7 Awesome Ways to Increase Your Amazon Alexa Audience Right Now
Grow your business in the burgeoning voice-first market through a popular and profitable skill.
Are you ready to grow your business through Alexa?
Well now is the time.
Amazon is making it easier to make money with Alexa. The first way is through developing popular skills. And what do you need for popular skills? A large audience that engages with the skill frequently.
Secondly, businesses are able to sell goods through their skill whether it is a flash briefing or custom skill. And a growing audience likely leads to growing sales.
Third, content creators can charge for their audio briefings.
These seven tips will help you grow your audience to make Amazon Alexa a popular and profitable platform for you and your business. Be methodical about implementing them. Take note of how many listeners you have now using Amazon Developer’s “Measure” tool. And track the increase in listeners you get over the next month as you implement these steps.
1. Follow Amazon Best Practices
For flash briefing skills:
a) Publish Daily
b) Record a couple minutes per post at most.
c) Publish a peak times. Publish or schedule your briefings so that listeners can listen to them early in the morning (starting around 4 a.m.). For an affordable scheduling tool, use Effct.co. If you feel like waking up early or publishing without paying, you can use the complimentary version of Effct.co.
For custom skills it’s critical to chose a good invocation name.
The other day, I was laying on my couch, feeling slightly down. So, I said, “Alexa, inspire me.”
The Inspire Me skill started playing. I’d never engaged with it before. But, all of the sudden it was enabled, and giving me pump up advice from Peyton Manning and Maya Angelou.
Make sure your invocation name is simple, easy to pronounce, and describes exactly what your skill does.
For example, the skill Question of the Day, does a great job of this. People often will say, “Alexa, give me my Question of the Day?” Or “Alexa, what’s the Question of the Day.” Even if that person hasn’t enabled the skill, Alexa will enable it automatically, and start playing it.
So does the Mindful Meditation. Lots of people will say, “Alexa, start Mindful Meditation.” And that skill will start playing, even if the person has never heard of it before.
I searched, and found that the name “Meditation,” is still wide open. Geez, someone please create a skill called “Meditation.” Many people are going to tell, “Alexa, start Meditation.” And it can be your skill they engage with.
2. Promote Your Skill on Social Media
Use your social media channels to spread the word about your flash briefing.
In the post use a call to action that tells people to click the Enable button, and then ask, “Alexa, what’s in the news, or what’s my flash briefing” to listen.
If they don’t have an Alexa device, they can turn their phone into one by downloading the Amazon shopping app. The little circle that appears in the top right of that app is how they can activate Alexa.
3. Shorten Your Skill Link
Amazon’s links to your skills are extraordinarily long. Mine looks like this.
So, shorten it.
Step 1: Find your skill’s link on the Alexa store.
Step 2: Navigate to a URL Shortener such as https://goo.gl/ It will look like this once you are finished:
This link will be useful for your next step.
4. Publicize Your Skill in Reddit Groups
Reddit hosts communities with people highly interested in Alexa and Echo.
I recommend providing a link to your skill in some or all of the general groups. But, remember, this is a conversation. Yes, tell people to enable it. But, also tell the Reddit community to listen, and to give you feedback on how you can improve your skill whether it’s a custom skill or a flash briefing.
Here are some general Echo and Alexa groups:
r/alexa
r/alexa: The brain behind Amazon's voice powered devices like Echo, FireTV etc.
www.reddit.com
Then, find some targeted groups based on your specific content.
For example, for my flash briefing Denver News, I told people in this group. And a lot of new people started tuning in, and even writing reviews on Amazon.
If you have an “On This Day in History” skill, you could target this group.
If you have a flash briefing on tech news, you could target this group.
If you have a meditation skill, why not let people know here:
5. Promote Your Skill in Facebook Groups
Similar to Reddit, Facebook has groups of highly targeted folks.
Here are some places to let people know about the skill you have created.
Then, once again, you can use highly targeted groups to target people of your specific interest.
For example, if you publish a daily tip on the Paleo diet, promote your flash briefing here in the many paleo groups on Facebook.
Or if you have a skill that interacts with users about effective charities, they can donate their money to, publish in a group like Effective Altruism:
6. Promote your skill and its content on your website.
There are various ways to promote your skill on your website. One way is to provide a large clickable image or button like this.
If you’re a blogger or own a news station, you could include a call to action to encourage people to enable your device with a link to your skill. Example:
If you enjoyed this New York Times article, you’ll love our daily flash briefing for Amazon Alexa. Click here to enable “The Daily” now.
7. Make sure your keywords are optimized.
One of the best ways for you to increase your audience is to make sure your keywords within Amazon Developer are aligned with what people are searching for.
Keep in mind, Amazon only allows 30 words total. There is no phrase lumping like in Google AdWords and SEO. So choose your words wisely, and don’t use duplicates.
In targeting for Denver News, I chose the names of our sports teams in Colorado, other big cities in the state and key political figures. When those city names had two words in them, I made sure to include both.
Here’s my list of 30 keywords:
denver, news, post, colorado, rockies, broncos, avalanche, pioneers, buffaloes, rams, rocky, mountain, denverite, westword, business, journal, littleton, arvada, boulder, springs, junction, aurora, aspen, hickenlooper, hancock, bennet, garnder, pueblo, fort, collins
BONUS TIP [SHOCKING]: Encourage people to listen in person.
If you see a friend with an Alexa device, let them know about your skill, and encourage them to start engaging with it.
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These seven tips will massively grow your audience. Take initiative, and establish yourself early in this booming market. The results will be tremendous, but only with your hard work.
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