More and more people are using and discovering new things using Alexa. Alexa is the voice assistant from Amazon that is dominating the market right now. If you want to reach people asking for assistance rather than turning to Google on their phones or desktop, you’ll need to create a flash briefing, but how do they work?
What is A Flash Briefing?
Alexa offers the users the chance to receive snippets of information from chosen skills, news sites and so on. Most people begin their daily routine or ask for a flash briefing when returning home to catch up with the latest goings on. Flash briefings are usually short, averaging around 1 minute, but they can be up to 10 minutes long (but not many people sit around and listen past the 60-second mark). If the user isn’t interested they can say Skip or Next and go on to the next news.
How Do Users Hear the Flash Briefing?
Alexa users need to use the Alexa app via a smartphone or go to the Amazon website to enable any skill, including any flash briefings. Once you create yours you can update it daily and people with your business skill enabled will receive the flash briefing when they ask Alexa to provide the updates. Each flash briefing will remain live for 24 hours, offering fresh content each day of the week.
How could you create a Flash Briefing for your business? Let’s take Sharpmonkeys as an example. We could provide our listeners with a daily dose of news relating to digital marketing while referring our listeners to our website or to contact us for further information or help. Create content that is relevant and of interest to your audience, remain on brand, keep it short and provide a way of getting further information, all within a minute or so.
Always think about you can make the best use of the minute of time you have. Be unique but stay on brand and keep it relevant. If you are a food producer, you could offer a recipe for the day. If you create clothing, why not offer a daily style tip? Pet product supplier? How about a daily pet fact?
Creating the Flash Briefing
In order to create the brief, you will need to create an audio file, edit it and perhaps choose some background music. Once created, the audio files can be uploaded to a host site, so it can be accessed by Alexa, in the same way as Podcasts and videos need to be hosted.
Once you have your audio files online you head over to Amazon to create the skill. Open a developer account to begin. When creating a new Alexa skill you will need to complete a basic form and direct Alexa to the URL of the audio file you’re sharing. Continue following the prompts, ticking through the boxes and agree to the terms (after reading, of course). That’s all it takes, pretty simple stuff. Amazon will review your application before letting it go live. You will need to continue uploading your fresh audio files to your chosen online host to keep the news updated. If you skip any days those with your skill enabled won’t hear any news from you, it’s not the end of the world. You can avoid empty days by creating batches of updates to upload and schedule on the host site a week in advance.
What do you think? Have you got any fresh ideas for your business flash briefing on Alexa?
