How to Become the Most Persuasive Copywriter on the Planet

Copywriting, when compared to other forms of writing, is a different kind of animal.

It’s not necessarily about writing well.

It’s about writing persuasively.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a world-class wordsmith or a literary genius.

If you can’t effectively move readers through the proper sequence of steps and ultimately convince them to buy, your conversions are going to suffer.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the world’s greatest writer.

You probably won’t see me publishing a novel anytime soon.

But I’d like to think I’m good at copywriting, which, in its simplest form, is “the act of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing.”

In this post, I’d like to provide you with a straightforward formula you can use to become a highly persuasive copywriter with the end goal of maximizing conversions.

I’ll explain both the basic structure and the specific techniques you need to use to become more persuasive.

Start with a killer value proposition

Research from Nielsen Norman Group found that you have a very small amount of time to grab a visitor’s attention before they leave your page.

In fact, you usually have a max of 20 seconds.

Your first order of business is to make it abundantly clear what your value proposition is.

Now, there are several ways to go about this, but I believe in keeping things simple.

Getting too complex tends to dilute the message and confuse prospects.

What I’ve found to be most effective is keeping my value proposition short, sweet, and clear.

Like this:

I think the Moz homepage does a really good job at this as well:

Don’t make them guess what you’re offering.

Let them know in a split second what you are offering with your crystal clear value proposition.

To accomplish this, try to condense the essence of your product down to just a few words.

Swiftly move to the benefits

“What’s in it for me?”

That’s what most visitors are thinking after hearing your value proposition.

But here’s the thing.

Most people have a tendency to emphasize features over benefits.

But it should be the other way around.

Just look at this Venn diagram from ABC Copywriting:

Notice that benefits are valued over features.

Of course, you need to explain how your product works. But you can elaborate on that later.

What you want to do first is explain how the product fulfills a need or desire.

In other words, explain how your customers’ lives will be better after they buy your product.

Here’s a great example from Moz:

See how prospects instantly understand the benefits of using Moz?

It will save them time and make things more efficient.

They also don’t have to worry about deciphering complex data because Moz takes care of this for them.

When it comes to describing benefits, there are three main types to cover:

• Tangible
• Intangible
• Commercial

This illustration from ABC Copywriting explains these various types of benefits in more detail.

As they point out, “Benefits need not be unique, but they must be compelling.”

Keep this in mind when deciding on an angle.

I personally find that it’s best to highlight the benefits before getting down to the nuts and bolts of the features.

That way prospects should be more receptive and willing to wade through the details.

But if you go the other way around and cover the features before the benefits, you’re probably going to lose a sizable portion of your leads.

Just sayin’.

Now explain the features

“What’s in the box?”

That’s what Brad Pitt’s character David Mills wanted to know in the closing scene of the movie Seven.

While the contents of the box were quite grisly (his wife’s severed head), this question demonstrates the importance of promptly telling your leads what they’ll get by making a purchase.

In other words, let them know what’s in the box.

They already know what you’re offering and what the benefits are.

Now it’s time to succinctly break down the features of your product.

Again, I feel like Moz pulls this off flawlessly, so I’ll use this as an example:

I prefer breaking features down into bullet points or concise little sections like Moz does.

“Digestibility” is huge, and you want to present your product’s features in an easy-to-absorb, intuitive way.

You also want to touch on specifics to distinguish your product from competitors and to add a sense of value.

Here’s how I did this with Quick Sprout:

Keep it simple, but include a few key details that explain why your product is the bee’s knees.

CTA

By now, your prospects should understand what your product is, how it will benefit them, and what the features are.

Your final task is to tell them what to do next.

In other words, it’s time for your CTA.

You can liken this to battling a boss in the final level of a video game.

It’s arguably the most challenging aspect of the process, but if you’ve done what you were supposed to do in the previous steps, you should see a reasonable conversion rate.

Once again, simplicity reigns supreme, and I see no reason to complicate your CTA.

Here’s how I approach it on Quick Sprout:

And here’s what it looks like on NeilPatel.com:

Notice that it’s very clear what action I want prospects to complete.

As always, I strongly recommend doing at least some basic A/B testing on your CTA to see what works best.

