When it comes to content consumption, things have changed. With the increased focus on listening, offering a reading experience only is super risky.
The Trinity post
Introducing the Trinity Audio WordPress plugin
With the new Trinity Audio text to speech WordPress plugin, any WordPress site can be audiofied in a quick, and more importantly, completely FREE way.
How to cut through the noise and attract new audiences to your blog (hint: audio)
Too much noise makes it harder for bloggers to drive traffic. However, most of these problems can be solved by one simple action: converting articles to audio.
Basic voice SEO tips any content creator should know
The fundamental differences between voice search SEO and traditional website SEO start with rankings. Factors that typically affect website rankings aren’t necessarily the ones that affect voice search and vice versa, even though Google uses the same algorithm for rankings. As we move from short keywords to long phrases and queries, all with their specific nuances, there’s more effort involved now.
What are Siri Shortcuts and Bixby Capsules?
In my quest to get the voice industry closer to average Joe and everyone else interested in voice technology, I’ve taken on a task explaining one hugely important aspect of voice assistants – their versions of apps, so to speak.
The potential of digital audio advertising
Digital audio advertising has done a lot to make digital audio the go-to medium for both publishers and advertisers, with plenty of potential left.
The challenge of determining KPIs for audio
While very important, current audio measurement strategy is severely lacking because KPIs for audio are based on its video and display counterparts.
Audio is aiming for the video star
Just to make things clear: when I say audio, I mean both spoken word-type audio content such as podcasts, audio articles and ads, as well as products of its interface-like form such as voice queries, audio skills and actions, and such.
DMEXCO 2019 recap – the audio and voice angle
One of the world’s largest digital marketing and advertising conferences was once again the “meeting place for key players in digital business, marketing and innovation”. It was also graced by yours truly, although how much grace was actually there is difficult to pinpoint. In any case, this is one event where you have to be… Read more »
Digiday Publishing Product Leaders Retreat recap
With the summer being a hotspot (pun intended) of industry-related events, we hopped on a plane and landed in the US – the center of the audio industry.
What are Audio Skills and Actions?
We’re inevitably moving toward an audio-centric future where we no longer have to use our fingers to enable specific options, perform certain tasks and activities, seek information, shop, etc.
The audio revolution is here (infographic)
We’ve taken the liberty of compiling some fascinating stats and created an infographic to paint a picture of what is going on with audio today and how massive it really is.
VOICE Summit 2019 recap
I had the pleasure to attend what is arguably the biggest voice conference of the year, featuring the industry’s crème de la crème. You could even say I was a bit starstruck because a lot of the cca. 5000 people that were present, either as speakers, panelists, or attendees, are doing amazing work with voice… Read more »
How to write audio-ready content for your social media page
Audio is a huge opportunity to engage your audience and create long-lasting relationships. People already gorge in audio content as the use of voice technology spreads like wildfire, with its popularity bound to grow massively in the next few years. I firmly believe an audio experience via any of the social media platforms, something that’s… Read more »
How to make Alexa smarter: creating routines
If you’ve been following our blog, you already know we have a series of blog posts called ‘How to make Alexa smarter’ where we present awesome skills in a variety of categories that make Alexa better. So far, we’ve covered the fun (best Alexa game skills), productive (best Alexa productivity skills), and healthy/fitness (best Alexa… Read more »
Tapping into the daily habits of your readers with audio content
Habit is a powerful thing. It’s something that we do subconsciously, without even thinking about it. We unknowingly look for that trigger and start a routine that ultimately rewards us, especially when it’s time-consuming like reading. That’s where audio content enters the fray when looking to enhance user experience with readers already firmly embracing the… Read more »
How to make Alexa smarter: best health and fitness skills (updated)
With the total number of skills approaching the 100K mark, it can be hard to know what exactly Alexa Skills store has in store (ha!) for you. In the myriad of built-in capabilities, we decided this is as good of a time as any to pay attention to the Health & Fitness category and get… Read more »
Hurting with eyeballs? Here’s how to increase engagement and keep your readers’ attention
Google ‘how to increase engagement on website’ and you’ll receive 32 pages of results that, at a quick glance, pretty much repeat the same thing. From actionable tips like improving the site’s load time and having a practical layout to unusable advice like “make great content“ (a huge topic on its own) and everything in… Read more »
Insider secrets for improving user experience and keeping visitors longer on your site
If you are a publisher, brand, or a content creator looking to improve user experience, I’m pretty sure you fire up your website analytics every once in a while and methodically go over data. And while you look over the metrics, one particular deserves special attention: average time spent on page. Why? Because, along with… Read more »
How much are we shopping via smart speakers?
