 As speakers, we need your feedback. Let's put it that way. That's the only way we get better is when we get the feedback. And so what worked, what did not work, so definitely. So please go there and give some feedback. I would appreciate it. And by the way, I checked the thermostat back there. It's at 55. So everybody's fine right now, just so you know, OK. I feel good. Yeah. OK, Amazon, Apple, and Google are changing how your audiences react and interact with computers. They're working hard to reduce the friction by making a way for your audience to use voice first and resort to their screens only when needed. This is creating a number of challenges and opportunities when it comes to branding. So in the next 30 minutes, I want to touch on the components of a traditional brand compared to a verbal brand. Then look into what it means to write for voice and why it's important to write for voice. And then we'll touch on the future of voice technology and then we'll wrap up with a Q&A session. So when I see traditional branding components, we not only understand the products behind the branding, but we also have a feeling and expectation about the product. Building a brand is important. And as we'll see, your brand name will become critical in a voice first world. Each of these branding elements that I've listed on the screen here work together to create a visual brand. But only one of them actually translates directly to a verbal brand. Consumers have been moving to smaller screens and we know that. And the recent smart speaker trend is actually causing another shift in the effectiveness of traditional branding elements. You're probably familiar with all of these company logos, from the golden arches to the Nike swoosh. These logos are a key part of visual branding. But they're hard to hear with your eyes closed. So in traditional, so in addition to logos and icons, many visual brands also use slogans. Having a good slogan or tagline helps you define your brand. Slogans work in both visual and verbal mediums. For the love of it is Pepsi Slogan. When I say taste the feeling, we think Coca-Cola on ice right now, that would be great. I'm loving it, the golden arches, right? And when I say just do it, we think Nike, right? So it's easy to recognize the importance of verbal brands. We protect these names, we protect these logos and slogans, copyrights and stuff like that. And we define a consistent use of colors and fonts on our websites to help pull those things together. All of these things help to create a valuable visual brand. So now let's look at the components of a verbal brand. While the name is a name, the auditory version of a name is technically different than the visual version of a name. To highlight these differences, I got a slide in just a minute and we'll kind of look at some of those differences and we'll use the idea of homonyms and heteronyms as far as to point that out, but it's a little bit more complicated but we'll use that in the next slide, that'll be a little bit of fun. The analog to a brand's logo or icon is a brand, is a Sonic brand, sometimes referred to as an earcon. You see what they did with that icon, earcon? Yeah, I know, boof, right? Sonic brands have been around for a long time though and in a couple minutes we'll play a game where we associate the brand icon to their earcon. A good slogan or tagline can help you define a brand. Creating a tagline helps you get to the heart of your brand. Slogans and taglines help both with visual and verbal branding. So slogans and taglines, those are important. But color palettes, fonts and images, they don't have verbal components to them. And without them, the content of your site comes front and center. So when we think about it, I don't know, think of any website you wanna think of. If you took that site and you pulled all the images off of it and then you pulled all the color out of it, so it's just black and white. And then we removed all of the font sizes and bolding, what's left? Text, words. Either in text or in audio format. And so in a verbal world, that's what we've done. We've pulled all of those components out and what are you left with? You're left with the words and the audio. And so those components actually become really important when you start talking about your verbal brand. And we'll talk a little bit more of that in just a minute. Okay, so what's in a name? In a verbal world, homonyms and heteronyms cause challenges. Now let's start with heteronyms. Okay, so when you visit this site, do you expect to see a picture of a lead bass player in an orchestra? Or a lead colored bass from the lake? Or maybe a lead colored, covered bass guitar with a cool new sound. It could be any of those, right? A heteronym is a word that is spelled the same but have different meanings behind them. Homonyms on the other hand are spelled differently but they sound the same. While these are all spelled differently, when you say them, they all sound the same. So in a verbal world, who owns this? Right? You got four different sites but only, how do you do that? So verbal branding becomes a little bit tricky and a little bit more complicated. When we talk about names, names are not just simple, it's not just the spelling, it's a little bit more complicated than that. So I was surprised to look at the number of homonyms in the English language. There are hundreds by the way. So if you look this