Some specific elements to test include:

• button style
• button color
• wording
• positioning

Being hella persuasive

Okay, now we’ve covered the basic structure of well-crafted copywriting.

The general structure of a landing page should be roughly as follows:

• Value proposition
• Benefits
• Features
• CTA

But how do you ensure you’re hitting all the right notes and being highly persuasive?

Obviously, the value proposition and benefits will offer some motivation, but here are some other things I’ve found to be impactful.

Make your content scannable

I’m not going to launch into a huge sermon about the importance of creating scannable content.

You probably already know people read online content differently than they do offline content.

But if you want to efficiently get prospects from Point A (your value proposition) to Point B (your CTA), it helps to make everything in-between easily scannable.

Luckily, the formula for scannable content is quite easy.

Just include headers, bullet lists, and a considerable amount of white space along the way.

Apple, being the savvy marketers they are, do this perfectly on their MacBook Pro landing page.

Here are a couple of screenshots:

It’s seamless.

Persuasive words

An article on Business 2 Community talks about the three different brains we have:

• the new brain
• the middle brain
• the old brain

According to the article,

the old brain is the part that controls decisions, and it also happens to be the most primitive. In this way, the words you use to market to the old brain will often be the most direct, simple, arresting, visual words you have.

So if there was ever a copywriting hack, it’s using highly persuasive words that make the “old part of the brain light up.”

Here’s a list of those words:

And according to research, the five most persuasive words in the English language are the ones in blue, which are:

• New
• You
• Free
• Because
• Instantly

Peppering these words throughout your copy in key locations should have a noticeable impact on conversions.

Social proof

This is my last point, and it’s a biggie.

Incorporating social proof into your copy is the icing on the cake.

This was actually one of Robert Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion,

which maintains that people are especially likely to perform certain actions if they can relate to the people who performed the same actions before them.

I’m not going to go into all the gory details of social proof here.

You can learn about it from this Kissmetrics article.

But I will say that testimonials are usually your best bet, pound for pound.

Here’s how I incorporate them into my landing page on NeilPatel.com:

You can also use things like:

• ratings
• media logos
• subscriber counts
• social connections (your number of followers)
• clients you’ve worked with

Just be practical, and provide whatever type of social proof you think would most persuade your prospects to take action.

Conclusion

The way I look at it, there are two main components of effective copywriting.

The first component involves properly structuring your content so that it’s presented in a logical, sequential manner.

This means explaining your product in a way that makes sense to an average person and systematically covering your value proposition, benefits, features, and CTAs.

The second component is weaving in persuasive elements to quell fears, clear up any misunderstandings, and ultimately motivate prospects to take action.

By appealing to people on these two different levels, you can create very persuasive copy and crush it from a conversions standpoint.

What do you think is the single most important aspect of persuasive copywriting?

from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/IDK2WESuwdE/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/161298908374

6 ways to build a more productive remote content marketing team

The landscape of the modern workplace has changed a lot in the past ten years. Once upon a time you had to find shady crafting companies or secret shopping positions if you wanted to work flexibly and from home.

Now we’ve seen a powerful trend emerging. In 2015 the number of US workers who had moved to remote (or telecommuting) jobs had climbed to an unprecedented 37%. That is a number that continues to grow as more startups and even large scale companies open their workforce up to those who act as office vagabonds, putting in hours from home, coffee shops, and even while traveling.

Content marketing is being impacted by this trend most. You no longer need to find and move talent to your office: You can work effectively with content writers from all over the world.

1. Use a good task management platform

There are so many task managing apps out there that it would be hard to find a single one that works best. You will want platforms that deal with business management (so your team can stay on board at all times), and communication (so you can always keep in touch, no matter where you all are.

Flow, Trello, and Asana are three solid examples you may want to look into.

From personal experience, managing a productivity tool still takes plenty of time. So unless you have a reliable project manager in-house, it makes sense to rely on a project management company.

It may actually save you money and minimize your headache with dealing with multiple to-do lists and processes. Distributed is a good example of a company that actually specializes in managing distributed teams all over the world. Hiring a virtual assistant is another option.

