremy Wilken
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12/25/18 • 40 min

Teri is a physician and clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver, Canada. He is an experienced keynote speaker, educator, consultant, and podcaster.


Getting into Podcasting and the Voice Space

  • His passions are technology and education.
  • Was always looking for a way to combine medicine, education, and technology.
  • First became aware of voice technology in early 2017 and wanted to learn more about it to see how he could use it in medicine, teaching and helping people to be more productive with their lives.
  • He launched the Alexa in Canada website along with the Alexa in Canada Podcast to talk about what’s going on in the technology scene and help people learn more about how they can use voice technology in their lives.
  • He started learning about the applications for voice technology in healthcare which led him to start the website and podcast, Voice First Health.
  • He’s also interested in entrepreneurship and marketing.
  • The idea of having a flash briefing was exciting for him and he started the daily Voice in Canada flash briefing where he gives people tips and the latest news about voice technology.
  • The Voice in Canada Flash Briefing is the number one rated flash briefing in Canada.

Flash Briefings and their Importance

  • A flash briefing is a term that Amazon has given to a type of audio show that producers can create and typically they are very short. They are also known as Briefcasts.
  • The big difference between flash briefings and podcasts is that flash briefings tend to be on a daily basis even though they don’t have to be.
  • Statistics show that people tend to listen to their flash briefings in the morning. They often become part of a person’s daily routine and it’s a way for the person creating the flash briefing to develop a more intimate relationship with that person.

Designing a Flash Briefing

  • Flash briefings can be produced for any topic.
  • They are great for businesses, nonprofits, and hobbyists.
  • There are very few flash briefings currently relative to the number of podcasts and blogs. It’s a huge opportunity.
  • The tools needed to start a flash briefing are similar to the ones used in podcasting.
  • There are 8 steps to set up a flash briefing. Step 1 is coming up with the core topic. Step 2 is actually sitting down and trying to record an episode to see if you even like this sort of thing.
  • Teri uses a Mac, GarageBand (Free Version), Audacity. You don’t need anything more expensive than that.
  • Step 3 is choosing an audio host where you will upload your audio files. This will allow you to have an RSS feed. You will take that RSS feed and plug it into your Amazon skills kit where you will be creating the flash briefing skill.
  • Teri is not a programmer or coder, but he set up his flash briefing all by himself.
  • Step 4 includes beta testing the flash briefing to make sure everything is live then submit it to Amazon for certification.

Building a Good Flash Briefing

  • When setting up a flash briefing, one can do recorded audio or text to speech.
  • From a branding perspective, text to speech will not have as much impact as audio recorded files. This is because Alexa’s voice gets mixed in with everybody else’s and thus have no identifying factors. When one does audio recording then they can have some type of audio jingle or branding which is important because people will always know what they’re listening to.
  • Having some music playing in the background of each flash briefing episode is also a great method of audio branding.
  • A good audio branding catches a listener’s attention.
  • When creating a flash briefing, one has the option of creating the skills card which works perfectly for multimodal devices like the Echo Show because it displays an icon and title of the flash briefing. One can also choose to put in a URL that people can click from their mobile phone or Echo Show and be directed to a website. That can work very for marketing a business’ product or service.
  • One can get information on listeners and unique users of the flash briefing depending on the audio host.
  • You can do your flash briefing weekly, daily or hourly, but Teri proposes daily.
  • Consistency is very important because the audience you have starts to rely on you and build a relationship with you.
  • When doing a daily flash briefing, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of content you need to come up with. Having a clear process is extremely useful.

Good or Bad Voice Experience

  • Teri was playing around with an educational skill with his kids. It’s a tutoring adventure stories skill called Kiwi Monsters. It teaches scientifi...
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Voice in Canada Podcast - Today's Health Tip Flash Briefing with Melissa Klepacki
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11/13/18 • 24 min

In this episode, Teri welcomes Melissa Klepacki, a serial entrepreneur and wellness fanatic. She’s also one of the pioneers when it comes to voice first and particularly with flash briefings. She is well into the 200s of her episodes of flash briefings, and they had a very interesting conversation about the impact that voice is and will continue to have on the world.


Getting into the Voice First space

  • Got into social media marketing to push marketing out to people instead of having them go to a website to get community news. Was using Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to share information with people.
  • She realized the paradigm shift happening with voice and decided to develop a daily flash briefing skill called “Today’s Health Tip”, to push wellness information to people.

Today’s Health Tip

  • It’s a 3-minute daily wellness tip.
  • Available on Amazon.com
  • She talks about all kinds of subjects like low carb living, gut health, brain health, recommended supplements, mindfulness, incorporating more movement, and others.
  • She works with a developer. Initially used Storyline to piece together her daily flash briefing, but it was ugly. The developer advised her to use her voice in developing the entire skill.
  • People in 190 countries listen to Today’s Health Tip. 28% of the listeners are in Canada.
  • The recommendations she gives comes from journal articles, books and anecdotal things that have worked for her.