Smart speakers are popular things these days. In fact, these devices are not your regular popular cool thing: these are commonly referred to as one of the fastest-growing segments in the consumer technology market and the next big thing since smartphones. A lot of things make smart speakers great, namely the way they changed how… Read more »
How to make Alexa smarter: best productivity skills (updated)
One of Alexa’s somewhat hidden superpowers is making people more productive (or at least helping them feel that way), whether it’s at the office, in the kitchen, or any other place. It’s an easy way of saving time and staying focused on whatever it is you’re doing. Who doesn’t want to be more productive? While… Read more »
How to monetize your site using audio
Here’s a rough picture of my 2 cents on how things look from a web-based content perspective. On one side, there are publishers who are doing their best to manage campaigns across different channels and devices and trying to keep up with necessary adjustments for better user engagement and usability. The other side is occupied… Read more »
Best voice-first podcasts
The increased sophistication of voice-recognition systems, largely propagated by digital voice assistants has created a voice-first world. The way we listen to and search for information, shop, and a whole lot more has changed. It became easier and more convenient, enticing more people to the system. Voice technology is on the rise. In fact, it… Read more »
How to make Alexa smarter: best game skills (updated)
As some of you may know already, skills are voice-powered abilities that enhance and personalize Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, and subsequently all your Alexa-enabled devices. Essentially, you are (sort of) adding voice apps with various features so Alexa can do more. If you’ve been following our blog, you already know we enjoy sifting through various… Read more »
How to increase visitors time on site despite short attention spans
Recently, I noticed an advertisement on my Facebook feed that referred to a Microsoft study suggesting that the average attention span of humans has dropped since the start of the century. Apparently, the average human attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds, but by 2013 it was only 8 seconds. The point of that ad… Read more »
Pro hacks to keep adapting to the rapidly shifting digital publishing market
A few weeks ago, I read an interesting interview with David Isbitski, chief evangelist for Alexa and Echo devices at Amazon. He’s one of those guys that shoot for the bullseye with his remarks, and he hit a dead center with this one: voice is the new HTML. Despite my close connections with voice tech,… Read more »
How to turn your readers to listeners by converting articles to audio
These days, audio is where the battle for readers is, as silly as might sound at first. This is the age of efficiency. No matter what you’re doing, almost always you’re doing something else as well. In terms of content consumption, readers no longer have the time or patience or willingness to go through a… Read more »
Best smart speakers you probably haven’t heard about
At the mention of smart speakers, what’s the first one that comes to mind? Is it something from Amazon’s Echo line of smart speakers? Statistically speaking, that’s the most probable guess. According to a joint study by Voicebot and Voicefy, in the US alone Amazon Echo has a 61% market share among smart speaker owners,… Read more »
How to improve the user experience of your publication
It’s safe to say modern life is dominated by screens of various size and shape, whether it’s in our homes, offices, outside or in our pockets. Yet, with the digital world moving at a fast pace, the ubiquity of the smartphone, along with the growing presence of smart speakers, is once again changing how people… Read more »
The rise of smart speakers and what it means for audio content
One of the frequent buzzwords on the world wide web are smart speakers and the accompanying aspects such as virtual assistants that power them, third-party integrations, and so on. The fact that the majority of people immediately link smart speakers with the seemingly ubiquitous voice technology only helps the cause. More than ever before, there… Read more »
How to enhance user experience – communicating with your readers via voice
Learn how to enhance your readers’ user experience and increase the overall engagement with voice by turning eyeballs to eardrums.
The audio revolution is happening – time to take action and not stay behind
As voice technology becomes more accessible and polished, businesses also need to integrate audio into their overall strategy in order to create content people actually want to listen.