2. Use a reliable editorial calendar tool

I am a big proponent of using a year-long editorial calendar that lets you and your content marketing team get properly prepared for big holidays, seasonal trends and even fun days that can be turned into solid promotional material.

By preparing your content in advance, you’ll be always ahead of the game. It’s exceedingly important if you deal with an international teams when not everyone is aware of your local trends and holidays.

My all-time favorite editorial calendar management platform has been Coschedule that’s also perfectly set-up for distributed teams: You add your team members and watch everyone do their own thing:

If you are looking for a higher-level solution, take a look at NewsCred. It gives you a nice color-coded dashboard of your content marketing plans:

3. Invest into solid writing tools

Your writing team is as effective as the tools you provide them with. You want them to brainstorm, research and write productively. Different workflows may require different writing tools. I always encourage writers to use the following tools:

1. Google Docs to create content. It’s easy for editing and it’s real time, so teams can work on content assets while discussing it on Skype or in a Slack group.

2. HARO and MyBlogU to collect useful quotes from niche experts and influencers.

3. Plagiarism Check to quickly check for any instances of copied content. This is especially important if you have new writers. Believe it or not, but many writers would just copy some parts of content (these could be too long quotes) without realizing it’s not an advisable digital content marketing tactic.

4. Use an effective social media sharing solution

It’s very important to engage your content writing team into the marketing routine. It’s obvious that they will be much more excited at seeing their articles succeed (after doing their brainstorming, research and writing tasks) than the social media team who may see the completed content assets for the first time.

Thus it’s essential to have a unified multi-user cross-channel social media sharing and scheduling solution that would enable cross team marketing incentives.

I use DrumUp to scale my social media marketing tasks. It has all the features I need:

• Easy one-click scheduling (for my articles to go to my social media channels repeatedly for more exposure)
• Multi-user support (for team members to see what they need to be shared)
• Leaderboard feature to encourage friendly competition among the team members
• Content library feature to store my promotions, ever-green content and seasons greetings in categories for convenient reuse

5. Use a marketing dashboard to monitor stats

Cyfe is a great customizable all in one business management software that allows you to create your own widgets to handle any aspect of your business, all for $19 per month. For higher-level content marketing stats monitoring I use the following boards:

• Growth of traffic referrals (Google Analytics)
• Recent traffic referrals (Google Analytics)
• Social media traffic analytics (Google Analytics)
• Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Pinterest account growth

6. Use productive communication tools that spur creativity

Properly set-up communication between your remote employees helps creativity, experience exchange and marketing collaboration. It also helps your brand consistency because your team can properly discuss every content asset before they start working on it.

Slack is an awesome communication tool that lets you create channels and speak to different groups, or on different topics. Think of it as a more professional version of Discord.

There’s one reason I prefer Slack over emailing: It gives a centralized platform for your team communication but unlike a project management solution, Slack fosters a more relaxed environment which is so important for creative teams. Slack helps creativity and gives writers a place to brainstorm freely without being accused of cluttering the board.

Create your super team!

Don’t let your workforce get limited by borders. These days we have tools in place that empower you to build the content marketing team of your dream without investing time and money into moving everyone into a single office. How are you managing your remote content marketing employees?

from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/05/31/6-ways-to-build-a-more-productive-remote-content-marketing-team/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/161286104569

Three strategies for cracking the B2B code on Facebook

When most people think Facebook advertising, they think B2C marketing.

Many tend to assume that B2B marketing on Facebook doesn’t make sense or would not be effective – because it would be too hard to get in front of professionals, decision makers, and the right industry positions, and even if you do, they’re not in the mood to think about business if they’re browsing Facebook.

These assumptions, however, are quite inaccurate – and with the right strategies and targeting in place, Facebook can indeed be an effective B2B platform. Below are three key strategies for how to make your B2B marketing successful on Facebook.

Build a layered Lookalike strategy

Lookalike audiences are one of Facebook’s most efficient targeting capabilities. First off, here’s a quick refresher: Lookalike targeting is where you can leverage your first-party data (e.g. customer lists, audience lists, etc.) as a seed audience and Facebook will take that list and target users who are very similar in characteristics, behaviors, and traits as that audience.

