LOVEfluencers LIVE: Day 3 Authentic A-Lister Challenge

¡Hey, everybody! And welcome to day 3. I am so excited. I cannot believe it. I actually got in here on time. So I managed to sneak down. All the kids were watching some— something doing ABC Mouse or Khan Academy Kids or something, and I was like, let me not even say anything. So hopefully all will be well for the next few minutes while I share with you what I am up to and what I hope you will be up to. Hey, Jim, good to see you. Um, so excited to be here, right? So Wednesday, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. So a small, you know, interesting tradition. I have a tradition in our house. We have lots of them, but one tradition we have is watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. And it turns out they're doing it. I don't know how I feel about it, like, ethically, but I am kind of happy to have one thing that's going to be the same from last Thanksgiving to this one, so that'll be nice. I also did the whole turkey thing, pulled the turkey out of the freezer, stuck it in the fridge. It'll go into a, a bath tomorrow morning and ready for preparation. Um, and yeah, I'm excited. But what I wanted to do with you all today— I hope you are all excited about the rest of this week. We're already halfway through this week. I hope you're doing something or planning to do something over the next few days that will just revive you. Um, and a lot of that— that's why I love this holiday— a lot of that energy can come from just being thankful and being grateful. I talked about on Monday, um, that we had gone through a bunch of different things, but one of them is a morning routine that I use, and gratitude is such a huge part of that. And however you get there, right, it could just be a habit of as soon as your feet hit the floor, you just have a moment of gratitude. You could write it on your mirror in your bathroom so as you're brushing your teeth, just the word gratitude or grateful will just trigger this moment, um, for you. Hey Rich, what's up? I hope the family at Hack4U is doing okay during my week off. Hope you all are surviving. I'm sure everything's great. I have peeked in. I know it's terrible, but I have. But great to see you here. So one of the things, so I encourage you all to just pick something that can help create some opportunity for you to be grateful or say something that you're grateful for on a daily basis. Oh, I didn't bring it today, but I do have my journal. And like I told you guys over the last, or you all over the last couple of days, Um, I don't write a whole lot. I don't have a whole lot of time to sit and journal like I used to when I only had 2 kids, or before I even had kids. But now I do commit to writing 3 things down every day, and that is the goal I have personally, the goal I have professionally, and my financial goal. And I write those down every single day to make sure it commit— like, for example, this, this is part of my personal goal And it encourages me and inspires me to get on even if I don't feel like it, even if I don't want to, you know, like, not that I, I mean, I actually love this. So I do, didn't have any problem getting motivated to be here for you all. But, but it does help every morning to set those goals, write them down, see them in writing, say them aloud, visualize and feel the feelings of doing those things and getting those goals. All the goals I write, I write in present tense, like, I have this right now. I am so grateful that this is happening. And those things have yet to transpire, but I do believe that setting yourself up, visualizing, cognitive rehearsal, as they say, is such a huge part of success. It's also a big part of that mindset that's required for many of us to be successful. So Happy Thanksgiving! Hey, Rebecca! Rebecca, our Winner from yesterday, or from Monday, was it? Oh, I think it was Monday. Our Monday homework winner, which we announced yesterday. Wasn't that fun, the little spinny thing? So Joe had asked, "How'd you even do that? What tool did you use to do this?" And it is a free tool. I actually use a different tool every time. But if you just go in and type in like custom spinner, spinner, or cus— I think that's all I typed in, custom spinner on Google or Bing, you would find this and you can go and edit it. You can spin it. It's great, especially if you wanted to add it just to a class that you're doing or to a meeting that you have. It's just a really fun way, a dynamic way of kind of getting everyone to be like, ah, it's so exciting. Anyway, we'll be doing that spinner again after this session for all of those who hashtagged your homework. Homework 2, and this time, right, the stakes are going up. It is a snowball mic. So not too late, though I want you to listen. It's not too late to go over to that Facebook group and, uh, tell us what your brand is, where your brand is hosted, or let us know what action you took yesterday in order to build your online presence. Um, I saw that we had quite a few people chime in and show what they are doing, and it So awesome to just see you all take action. So what are we gonna do today? Today in Lovefluencers, uh, A-lister training, right? What can we do to be a better, more authentic brand in this world? But today we're gonna focus on the power of our voice. So some of us may not feel comfortable, like, jumping up in front of a camera, but more importantly, we won't feel comfortable doing that every single time. So I always like to create many different modalities for me to get my work into the world, my message, my ideas, because I wanna be able to be like, well, I don't feel like video. That's okay. You have audio. I don't really feel like audio. That's okay. Hop on your phone and start writing something, right? Have lots of different ways that you can keep engaged, that you can keep moving your ideas forward into the world. So Um, yeah, so we're going to talk about the power of voice today, and I'm going to focus on, we'll call it, 3 tips around using your voice to expand your brand. So the first thing, which maybe is the most likely, um, and the certainly one of the easiest things you can do, is create a podcast. Now I have created dozens of podcasts. I was drawn to work at NPR heading up engineering there because of the podcast that I listened to at NPR. And of course, the broadcast too, but specifically the podcasts. And so I've got this kind of a heart for podcasting. I've also lately been on some