up, there are hundreds of homonyms in the English language. In the visual world, domain names are important. In the verbal name, the analog to that is called an invocation name. So let me describe an invocation name a little better. We all build websites. These are hosted on a computer with an IP address. The domain name is how a browser references your website. So just like building a website, in the voice world, we build what are called voice apps. For Google, the voice app is referred to as an action and in Amazon's world, voice app is referred to as a skill. But to reference them, we use what's called an invocation name. Amazon allows multiple voice apps to have the same invocation name. Google, on the other hand, used the domain name model and invocation names are unique, which means that the first person to register an invocation name owns it. So in our two sense example, the first person to create the two sense voice app owns the name. In the visual world, getting on page one is good enough. But in the verbal world, when you ask for something, you don't expect a list of answers, right? A list of possible, in the verbal world, when you ask for something, you expect the answer. So what's it mean? It means that Google and Amazon are gonna decide what the best answer is. This is why owning and marketing your brand is critical. Let's look at a couple of examples from Amazon. You probably have all noticed this, but when I point it out, it probably will make a little bit more sense. So I'm doing this upholstery project. And this upholstery project, it's got a million staples to remove. And so I get the first piece and I use this tack remover that I've got at home and I'm popping out these staples and I get the first layer off to find out that there's another layer under that. So oh my goodness, I got staples to pull out. So I was shopping on Amazon for an upholstery staple remover. These two seem almost identical. So in a voice first world, which one am I gonna get? If you do much shopping on Amazon, you'll notice that they've been putting this Amazon's choice on their products. So let's look at another example. It'll get a little bit more clear here as we go through there. Here's a couple more items. And when you look at the description of each item, notice the Amazon's choice designation. Here's where brandy becomes critical. Because guess what happens if I ask for a chainsaw helmet instead of a steel helmet? That's right, I'm gonna get a TR industrial hard hat. Branding trains our audiences to ask for the steel helmet instead of the generic chainsaw helmet. So that's what we're trying to accomplish when we're working on this branding and verbal branding is designating. Here's the invocation aimer. Here's the tag that you've gotta use to get to my stuff. Because if we use the generic stuff, then Amazon, Google, they're gonna decide what's best. But once you get into the branded components, now you start tying into your brand as opposed to the generic piece. Unless you've got really, really deep pockets I guess and you can convince Amazon that your product is the generic product. Okay, so let's look at Sonic branding. This will be a fun game here. Sonic branding has been around for a long time. Let's see how well brands have done at attaching their earcon to their icon. So hopefully we'll get some sound here. MGM, all of us old timers. We, this was an easy one, right? Okay, how about this one? NBC, good. How about this one? Samsung. How about this one? Nope, we'll get there. Life's good, LG. T-Mobile, good. They did a good job, huh? How about this one? Good, okay. So they just came out with a new Sonic brand. In February, they came out with this new one. So you don't know this yet probably or unless you've been paying attention. Mastercard, that was Mastercard's new Sonic brand that they just came out with. So you'll be hearing more of that from Mastercard. Just pay attention to that one. Intel, there we go. Pepsi. Okay, so this last one. This last one is interesting and I'm gonna do this one. So listen to this one here because this one here, they use their Sonic brand in a lot of different ways and a lot of different places and they tie it into the advertising that they're doing. So listen to this one. Actually, it's gonna be multiple, so. Okay, their Sonic brand used in a lot of, it's the same jingle they just integrated in a lot of different places and when you hear that jingle, you think Coca-Cola. Like copywriting five notes? Yes, that sequence of notes like that is theirs. So while Sonic branding has been around for a long time, it's becoming more popular in part because of voice technology. Sonic branding works with both visual branding as well as verbal branding. So it's not just the big brands at Hibiricons, by the way. If you watch, I mean, listen, you'll notice them in many places. They're the auditory cues that help you instinctively know what's coming next. So you'll hear them in a lot, podcasts. I mean, you'll hear them across the board, so pay attention, you'll hear, hey, I hear the same thing every time this is about to happen. That's their earcon or their Sonic brand that they're tying to their stuff. Sometimes we think about our brand, we focus on the flashy elements and miss the less visible ones. But when we are only listening and not looking, the visual branding elements don't exist. It's at this time when the less visible, less obvious