The capability is super-powerful, but rather than taking your entire customer list and using it as a seed list, you need to be smart about how to segment and leverage your first-party data.

1. Think about your customer list and how to segment it

To create an effective seed list, think about your customer list and whether you can segment that list into groups of identifiable characteristics. For example, let’s say you are a B2B cybersecurity company that sells cybersecurity to a variety of companies in different industries.

You may want to segment out your customer lists by the industries they are in – tech, medical, education, financial, etc. Keep in mind you’ll need a seed list of between 2K-5K users to be effective.

2. Upload the seed list you’ve developed to Facebook

Next, upload that seed list into Facebook and develop your lookalikes off of it. In most cases, I’d recommend that you build an audience of the 1% most relevant users, which tends to be the audience closest in similarities, characteristics, and traits.

However, for this strategy, you should keep your audience size fairly large in order to layer additional targeting to refine the list. I recommend a LAL 5% (LALs go from 1% to 10%), as a 5% will still find users similar to your seed list – but rather than receiving an audience size of 2M, you are going after a larger pool of 10M.

I know, you must be thinking that 10M sounds way too big!! Don’t worry – refinement is coming!

3. Start building your ad set

As you start building your ad set, you’ll be using your LAL 5% audience as your base audience to target. In other words, rather than targeting all of Facebook’s uses, you’re starting off with a more qualified audience given they are similar to your customers.

You’ll layer Facebook’s targeting options on top of this audience by selecting job/title targeting to find the decision makers in a company likely to be interested in your product.

You have now just leveraged Facebook’s various targeting capabilities to ensure that you are going after audiences similar to your customers and targeting true decision-makers.

Take advantage of third-party data

Remember that third-party data providers are your friend! You should consider partnering with third-party data providers such as Axciom and Datalogix in order to leverage their relevant lists.

Similar to what you can find within Facebook, you can also leverage their third-party lists and get in front of specific industry professionals and decision makers. This is a quick and easy way to identify relevant audiences and target them.

Engage users with video

Think about your business. Do your customers need to be educated? Are they conducting lots of research before they purchase? This is often the case with B2B companies who need to build a strong, long-term case to justify high price points.

An efficient tactic to avoid excessive clicks, yet get the job done on educating your audiences, is to leverage video ads. You’ll want to keep in mind that 30 seconds or less is the recommended time given people’s short attention spans – but that’s more than enough time to inform the users and get them into your funnel.

And Facebook automatically builds audience lists based on how long users have viewed your video (e.g. 50%, 75%, 100%), so you can segment by level of interest.

Next, you can create an ad set and remarket with static and carousel ads towards specific audiences who have viewed 100% of the video. Introduce more value props to the folks who showed serious interest; pull the users onto your site, push them down the funnel, and ultimately convert.

Are these strategies guaranteed to make Facebook a successful platform for your B2B company? Of course not. But we strongly recommend testing these three strategies to see what kind of traction you can get; otherwise, you’re letting your competitors grab all the eyeballs on one of the most biggest, most engaging platforms in digital marketing.

from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/05/30/three-strategies-for-cracking-the-b2b-code-on-facebook/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/161247831019

How to Get 99+ Endorsements on All Your LinkedIn Skills

“I got 99+ endorsements, and they all help prove my proficiency in key areas.”

That’s what Jay Z might say if he was optimizing his LinkedIn profile.

Hopefully you get the reference.

But seriously, LinkedIn endorsements are really important.

In fact, they’re one of the most effective ways to prove your expertise and back up your claims.

Anyone can say they possess a particular skill, but having 99+ endorsements proves that.

What are endorsements?

Before I go any further, allow me to explain this concept if you’re unfamiliar.

It’s pretty simple.

Endorsements are a LinkedIn feature that allows others to verify your skills with a single click.

Here’s a screenshot of the formal definition given by LinkedIn:

For instance, the top three skills I list on my profile are SEO, online marketing, and web analytics.

Endorsements are a simple way to prove you are not a charlatan—you’re genuinely proficient at the skills you list on your profile.

The more endorsements you have, the more legit you appear.

Ideally, you’ll want to reach 99+.

Not to toot my own horn, but that’s what I’ve achieved on the vast majority of my LinkedIn skills.

