I’m sure you all have heard about voice-activated speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speaker. But did you know that in January 2017, seven percent of the U.S. populations owned one of these speakers? According to Google data, 20% of search queries were voice-activated in 2016. Gartner predicts that this percentage will increase to 30% by 2020. No less than 87% of the people who own a smart speaker want to use it to ask questions hands-free, according to an Edison Research and NPR collaborated survey. This is where brands can expand their content marketing by sharing their expertise and resources. Since the Amazon devices currently dominate the market with a market share of nearly 72%, we’ll focus primarily on how to use content marketing on those devices.
What Kind Of Content Should You Create For The Amazon Echo And Echo Dot?
There are several things to keep in mind when creating content for voice-activated smart speakers. Below you’ll find best practices on how to create effective content for these devices.
- Nowadays, consumers are multitasking all the time, dividing their attention over several devices at once. You can use audio to engage usefully during those micro-moments before the consumer flickers on to the next thing. As a brand, you can add value to the customer by understanding what he or she wants to do, know or buy during these micro-moments.
- When creating content for smart speakers, you have to apply the same principles like marketers did when advertising on the radio. Since there are no images available, your content has to be optimized for audio. Implement music and real human voices that sound helpful and authoritative at the same time. Create mental images through text and generate emotional responses without the use of images. To do so you have to use memorable language.
- Add to this that humans are better at remembering visuals than audio. Make use of music, branded tones and repetition of key points so the auditor will be able to easily recall your brand or content.
- Get to know what questions and pain points your target audience has and adapt your content to these findings.
- According to the Edison Research and NPR collaborated survey, 90% of smart speaker owners reported that the ability to listen to music was a core reason to purchase the device. Taking this into account, it might be interesting for your brand to advertise on Pandora or Spotify.
- If your brand is a thought-leader or a unique view and approach to a topic, a podcast might be useful for your brands content marketing.
How To Optimize Audio For SEO?
Since the industry is still relatively new, there aren’t any SEO best practices for smart speakers yet. However there are a few trends according to research from Forbes and Milestone Internet.
- Long-tail Keyword Phrases: The user’s motives behind keystrokes are easier to identify thanks to conversational tones and queries. Due to this, long-tail keywords are very important. Fiddle with full sentences based on your list of keywords and improve more pages to include those sentence searches as they would be used by potential customers.
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): 87% of smart speaker owners want to ask questions hands-free. We advise you to optimize your website by adding a powerful FAQ page. On top of that, address common questions within other web pages, social accounts, blogs, and so on.
- Stay Local: Consumers are three times more likely to use voice search for local-based queries than text searches. Make sure your name, address and phone numbers are present on every appropriate page. Also, “Near landmark” searches doubled since 2016. Make use of local landmarks and get them on your website in order to anchor your business to them.
Learn from the Best
In December 2017 the number of skills available for the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot passed 25,000. There are numerous examples of skills from big international corporations like the BBC, Uber, Just Eat among others. You can always draw inspiration from their usage of smart speakers for their content marketing strategy. Finally, if you’re interested in setting up your very own Flash Briefing Skill for the Amazon Echo and the Amazon Echo Dot, we highly recommend you read this article on our blog. Here we’ll explain to you step by step how to get started using Flash Briefings for your brand!
iRISEmedia | Social Media Marketing Agency | Toronto
iRISEmedia.com is a Toronto based social media marketing agency, specializing in social media management, digital marketing, online reputation management and online branding. Our team helps clients manage and grow their online presence and branding to increase qualified web traffic and online leads. We service clients in Toronto and throughout Canada and the U.S. If you would like to have a discussion about any of your digital marketing needs, please feel free to contact us today. We would be delighted to hear from you.