components become critical. When we're just hearing content, the content becomes the brand. In this section, I'm gonna provide a few tips on how to prepare for voice and hopefully peak the interest of some early adopters in voice technology. Since your content is an important part of your brand, let's look at two components, two major components, which impact how your brand is seen. I mean, heard. First, let's look at how your content is organized and then let's look at the actual form of your content. So let's start with how your content is organized. Is your content grouped in such a way that your content can be found and delivered as you expect? Grouping involves categorizing and organizing your content into pages and headings with tags and labels on them. This is important from two perspectives. To make it easier for Google and Amazon and Apple to be able, or even screen readers for that matter, to find the one answer from your content and two, to give a clue on how to deliver your content. In other words, how best to turn your content into audio? Let's look an example. This is an excerpt from one of my blogs. The two versions look very similar, but the HTML coding behind them has some slight differences to them, which I'll show you in just a minute. Let's listen to the first part of these and see how they sound different. Alexa and the elderly comments from participants this first commenter shares how Alexa opened her world. Okay, so let's listen to the second one. Alexa and the elderly comments from participants. This first commenter shares how Alexa opened her world. I thought Alexa was just for things like turning on lights, but it opened a whole new world. You can do anything that you want to do. Okay, so let's look at the HTML and what's it look like. Notice that the first one specifies the font size in the pipe, but there isn't a verbal equivalent to font sizes, right? And so when we turn this into voice, we just throw it away because there's nothing to do with the font size, okay? In the second one, we specify, hey, this is a heading. Headings provide meaning, which can be used to find a section of your content as well as change the delivery of the audio. So using Gutenberg, it's important that you specify heading blocks as opposed to text blocks reformatted to look like heading blocks. For those of us who are still old school HTML coding, we get it this way, but if you're using Gutenberg, Gutenberg helps in a number of ways, but this is one of them where you use the easy method of Gutenberg, don't try to second guess it, put in heading blocks. And it gives information both to the readers as well as the audio side of those. Okay, the next organizational element that impacts your branding is descriptions. Pictures, charts, tables, and graphs, they don't translate well into audio. These figures are all visual in nature. We put pictures, charts, tables, and graphs into our content for one of three reasons. As decorations is the first reason. Decorations add life and interest to our website. Similar to colors and fonts, adding consistently themed decorations can enhance our brand. These items can be removed, however, without impacting the content. When we look at examples, though, examples help your audience understand the text. These figures are not only add color and interest, they help people understand your content from a different angle. And some decorative descriptions or figures, tables, content, these are supplemental information and they provide additional information that's not found in the text. These types of charts or graphs or tables contain information which we expect our viewers to see or deduce. If the figure is not seen, then some of the content from your site is missing or not fully understood. For each of your figures, it's important to evaluate why they exist. This will help you ensure that you handle them appropriately for your verbal brand. I'll show you the mechanics of this in just a minute, but first let's discuss how to handle each of these. For figures, which are descriptions, just describe the image. Describe it in the same way that you would describe a painting on the wall to your blind friend. He can't see the image, so describe it to him so he knows what's there. For figures, which are examples, however, you're gonna not only briefly describe the image, but you're gonna want to tell how the image supports your text. And for supplemental information, this is actually really critical because lots of times we put tables in our website and we expect people to look through that table and pull out information. Well, tables don't turn into audio very well because you've expected somebody to figure something out from that table. So it's important that you specify what did you want the person to understand from this information? And so this is supplemental information that we've gotta now describe. So in this one here, we not only describe the figure, but we point out the details that you expect your audience to visually understand or deduce from the figure. There are two areas that we can use for this information, alt text and big caption, right? So here's an example from one of my blog posts. This is an example of a graphic decoration. When the image is added to my blog post, it adds life to the page, but not necessarily additional information. This image actually supports my visual brand, but it doesn't help my verbal brand. And