See?

Here too:

All are 99+.

Of course, you can have thousands of endorsements for a certain skill, but 99+ is the highest number that will appear unless someone actually clicks on the skill to dig deeper.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

I actually have 2,134 endorsements for SEO, but 99+ is what visitors first see.

Why are endorsements important?

Getting people to endorse you can open doors and unlock opportunities that might not have happened otherwise.

It’s a way to validate yourself and show you really do “have the chops.”

This is obviously appealing to those who come across your LinkedIn profile, looking to find a partner in a business project, working arrangement, and so on.

Some experts even suspect it can impact your search ranking.

The bottom line is the more endorsements you receive, the better.

In this article, I’d like to discuss some strategies to help you get 99+ endorsements on all your LinkedIn skills.

Let’s start from the top.

Prioritize your skills

Most people have a wide array of skills.

And LinkedIn is more than happy to help you share them with the world.

In fact, they allow you to list up to 50.

I list a few dozen on my profile.

But you need to be selective about the skills you list at the top.

Like I mentioned earlier, the top three skills I list are SEO, online marketing, and web analytics.

This is important for two reasons.

First, it tends to be easier to get endorsements when it’s for your core skills that people naturally associate you with.

For example, I do have experience with website development. That’s true.

But I’m far more skilled at SEO.

Therefore, most people associate my name with SEO more than website development, which makes them far more likely to give me an endorsement for SEO.

That’s why I made the conscious decision to use SEO as the first skill on my profile.

Second, people tend to get overwhelmed if there is a ridiculous number of choices.

But if you place your primary skills at the top, people can zone in on those skills, which increases the likelihood of them giving you an endorsement.

Endorse others

I’m a firm believer in the law of reciprocity.

It’s a psychological principle I’ve discussed in several blog posts mainly in the context of conversion optimization.

Long story short, it simply means that people are inclined to do something nice for you if you do something nice for them.

But reciprocity can be applied to LinkedIn endorsements as well.

And it’s not rocket science.

Endorse the skills of others, and there’s a good chance a considerable percentage of them will return the favor.

I recommend starting with the people you’re closest to and have the tightest relationships with.

This might include colleagues, team members, previous employers, and satisfied customers/clients.

Look over the skills they list on their profiles, and add a few endorsements.

Once they see you’ve made the effort to help them, many will be inclined to help you as well.

If they know for a fact you’re adept at a particular skill, it shouldn’t be any trouble for them to endorse you.

And the beautiful thing is it’s easy to do.

It’s not like it requires a major time commitment.

Unlike personal recommendations that require someone to write a unique statement, an endorsement requires only a single click.

It’s really no big deal.

Straight up ask for endorsements

One thing I’ve learned in life, as well as in business, is that it’s important to ask.

Some of my biggest breakthroughs were simply the result of me asking for help, a favor, etc.

And you know what?

A lot of people are more than willing to help you out.

Tactic #1

If you’re looking to raise your number of endorsements quickly, I suggest politely asking others to give them to you.

An article on Portfolium discusses a specific formula for increasing endorsements by asking.

It’s simple.

The author, Scott, created a brief message that he sent to 300 connections asking for endorsements.

Here’s what it looked like:

I’d like to point out his opening line:

What skills do you want to be endorsed for?

I think this is a more effective way to approach people than immediately asking for an endorsement—it doesn’t make you come across as overly self-serving.

After sending this message to 300 connections, Scott saw a drastic increase in his number of endorsements.

It went from a meager 28 to 302, which was an increase of over 1,000%!

The amazing thing is that it took less than 15 minutes.

Tweak this template as you see fit, and send it to as many connections as possible.

While you may not get quite the level of results that Scott did, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll see a substantial spike in your number of endorsements.

Tactic #2

Here’s another simple way to go about asking.

It involves leveraging existing resources where people understand your skillset and know what you bring to the table.

Some examples might include your blog and email.

Here’s what you do.

First, invite others to connect with you on LinkedIn.

This is necessary because the last time I checked, only first-degree connections are allowed to endorse you.

To do this you, you could leave a CTA with a link to your LinkedIn account at the end of blog posts or in your email signature.