The Guud Company

  • She has a passion for Umlauts which remind her of the smiley face.
  • She wants to share good news and make people think about wellness on a daily basis.
  • Consults with other companies to develop flash briefing skills. Currently working with Princeton Partners, the largest marketing firm in Princeton, New Jersey. They have developed 2 flash briefing skills for them.
  • They just launched a fun, family-friendly holiday skill called “Dear Santa” done in Santa Clause’s voice. The typical consumers are 4 to 9 year olds and the two choices they have is to report their good behavior to Santa so they can be on the nice list or to request a specific gift. When requesting a gift, the child asks for a specific gift and that information is captured so that the email registered to the Alexa device will receive an email from the North Pole to tell the parent that a specific gift has been requested. The parent can then buy that gift for the child for Christmas. Kids will typically not share their gift requests directly with their parents.
  • Dear Santa is live right now.
  • They plan on building out the regular Alexa skill to include more wellness and mindfulness topics.

Challenges and Rewards with the flash briefing

  • Recording it on a daily basis can be a challenge.
  • Records a few episodes at a time sometimes like when she’s taking a vacation. Does it the night before and tries to release at 12:01 AM on the day that it’s going to be shared.
  • Friends and other people have reached out telling her the flash briefing has changed their lives.

Flash briefing tips

  • There is a huge opportunity in the flash briefing skills arena especially for people creating content regularly. There are about 50,000 Alexa skills and only 5,000 of those are daily flash briefings.
  • You don’t have to do the flash briefing every day.
  • Flash briefings are a huge opportunity for companies to get out in front of competition.
  • The discoverability issue: It’s not easy for people to find the different Alexa skills that are available because there are currently no discoverability tools. There needs to be a website or Alexa skill that will recommend the different skills and flash briefings based on each user’s preferences. She occasionally asks people to share her flash briefing and leave reviews. Plenty of Alexa skills have no reviews.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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Voice in Canada Podcast - Top Tips for Voice in the Roaring 20s
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01/28/20 • 20 min

Top Tips for Voice in the Roaring 20s

In this episode, Teri will share the recording of the presentation that he gave at Project Voice 2020 about flash briefings and the top flash briefing tips for 2020 and beyond.

Teri was awarded the Flash Briefing of the Year award at the event, and has recently learned that Amazon named him an Alexa champion. His Crack the Code gamified flash briefing competition also just recently ended and he will be announcing the winners in this episode.

Enjoy!

The Audio Content Production Opportunities with Flash Briefings

  • While looking for resources to help him learn about voice technology, he didn’t find much, and so he decided to start his Alexa in Canada podcast all about consumers and how they can use Alexa and leverage voice technology.
  • His Voice in Canada flash briefing has been the number one rated flash briefing and new skill in Canada since it started.
  • He started the Briefcast.FM Network, which is a network of curated briefcasters who are producing some of the very best flash briefings in the market.
  • Combining his passion for voice with his medical expertise, he also created a suite of voice first health flash briefings on top of his Voice First Health Podcast.
  • He also created a course called Flash Briefing Formula to help the voice community.
  • There are 700,000 podcasts and 12,000 flash briefings, which means that for every 60 podcasts that are currently out there, there is one flash briefing. This highlights the great opportunity in the space.

The Top 9 Flash Briefings Tips

#1 - Be Brief

  • Listeners are subscribing to multiple flash briefings (6 to 10 at least), and they want quick content. They want to get in and out, and get the little nuggets so they can move on.
  • From a poll that Teri conducted within his audience, the preferred length for a flash briefing episode is 3 minutes or less.

#2 - Solving a Problem

  • The best way to develop a nice relationship with listeners through a flash briefing is by solving a problem that the listeners have.

#3 - An Eye Catching Eye

  • As of today, the way people are finding flash briefings is by looking at some type of visual display.
  • Teri asked his audience how they search for flash briefings, and 68% of them said that they use some type of visual interface like the Alexa app, the Briefcast.FM website, and the Amazon website.

#4 - Equipment

  • The use of decent equipment is paramount if someone wants to create a great flash briefing.

#5 - Have Fun with it

  • It’s important for one to be willing to experiment and be creative. For example, for the 500th episode of his flash briefing, Teri created the Crack the Code competition to make the flash briefing fun and engaging for his listeners.

#6 - Consistency

  • This is probably the most important tip because if one is not consistent, they will definitely lose their listeners.

#7 - Analyze

  • One must take time to strategize about their titles and descriptions when they’re creating their flash briefing. Amazon is a search engine just like Google, and so it’s critical to use the right keywords. Daniel Hill from the Instagram Stories Flash Briefing advises people to pick a name for their flash briefing that incorporates something that people are searching for on Amazon or Google.

#8 - Sonic Branding

  • Emily Binder of Voice Marketing with Emily Binder flash briefing says that a flash briefing’s consistent intro and outro should be on brand and short (under five to ten seconds each)

#9 - Start Today

  • Now is the time to start a flash briefing. They are an incredible opportunity for people to get their message out to their niche (audience)

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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