that's because I didn't caption it and I didn't put any alt text behind it. While computers are getting pretty good at finding objects inside of images and the like, and someday they may be able to describe these things for us, currently they don't do it and so it's a manual step. So I know, it's rough, but we gotta do it manually at this point. So let's take a look here. If we fortunately Gutenberg makes it easy to add these necessary tags. At a minimum, we need to insert the alt text to convey the information about the image. So if it's a decoration, just describe the image. This is an image with tools for learning, including an Apple smart speaker, books, pen, and a ruler pictures only used for visual color. Now, my wife tells me I'm a detail person and so when I describe my stuff, it's like, that's every, put all the details in there. She's like, yeah, it's an image with school stuff. So she's a big picture person and so her descriptions in her alt text are more big picture-y. Mine are like, yeah, but the person might want to know all the stuff that's in there. So it's kind of up to you as far as you figure out exactly what you want to communicate, but that's the place for it. For the people who can't see what the image that you've put there, this is where you describe it. Put it in the alt text because that's what they're gonna hear. For examples, tell how the image supports your text and supplemental information to describe the details of the image or table or graph that you expect the audience to visually understand. Additionally, insert a caption can be useful both visually and verbally. So that right here, Gootbird makes it easy. It's like you put an image here, put a caption on it, so just click there, type the caption in. So if I did that, now my website would look like this as far as you can see, adding a caption appears as part of the figure now. So when translating this into audio, the image will be ignored. However, the caption can be read something like there's an image with a caption which reads books, apples, and smart speaker. So now somebody will know that, hey, there's an image there and this is what you would expect to see if you were seeing it. While the alt text is not visible, it can be used to provide additional context about why you inserted the image. Now let's look at the details of our content. Diction, diction is our choice of words. An example would be, do I use the word begin or start or initiate or commence? So diction is I'm choosing words, they all have the same similar meanings, but I'm choosing words on purpose and we'll see why that is important in just a minute. Grammar and syntax is how we structure our words together, ranging from simple sentences, think Dr. Seuss, to dense complex syntax, think like doctoral thesis and stuff like that. As a hint, when we speak, we often use simpler sentence structures than when we write. So when writing for audio, I found that I need to simplify my writing to make it easier to understand when Alexa or Google turns my content into audio. Style, style is how we choose to communicate a thought or idea. Think news versus teaching versus storytelling versus a dialogue. So let's dive into these a little bit further. Okay, in a minute, I'm gonna put on the screen something that you've all seen from a Facebook post. It's a bunch of misspelled words that remind us how amazing our brains are. It seems that our brains automatically translate what we see into what we should be seeing. This is, there's a downside to this though, and many of you probably run into this. I've often read my blog posts over and over again, and my brain seems to make everything look correct. Our ears don't have this auto-fix feature quite as much as our eyes do. So listen to this clip and see if you can decipher it. It deals in tearing a lot of regular tears in a rod arm. The only a permutant time is taught the first in Elm's apple chair be at the repeat link. Yeah, exactly, see? Okay, we read the first sentence of this here, okay? Yeah, it doesn't matter in what order the letters or in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. We can read it, right? That's my problem with my, when I'm writing my blog posts. I look at it and it's like, I got nothing on this. It looks right, but then when you hear it, it's like, what? I don't know how many times I've listened to my blog post afterwards and I said, I didn't do that. I look at it, sure enough, that's what I did. Okay, while fixing errors, errors should be fixed. That's, but contrary to my English teacher, what my English teacher taught me, it's not true that our brands require us to use the King's English. Your brand should dictate the diction, grammar, and style used on your website. We expect the language used by an MIT article to be different from the language used by the California Surfer blog, right? Which should be different than the Southern Miss Manners blog and that should be different from the Moonshiners blog, we expect different things from these different environments. We expect different things and so we wouldn't want to see, we so, let's leave it there, that's good enough. Your brand should capture the attention of your audience. That's probably the key. Your brand should capture the attention of your audience. Let's look at a few examples. This first is from the Mercedes-Benz website. No car in its segment can claim the performance pedigree