Why you should Voice-Enable your Facebook Page

According to the latest data, something in the order of 50 Million businesses have a Facebook page. Any company worth its name, no matter its size, not only has a Facebook page up, but also a paid staff that actively manages that page, alongside the other social media properties (Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, etc.). Indeed, one can safely say that customers nowadays engage with a brand via the Facebook page of that brand much more than with its website.
What have come to be called Far Field, Voice First devices, embodied in Amazon’s Alexa products (the Echo, the Echo Dot, the Tap, the Echo Show), Google Home, and Microsoft’s Cortana as delivered on Harman-Kardon’s Invoke device, are quickly graduating from the status of novel gadget to the that of a must-have home appliance, soon to be on par with the microwave, the fridge, the oven, the radio and the TV. This means that soon, Voice will become a table stakes channel, just as social properties, mobile apps, and before them websites and toll free phone numbers, became must haves for any business or organization that wants to claim a serious, legitimate and professional presence in the market. People will soon expect to be able to speak with any brand, and the absence of a brand from the voice interface will be noted as a red flag, very much like the absence of a website, a mobile app, a Facebook page, a Twitter or a Youtube channel, have now become red flags.
But as is the case with any emerging technology, businesses and other organizations, busy to the hilt executing on their missions, heads down (as they should), whenever a potential new technology emerges, the big question that the leaders of the business must wrestle with is one of priorities. Is this thing that we are just becoming conscious of something real or a fad? In fact, is it even worth taking the time to look into and understand? Because every hour counts, will asking someone to research this new thing, meet and talk about the thing, have a vendor present about it, or tinker around with a concept demo, be worthwhile? And if so, is it worthwhile now or can it wait? A healthy business that is executing must ask these questions or risk costly distractions.
Enter Witlingo
Witlingo has introduced an offer that lets any business or organization extend their Facebook page to the Voice First interface and do so with minimal disruption and minimal cost.
Here’s what extending a Facebook page to Voice means:
So, why should your business or your organization engage with Witlingo and launch an experience that voice enables your Facebook page?
Here are some reasons.
Protect your Brand’s Name
In voice, the surface, immediate manifestation of your brand is how one pronounces the name of your brand. No graphics and visual logos, no tag lines, no special fonts, no funky spelling (for instance, the homonymous “Slckr” and “Slacker” are two different brands from two different companies, but their respective names and pronounced the same), and no funky URLs (“Delicious” uses “del.icio.us” for their domain name). It’s the sound of your name — and that’s it. So, who will be first to enable their customers to say, “Alexa, ask slacker for the latest news”? Will it be “Slckr” or “Slacker”? He who waits the longer, loses the most.
Delight your Customers and Followers
People love their Echos and Google Home devices because those products are easy to use: in the flow of their life (while preparing food, while reading, while typing, while folding the laundry, while potting a plant), users can ask and can receive without disrupting what they were doing. Far Field, eyes free, hands free voice is the ultimate on-demand user interface. When your brand comes to mind, your customer can immediately interact with your brand. No more making mental notes to check on something after one has finished what they are doing (only to most assuredly forget doing so). Customers LOVE the think-ask-and-done aspect of voice.
Differentiate yourself
List your 10 most favorite brands and then go to the Alexa Skills store and see how many of those brands have a skill. There are now more than 15,000 skills on the Alexa Skills store, and yet, chances are that, at best one or two, if any, out of those 10 brands that you thought of will show up in your search. Look for Coca Cola, Perrier, Proctor and Gamble, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Exxon-Mobile, BP Oil, Giant Food, Safeway, Wells Fargo, John Deere, Harvard University, The Kahn Academy, Nike, The Kennedy Center, McLean High School, Virginia Fairfax County, The Newseum, and so on (each one of these has a Facebook page that is well maintained and kept up to date) and you will find nothing. Starbucks is there, as is Capital One, Uber, Fidelity Investments, The Motley Fool, and Meetup, and a few other intrepid brands, but they are the vivid exceptions that prove the current rule.
So, if you are Giant Food, get yourself an Alexa skill and/or a Google Home Action and differentiate your business a tiny bit (because everything counts) by giving your brand a shiny bleeding edge gloss while you can (before Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Kroger, Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, to name a fraction of the stores out there, get one, as they all surely will get one, sooner or later).
Do it with Minimal Effort
Witlingo offers brands a way to get a voice skill out — and one that delivers value to customers — with minimal disruption to the business beyond filling out a form. Witlingo takes care of the rest: building the skill (we have tools that enable us to generate skills in minutes), testing it, submitting it to Amazon/Google/Microsoft for certification, publishing it, hosting it, and giving you a login to the Witlingo web portal so that you can see how your skill is doing.
Do it with Minimal Cost
The set up fee is a one time $295.99 and your monthly fee is $99.95. Beyond that, you need do nothing. Your skill is up and running and pulling live from your Facebook page. No one in your organization will need to do anything else at any time. Set it and Market it!
Remember that it’s a Starting Point
The voice experience we would deploy for you is a starting point. If you want to add new capabilities to it, Witlingo is here to help. If you want add customer care to it, a feedback line, an audio stream, a survey, you now have a starting that is up and running and live, that has the name of your brand securely associated with it, and that you can augment as you learn more about how your customers want to speak (literally) to your brand.
Act Now!
Time is of the essence. Don’t let someone take your brand name away from you. Don’t let the chance to differentiate your brand against the competition slip away from you. Delight your customers and give them, and yourself a chance, to start learning what it means to have a spoken conversation with your brand.
Witlingo can have a skill up and out for you in a few days. And all you really have to do is to fill out this form or email us at facebook@witlingo.com
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For more thoughts on the voice space by Ahmed, you can listen to him on Alexa by saying, “Alexa, launch Voice Guru”