incredible podcasts with amazing people. Um, and I just think it's a really good vehicle for expanding your brand. Now, a lot of podcasts have also decided to be visual, so they have video components, but for you and today, you could just do audio. So I'm gonna share with you what an audio podcast, how you can build one. I'm gonna build it for you right here, right now. As a matter of fact, if we should think of like a name for a podcast. I already have a Lovefluencers one. Anyway, so we'll have to think of something by the time we get there. So we're gonna start off by building a podcast from scratch right here, right now. Then the next thing I'd like to encourage you to do is think about beyond a podcast. How can you use your voice to get out there? Well, we all know and love our little devices, and those devices are audio in nature. So there are mechanisms that you can use today, and here's the good news, there are no code ways of getting your work into the world. Now, granted, be aware, anytime I say, uh-oh, I hope you guys can hear me okay. I wonder, should I put this on? Is that better? Can you hear me? I don't know. All right, I'm going to put this. Is that better? Like, is the mic closer? You guys will have to tell me anyway. You know, Noelle and her tech. I did a podcast yesterday and I literally went through 4 different piece, like, audio mechanisms to get the best quality sound. So hopefully you can still hear me. Nothing's really changed other than the location. Oh, it's better. Okay, great. Yeah, so it's probably because my microphone was like hanging off the side of the desk, you know, and you just keep going. This is my mission and inspiration to you. A tad bit scratchy. Okay, it might be because now it's moving against my shirt, so we'll see. We'll see what we can do there. So thank you, thank you so much. All right. So the next thing that I wanted to share with you was the power of an Alexa skill, a no-code Alexa skill. With no-code, as I mentioned, you don't get full flexibility, full capability. But my goodness, a lot of us just need to do the thing, right? It doesn't need to be perfect. We just need to move that foot in front of the next. And take the next step. So I'm gonna show you how to build an audio presence on Alexa right away. And I'm going to encourage you, and this is something I say often, you're not gonna be fantastic, amazing, incredible presence on, you know, in this voice space the first time you start, unless you've been doing it a while, right? Honing your voice, listening to your voice, getting used to speaking Cadence, like all of these things. The sad thing is, is that you have to kind of go through awful to get to awesome. That's just the truth. So the good news is though, no one's actually listening right now. So when you start, and even, you know, my audience has grown exponentially over the last 2 years, but I've been talking for like 20, right? So, um, know that your content that you're putting out there there's not going to be a huge audience. So go for it. Say the things. Get used to your voice. Hone your message. And the best way to do that is by either doing what we mentioned yesterday, creating a written version of that, or hopping on some of these voice mechanisms. So one is a podcast. I highly encourage it. Two is using an Alexa skill. Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be your voice. It could Alexa's voice, but it's still an audio message to the world. And then finally, the thing I would like to share with you is the ability— I think this is the one— yes, to actually— I guess it's two, but Twitter and Periscope. I'm live on there now, so hi Twitter friends! Hopefully this is catching you all well, but my Twitter family is seeing this because when I went live, it broadcast. Now they're also seeing the video, but in Periscope, there's the ability to go live on Twitter and on Periscope because they're owned by the same company. You can actually do an audio-only broadcast, and I love that. So when I'm doing a podcast— oh, this is a good tip, write this one down, or like just keep a mental note. Um, no, maybe you should write it down. But whenever I do anything any conversation like where I'm talking to a group of people or leading, uh, obviously not company work that you're doing, but when you're doing things in alignment with your brand or your message, no matter what it is, record an audio version of yourself. And if you can record the video version, everything you do, you don't know how good it is until later where you're like, oh man, I wish I would have recorded that. So I encourage you from now on, Everything you do, every, every podcast you get on, every podcast— of course you do, you'll be recording— but every podcast you get on, every session you decide to deliver for a virtual summit, all of the things, record. And if you are not interested or willing to record your, you know, video, you can just record audio, and Periscope gives you a way to do that. Another option you have, and I don't know if you all have seen this, I'm gonna see if I can show you through my the magic of my camera. But I'm gonna go into Twitter and attempt to post a new tweet. Yes. And let's see if you could see it. Oh goodness. Oh goodness. See that right there? Oh wait, other side. Right there. That thing right there. That is an audio tweet. What? I know. It's awesome. So you have the ability now to create, like some of us have cool ideas all the time, right? We have ideas about our brand, about our message, about, oh my gosh, or worse, we have an experience that we literally watch or experience ourselves and we're like, the world needs to know that that is not okay. Now you have a vehicle for getting that information into the world. As a Lovefluencer though, we are constantly looking at ways not only to perpetuate like, oh, I saw this bad thing, But how do we see the good in that? How do we share the solution? Not just the problem, right? Problem staters, people who identify problems are everywhere. People who couple that with a solution, people who say, oh, I felt this way, but here's what I did and now I feel better. Now I'm doing more. Now I'm being more helpful. That's who we are as Lovefluencers, right? We take that extra step, not just to say, here's what's wrong with the world, but also here's what I'm doing to help overcome, right? To help change the trajectory of some of those experiences. All right. So, hey there, good to see you all, all my