Then, each time you make a new connection, send them the message I discussed in the previous tactic.

Be active on LinkedIn

One of the things I find interesting about LinkedIn is that many people seldom update their profiles.

While there are 467 million users, only 3 million update their profiles on a weekly basis.

That’s a tiny percentage.

Most people update their Facebook at least two or three times a week.

It’s usually the same with Instagram profiles.

As for Twitter, it’s not uncommon to hit double-digit updates daily.

But for some reason, most people totally forget about LinkedIn.

But that’s not how I roll.

If you look at the activity feed of my profile, you’ll notice I update quite frequently:

And for a good reason.

The more often I update, the more I’m on the radar of my connections.

This means more traffic to my profile and more opportunities for engagement, including endorsements.

What I’m trying to say is that you should make a point to consistently update your LinkedIn profile with quality content.

It doesn’t even need to be your own content.

Curated content is totally fine as long as it offers real value and scratches your connections’ collective itch.

And when you’re choosing what type of content to post, try to make sure it’s relevant to the primary skills you’re seeking endorsements for.

If conversion optimization is your thing, you might want to post something from ConversionXL.

Considering the small number of people posting updates on LinkedIn, it should be fairly easy for you to gain users’ attention when they scroll through their feeds.

Conclusion

When it comes to professional networking, LinkedIn is the go-to network.

While it doesn’t get as much attention or have the same user base as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you don’t want to overlook it.

In fact, it’s been an incredibly powerful tool for me and has helped me make several valuable connections over the years.

One of the ways you can prove you’re legitimately proficient at the skills you list is by having others vouch for you by giving endorsements.

It’s quick and easy but can have a tremendous impact on your personal brand, especially if you’re able to gain 99+ endorsements.

By using these strategies, you can effectively leverage your network to get the endorsements you’re looking for.

And who knows what opportunities this will lead to in the future…

The long-term implications can be profound.

How do you typically go about getting endorsements for your LinkedIn skills?

from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksprout/~3/A2lGwBReL3Q/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/161222465129

Optimizing for voice assistants: Why actions speak louder than words

“Hey Siri, remind me to invent you in 30 years”

In 1987, Apple came up with the idea of a “Knowledge Navigator”. You can see the full video here, but it’s a concept that’s remarkably – and perhaps, not coincidentally – similar to our modern smart device assistants, Siri among them.

Its features included a talking screen, reacting to vocal commands to provide information and sort calendars.

In theory, we’re there, 30 years later – though the reality doesn’t always quite match up to the dream.

Even when it does work, voice hasn’t always been exactly what people were looking for. The thing most adults said they wish their voice search systems could do was find their keys (though teens said they most wished it could send them pizza).

Although we’re getting to the stage where that’s possible now, the majority of developments in voice have been voice search – talking to your phone to find out information.

Showing search results for “Why can’t you understand me, you stupid phone”

But while talking to a device can be a better experience than playing around with a virtual keyboard on a phone or a physical one on a computer, there are two major issues with voice search.

The first is that it’s still clunky. Half the time you have to repeat yourself in order to be understood, particularly if the word you’re trying to get across is slang or an abbreviation of some sort, which is to say, the default sort of language you’d think would be fitting for “conversational” search.

It doesn’t feel smooth, and it doesn’t feel effortless – and that pretty much removes the point of it.

The other is that it simply doesn’t add value. A voice search isn’t achieving anything you couldn’t do by simply typing in the same thing.

But recently, we’ve seen developments to the voice control industry, starting with Alexa. At this point, everyone’s familiar with the Echo and its younger sibling, the Echo Dot – it’s been in adverts, our friends have it, maybe we have it ourselves.

The Alexa devices were among Amazon’s best-selling products in 2016, especially around Christmas, and the trend doesn’t show significant signs of slowing. But if we’ve had Siri since 2011, why is Alexa picking up so much traction now?

The answer is that it’s not voice search. It’s voice commands. Alexa is more exciting and satisfying for users because it provides an action – you speak to it and something happens. You now can order a pizza – or an Uber, or a dollhouse.

That’s what people have been wanting from their devices – the ability to control the world around them by talking to it, not just have an alternative to a keyboard.

