Google’s CEO says over 20% of search enquiries are by voice now and we want to be found! Having podcasts will help but Amazon is a massive search engine where the inhabitants have buying intent. Alexa unlocks that so we have launched ClicksAndLeads365.com to deliver short, daily business and marketing tips via your smart speakers.

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Clicks And Leads is a “tongue in cheek” digital marketing Vzine by entrepreneur, author, podcaster, speaker, Nicola Cairncross.

Mentioned in the Vzine

• Clicks And Leads 365 – Alexa Skills

On the blogs

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders: Ilana Wechsler
Vzine 071 | Allowing Creative Force
Vzine 070 | New Clicks & Leads Masterclass Coming!
Own It! 184 | Am I A Copycat?
Own It! 183 | Building A Community: Why, How And Where

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Hi everyone it’s Nicola here, and I just want to welcome you to the latest episode of the Vzine. There’s been a lot happening this week.

I’ve joined a poetry course, and I’ve written and read more poetry in one week than I have in my whole lifetime to date, it’s great fun. And I’m finding that, what’s the point of poetry? It’s the point of capturing a small thought, or a moment in time, that perhaps doesn’t need it’s own story, but that you’d like to communicate about in some way. So I’m really enjoying that. Learning about the different forms of poetry.

This week, I’ve stepped up my own ‘Be Everywhere Online’, social media efforts another notch. We’ve released the, ‘Clicks And Leads 365‘, on Alexa Skills. It’s a short daily informational tip, business tip. It will cover mindset, marketing, and money. And it’s basically a one minute thought of the day. If you’ve got an Echo Dot, or any of those smart speakers, you can subscribe by going to clicksandleads365.com, and it should by then be pointing to the Alexa Skills platform.

It’s also on YouTube, so if you search Clicks And Leads 365, and then also on any podcast platform, because we are pushing it out across all our different platforms. And, I’m really enjoying making them, they’re quite tough, just to condense your thoughts into one minute. But it’s going quite well so far.

And the reason we’re doing this is because I listen to Gary Vaynerchuk on a regular basis. And he’s talking about the future of Voice Search. Now Voice Search is when you just hold up your gadget and you say for example to Siri: “Find me a podcast about digital marketing.” And the reason I’m doing the whole Alexa Skills thing, is because, a lot of the Voice Search, is done on the Amazon platform, through the Alexa medium. As opposed to Siri. And I want to be found there, I want to have a presence on there. I want to be found if someone searches through their smart speaker in their home. And I want them to be then led on to my website and to then choose whether to subscribe to the other podcasts, or the YouTube channel, or download the app.

So, it’s all about getting found in Voice Search. Now there’s only about a thousands skills apparently, across the whole world, at the moment. Social Media Examiner’s got some really great statistics on this. And apparently, one in every four or five Americans, have listened to a skill in the last three months, which is pretty astonishing when you think about it.

And the whole thing about Voice Search, I mean people don’t like to type. The amount of time it takes me to get my phone out. Finger code, whatever it is, my identity or whatever it is. Then go to Chrome, the browser, because it’s not immediately on my desktop. And then type in my search, it takes a little while, doesn’t it?

Whereas if you could just click: “Siri, find me a podcast on digital marketing.” Then it’s going to be a lot quicker and it’s a lot more convenient. Even people like me who are visual and who don’t like auditory environments very much, I’m actually seriously thinking about getting one of these smart speakers for the house, it will be great fun.

You have to train it to recognize your voice apparently. I’ve got an American friend and it doesn’t understand a word she says. Because she comes from the deep south. But you just have to be patient, and train it for a bit longer.

I could definitely see that lots of these gadgets are being sold. I could see that the database of skills is only going to grow. At the moment, you can only listen to skills in your own country. So, I can’t listen to Gary Vaynerchuk’s skills because he’s in America. And I’m sure they’re gonna make it global at some point though. Either that, or they’ll find a way for you to be able to sign in with a different account for a different country and then listen to the skills there.

So, yeah, it’s gonna get bigger and bigger, I can only see that. I mean, sometimes you just come across things, like I did when I found Twitter in 2006, when it just launched at South by South West. And I just knew it was gonna be huge. So, this is the next thing, Voice Search, and having your business, having voice properties and audio properties is gonna become as essential as video is becoming at the moment.

Hope that helps, if you have got any questions about Voice Search or Alexa Skills or how to get your business on to either, don’t hesitate to come over to nicolacairncross.com. On Facebook, Twitter, or Indeed, the blog. Love to talk to you anytime.

So, on the blog and the podcast this week, we’ve got a real treat for you, in the form of an interview I did with Ilana Wechsler. Now Ilana is a Pay Per Click expert. She’s also a really interesting person, she used to be a data analyst in corporate life and she’s got three small children and she’s built herself a very successful Pay Per Click agency called, GreenArrowDigital.com.

I met Ilana at the Superfast Business Conference a couple of years ago and I liked her enormously. And I’ve been modeling a lot of my Facebook campaigns on her information. She doesn’t just do it for other people, she’s got her own training course as well. So, if you’re getting started on, getting paid traffic rolled into your website, you could do worse than check out Ilana’s training, I really highly rate her.

The last episode the Vzine, episode 71 was called, “Allowing Creative Force“, and that was because I was feeling stuck on a project that I was working on and I wasn’t feeling it was going right and I was doing the right things.

So I’ve doing some meditation as you know, 15 minutes nearly every day. And the thing that I was prompted to do from the meditation was just put a hold on this project until I could work out a better way to do it, and so I did, and I feel much better about that.

And while I was waiting for the, by making the space, releasing the project, not doing it, I had lots of other great ideas including the whole Alexa Skills thing. Time to get that rolling, I thought. So that’s what happens when you make, make space for the creative force to come through, the ideas to flow. So I go into that on Vzine 71.

On, Own It The Podcast, we’ve got episode 183, which is all about creating and building a community. Why you might think about it? Why you need to do it? What’s a great idea? What’s a great way to actually do it? And how to keep the community engaged once you’ve built it. So, check that out, it’s Own it 183, and you can as always find it at, ownitthepodcast.com

That’s it for this week, hope you enjoyed the show and look forward to speaking to you next week as ever. So, do feel free and please do comment to let me know you’re watching on YouTube, Facebook, or the blog. Love to hear from you anytime. Have a great week.

Creative Direction & Video Editing
Phoebe Soremekun

Intro Music
Pool Cosby

Incidental Music
Chill Motivational Lo-Fi Hip-Hop Instrumental – The Process // No Copyright Music
Chill Lo-Fi Hip-Hop – Midnight Bounce (Lakey Inspired) Relaxing “Copyright Free” lofi Hip-hop Music

Drone footage of The Mani
Georgios Ser-Aouas

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