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Automated Blog-to-Speech by Alexa Guy
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When Amazon initially rolled out Flash Briefings, they had two features that were taken away after a few months: 1) Video Flash Briefing creation and 2) Enabling Flash Briefing by voice. In fact, you may have seen these if you are a fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. His was one of the first Flash Briefings, which featured (and still features) video. He also has a video where he says “Alexa, add GaryVee 365 to my Flash Briefings.”
We still can’t create new Video Flash Briefings, but it looks like voice enabling is rolling out again now. It works by telling Alexa to “enable the [Flash Briefing name].”
Want to see it in action? Take a look at this video where I voice enable Jonny Cooper’s Daily Brain Tattoo Flash Briefing. Then, join me again below the video and we’ll go into the details.
What this means is that if Derek Champagne wants his traditional podcast to know about his Flash Briefing, he can have a call to action that says, “To hear my daily Flash Briefing, just say “Alexa, enable the Business Leadership Series.”
Or when Anne Bacharach is a guest on another podcast, and the host asks “How do people contact you?” She can reply “at my website at accountabilitycoach.com or listen to my daily Flash Briefing by saying ‘Alexa, enable the Accountability Minute.’”
Or you can put it on your website or marketing materials for easy enabling, like in the potential Alexa Guy Facebook add at the top of this page, featuring Matt Miller’s Sowing Seed.
To this old marketer’s brain, this is huge!
Now the bad news: it doesn’t work for every Flash Briefing yet. I didn’t try it on all my clients shows, but it seems to only be working for about half the Flash Briefings out there. For instance, Alexa couldn’t find the Mark Mawhinney Minute or Jen’s 5 am Jumpstart. On some, she would say “I don’t know that one.” On others, she’d tell me I could enable it manually in the Alexa app.
I’m not sure why some work and others don’t, but give it a try and see if yours does. If it does, start providing this to drive more people to your show. It’s also a shortcut to getting reviews. Tell your audience, “Just say, ‘Alexa, enable [Flash Briefing Name].’ Then give me a listen and leave a review right in the Alexa app.”
I’ll continue working with this and finding ways for it to work for everyone.
Leave your ideas for other ways to use this new feature on our Facebook Group so we can all learn from each other.