Ultimately, the commands are more personal. You can go on a website and order a pizza, and you can customise it and pay for it and it’ll show up, but talking to Alexa is akin to saying to your friend “Order a pizza?” (Except Alexa won’t stop mid-phone call to ask you what the other topping you wanted was).

Where the majority of mobile voice commands are used for search, Alexa’s use cases are dominated by home control – 34% of users have Alexa play music, just under 31% get her to play with the lights, and 24.5% use it as a timer.

While Siri and the Google Voice Search system are both examples of narrow AI like the Echo, they make much more limited use of its capabilities – compared to Alexa, Google is not OK, and Siri can say goodbye.

“OK Google – who would win in a fight, you or Alexa?”

Alexa’s success has put Google into catch-up mode, and they have been making some progress in the form of Google Home. Early reviews suggest that it might actually be the better product – but it lacks the market momentum of the Amazon product, and it seems unlikely that the sales will be on an even footing for a while yet.

However, Google does have the advantage of some high-end technology, namely Alphabet DeepMind.

DeepMind itself is the company name, but the more familiar connection is the technology the company produces. DeepMind are responsible for the program AlphaGo that beat the world’s foremost Go player 4 – 1, as well as a neural network that can learn how to play video games with the same approach as humans do.

DeepMind can offer Google systems their machine learning experience – which means that Google Home’s technology might have more room to start leaning towards Deep AI in the future. Your device will be able to start adapting itself to your needs – just don’t ask it to open the pod bay doors.

“Watson – what wine would you recommend with this?”

The other major contender in the AI race has only just started dipping into the B2C commercial market, and not nearly to the same scale as Alexa or Google Home.

IBM Watson has, however, won Jeopardy!, as well as found places in healthcare, teaching, and weather forecasting – essentially, absorbing a great deal of information and adapting it for different uses.

Watson is now used by The North Face, for example, to offer contextual shopping through conversational search. Users answer questions, and Watson suggests products based on the answers.

Likewise, Bear Naked uses Watson to “taste test” their customized granola system for the user, so once you’ve designed your meal, it can tell you if you might want to cut back on the chocolate chips.

AI is a competitive market – and it’s a market synergizing with conversational and voice search to bring us ever closer to the computer from Star Trek, and even beyond it.

For now, however, narrow AI is the market – and that means optimizing sites for it.

SE-OK Google

Voice search means that people are searching much more conversationally than they used to. The best way to accommodate that in your SEO strategy is to give more attention to your long-tail keywords, especially the questions.

Questions are opportunities best met with in-depth, mobile-friendly guides that offer information to your customers and clients.

But this also applies when it comes to using apps in the way that Alexa and Google Home do. People aren’t just making voice searches now – they’re also making voice commands.

With that in mind, to rank for some of these long-tail keywords, you need to start optimizing for action phrases and Google-approved AI commands like “search for [KEYWORD] on [APP]”, as well as carefully managing your API, if you have one. And it is worth having one, in order that you can integrate fully with these new devices.

You can break down the structure of common questions in your industry to optimize your long-tail keywords for devices.

You’ll also need to look into deep-linking to optimize your apps for search. Deep-linking allows searchers to see listings from an app directly on search, and open the app from those search rankings, making for a smoother user experience.

Search results show your app data and link directly into the app

This is only going to become more important over time – Google have just announced that they’re opening up their technology, “Instant Apps”, to all developers.

Instant Apps mean that if the user doesn’t have the app, it can “stream” the page from the app anyway. It’s not a stretch to imagine that before long Alexa won’t need Skills to complete commands – so long as you’ve properly set up your API to work with search.

Siri, likewise, already has SiriKit, which allows developers to build markup into their apps that Siri can read.

“Alexa – What’s the Best Way to Deal with AI?”

Voice search is a growing part of the search industry. But it’s not the biggest opportunity of it.

Rather, companies should be focusing on integrating voice actions into their strategy – by deep-linking their apps, ranking for long-tail keyword questions, and making sure everything they want a customer can do, they can do with their voice.

from https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/05/29/optimizing-for-voice-assistants-why-actions-speak-louder-than-words/

source https://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/161209694284