of an AMGC class. Countless German touring car championships fill its trophy case. And with a thundering power and lightning quick response, it's a fitting trophy for your own garage. Notice the language, diction, syntax in this one. So let's compare this. Let's compare that to this West Virginia blog. I wish I could count the times I heard mama's voice holler in my name whilst I was sitting there, surrounded by friends, cool air, and the ghost of a future I knew nothing about and didn't care. Totally different in language in this. So let's compare this to this National Geographic site for kids. It uses an educational style with a grammar addiction suitable for kids. Check out this description of Georgia trees. Some trees you're likely to see include live oak trees, magnolias, cottonwoods, sugar maples, and gum trees, but what's that spooky-looking vine all over them? It's Spanish moss, and it depends on trees for its water and nutrients. It doesn't kill the tree, but the moss can shade the tree's leaves and can sometimes break branches off. Your brand should use a consistent diction, grammar, and style which resonates with your audience and helps them identify with your brand. Let's look at one more distinguishing mark of our content, voice. Voice is the mechanics of how we speak, timbre, volume, language, accent. For those with podcasts, voice is part of the recording process. It's how you distinguish between the speakers. So how does voice apply to written content? I'm glad you asked. Let's visit my blog example one more time to highlight voice, because this is coming. So listen to this, let's listen to this one more time. Alexa and the Elderly, comments from participants. This first commenter shares how Alexa opened her world. I thought Alexa was just four things like turning on lights, but it opened a whole new world. You can do anything that you want to do. And this last comment references how using Alexa helps someone with physical difficulties. I have a genetic tremor, so enter in data is a pain. But if you're going to speak a command and get something to happen, there's a wonderful thing. Notice that the words were the same, but when delivered by a different voice, it brought life to the content. You're probably all familiar with HTML. In the text-to-speech world, the new set of tags that are available are called SSML. Speech Synthetic Markup Language. These additional markups can be used to help turn written content into audio content. What you heard was read by an Amazon Alexa speaker. And here's the HTML that was behind that with the additional SSML tags inserted. Notice the voice, we changed to Revena. And here we changed to Brian. So, now this is only available on the Amazon Alexa smart speakers right now, but the point is that this idea of moving to voice, you can specify a number of things in your text that visually you're not going to see, but when it gets turned into audio, it makes it so that it will come alive. You know, there's an Alexa plug-in for WordPress to add that markup. So, there is, not to, your question is a complicated one, let's put it that way. So, there's an aspect to it. Not to be able to put that stuff in like this, you would have to hand code that right now. So, Google, so, in the stuff that we do, we strip those things out because Google gets hung up on them and actually reads bracket voice name equals Revena. So, we strip that stuff out when we send it to Google. So, it's very, yes, but it's coming. The point is, it's coming and as our audience starts using smart speakers or their mobile phone and they start talking, they're not going to be logging into your website and looking at stuff as much, they're going to be asking for what they want and now we're strutting this transition into, okay, how can I set myself up to be able to give them what they're asking for in a way that enhances my brand? Yeah. So, can I ask for the different sounding voices, what is Revena and what is Brian, what are those? So, those are, Amazon Poly has a set of like 20 some English voices. They've got a bunch of Spanish and French and other voices that they put names on to. And so, two different people. Yes, exactly. There's Matthew and Joey and I mean, there's a bunch of them. And so, in this one here, I just, to specify, this is what you heard. You heard Revena in that first one and then Brian in the second one but this is how we put it in there. So, for Amazon, it is right now. You can do this right now. So, SSML is a universal standard. It's not universally supported by all of the platforms that turn it into audio. Yes. Yes, so yes, Google will have this, they don't yet. But it's part of the SSML platform. Yep. No, nope, that's what we're here for. Yeah. Invocation name, yes. So, to be able to do that right now, you create a voice app that delivers content to somebody talking. And there's ways of hooking your building a voice app that you can then have it hooked to your RSS feed to be able to deliver your RSS feed. So, from a blogger's perspective, you're still blogging. You can put these things in and now have your blogs routed through to smart speakers so that people can just ask for your blogs and have them and hear them. Or, and blogs, I'm using blogs generically. It's any post that you're putting out there, content you're putting out there. I think, what's the name of your, how would we ask Alexa to hear Alex and the elderly? How would we, what's the name of your, so this is one of our, create my voices, the company I'm from, and we, so you would just ask Alexa to start create my voice? So start create my voice and this will start. Well, it will get into all of our blog posts and this is one of our blog posts that are out there. So we've got a number of different examples and stuff like that you can do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I've got, on the last page, I've got all the stuff you need, including a link to all these slides, so, yeah. Okay, so let's talk about the future of voice technology. I got several quotes for you and then we'll get into a few more Q and A time if there's any more Q and A time, or any more questions. First is quote from Joe Murphy, CEO of Vocalize AI. At Vocalize AI, we predict that a company branded voice user interface will soon be a must have feature for almost all mobile phone apps. This is a long one, but it's from Nick Newman for the Reuters Institute. He's talking about voice technology and the impact on the news media. He says voice remains a critical focus for technology platforms. Platforms believe that it will change the way we interact with the internet and that, in turn, will disrupt and change the business models, be that e-commerce, advertising, or hard-well sales. The tech company's vision for voice goes way beyond smart speakers to become embedded in every device, supporting and anticipating user needs. Now, you've already heard this where they're embedding these things in your cars, in your refrigerators, in your washing machines. I heard one in the CES, I think, where they were talking about a company came in and they got Alexa embedded in their toilet. Like, now, there are some things that's like, even if you can, no, don't. But I think they, I'm not sure, but the point is these companies are planning to put these devices everywhere and in everything with the idea that they're going to be able to respond to you wherever you're at, anticipating what your needs are, and being able to give you the answer that you're looking for. Without having to go to your computer, log in, and pull stuff up. That's where they're going. Let's look at this one here, Brit Armor from ClearBridge Mobile. This is a company that is a software development firm specializing in mobile apps. Voice is the future of how brands will interact with their customers. How about this one from a CEO of BlueTag, Mr. Argyll. Voice commerce will completely change the way people shop because it adds a level of ease and personalization to their everyday tasks. Yes, so they're working on that. So already they're embedding the understanding of who's the person talking to this device. So that's already happening. Now it's not great yet, but when my wife talks to our Alexa device and I talk to our Alexa device, it knows the context that it's coming from. Yeah, and that's going to get better and better and it will just, it will know your voice when you talk. That's where it's going. So that's where it's going. Now right now people are a little uncomfortable with that and so you put on there, yeah, I don't want my kids ordering or for me, it's my friends coming into my house and getting there before I do and ordering six cartons of toilet paper or something like that gonna show up at my doorstep. So I always have this, okay, but you gotta have these four digits that I don't let anybody know but me. So there's ways that they're protecting things, but it's coming. That's what it is coming. Yeah. My blog on the site has a post writing text on having a review of that. So you get more interaction and engagement and you have to get more feedback. I've been blogging for a while and I rarely got feedback, but since Chip's company has actually committed to Alexa and Google, I get more feedback for the content that I created. And as a feature, my teams can be engaged with it more and they want to mix it with more as opposed to just reading text. Yeah. It's interesting. It's actually, it's interesting. The younger generation and the older generation are really moving to these devices. The younger generation is because that sitting in a computer reading, no, I don't have time for that. The older generation, my parents got one and they're 70s. They have it on all the time. They're always listening to stuff and talking to their device. And so it's actually, and as a matter of fact, slide track here. They're using it for some people like Alzheimer's and stuff like that. It's actually a huge benefit for because some people, they have the same question over and over and over again. And it drives Alexa doesn't care. She'll answer that question all day. So they're finding these devices of huge benefits in certain cases because they, because there's huge benefits in those environments because it can understand the person and respond to the person. Okay, I think I got one more here. Okay, so for those of you who follow Gary Vee, you know that he sees voice technology disrupting many industries. In his interview with Andy Sewer, the editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance, he says everybody is going to do a lot more things with Alexa, Google Home and Apple Pod than they think today, like order every single food they eat. I think it's clear, voice technology is here and it's becoming a new platform to engage your audience. So that wraps it up. Any more questions? Yes.