friends on LinkedIn. We've got a bunch of people on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on YouTube. Thank you all. Um, on Periscope. So super excited to see you all. Thank you for joining. Okay. So that is kind of what I want to talk to you about, those 3 things. So we're going to start off. I'm going to go and show you how to build a podcast super quick. I'm then gonna show you how to build an Alexa skill also relatively quickly. And I just showed you Periscope and Twitter both have audio mechanisms for you to just press a button and start talking to the world. Now oftentimes before I get into the tactics, many times people are like, but I don't even know what I want to say. Some of us do, like Joe. Joe is awesome. He has so much good content. And we— I was just like, you just need to get more trains out of the station, right? Ways for that content to get into the world because it's awesome, amazing content. And so sometimes that's— content isn't our problem. But if content is something that you are struggling with, I did want to give you a couple of tips. So one thing I like to do, especially because I think it's a good way of knowing who you are and what you stand for. Um, without doing too much work is just think about something that if, if you were in a, you know, uh, I don't know, dinner party— we don't do that anymore— but if we were in a dinner party or if you are at a conference, and what question could someone ask you that you wouldn't have to prep for, right? That you know in your head automatically. Like morning routines for me, like I know morning routines because I do them.. And I, I know why I do them. I know what I wanna do. I know ways that it's evolved in my life. And it actually, when I say it out loud, it turns into almost like a framework, right? Where I'm like, first say something you're grateful for, then don't forget to work out, then don't forget to journal, then don't forget to, right? Like I ha— it kind of turns into a system that someone else can follow. So I encourage you, if you're struggling with things to say, write down, like think about and write down, or even use a voice memo. What question could someone ask you that you— about what topics could you talk about with no prep, right? That you just know wholeheartedly, like deep down, and you could just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Okay, it is possible that you might get sitting down asking yourself this question and you'll be like, I actually don't, I don't know. So here's the next stage of this. Ask people. So there are things about you that are constant themes about who you are, what you talk about, what you chime in on. Ask people, go on your Facebook page or go on Twitter and be like, hey, what do you think I'm good at? What do you think I'm passionate about? And see what they respond with. Even if only a few people respond, you will start to get an inkling of what you want to focus on., right? Because that's what other people see you like. If I ask that of my friends, many times they'll be like, oh my gosh, Noelle always talks about mindful leadership, artificial intelligence, ethics, right? There's like a lit— a list, but it's pretty— it's a short list of things that if you go to Noelle, you know you're gonna hear something about. So that's the list you wanna start honing. And that list shouldn't be 500 things long, though it's tempting cuz a lot of us are so multifaceted. We, um, I've adopted this philosophy of picking 5, 5 categories of things that I want to talk about. And in picking those 5, one of them I make money on, one of them is my business, one of them you'll hear, and buy this for $14.99 or whatever, right? One. So when you come to my pages, if you go to TikTok, you will see mindful moments. You will see Alexa Easter eggs. You will see, what else do I talk about, like emerging tech, gaming. You'll see what it means to be a special needs parent and taking care of all these people in quarantine. And the thing though that I'm working on is like tech education, deepfake. I'm building a deepfake course. And so I've got all this content on deepfake.. And I'm like, hey, my course is coming, my course is coming, it's this price. Or you all, many of you saw the landing page I did for the book I'm writing on how to get started in AI and machine learning. That's gonna be something you buy, a transaction you do with me. But there's tons of other stuff you'll learn about me. And so I literally go through this cycle of like 4 things and 4 videos, 4 blog posts, 4 Facebook Lives. And then I talk about the thing that is my business, that is what, you know, uh, generates my livelihood. Um, so just to give you a tip, if you are struggling with, oh my gosh, I have 100 things I want to talk about, pick 5, pick 5 things you can talk about without really thinking. And then, and one of them should be your business, uh, and then rotate through. And then that way people get to know the real you and of course get an opportunity to support the thing that you are most passionate about or the thing, um, that, uh, will allow you to maintain a livelihood, which everyone deserves. Okay. Hey there, fellow Lovefluencers! What's up? Okay, awesome. So great to see you all. Okay, so why don't we do this thing? I'm going to share my screen. We'll go into inception, um, in Restream. I always take this opportunity to share with you the Restream environment. I'm going to go ahead and turn it on and you can see it. So there is Restream. This is the window. There's my mouse in like anyway, Inception. It's like, ooh, there's 100 of me. It's so nice. Okay, so this is Restream. I like to always show it to you. You can tell here I'm live. You can see this is the chat window over here. At any time I can go in and say, For example, sometimes Facebook doesn't let me see who's talking to me, um, depending on which— what their privacy permissions are. So this person, and you know who you are, says, hello, Lovefluencers! And so I can pick certain content to bring up on the screen, um, and then of course I can, um, hide it again, I would imagine. Uh, I don't know how to hide it again. Anyway, you might just be up there the whole time. So really cool though, gives me the ability to connect all of my social platforms. I'll show this to you. Um, so that was my first message, but over here, uh, you can see it shows this message posted on all 4 platforms that I'm broadcasting on. So pretty neat. I think it's cool. Uh, it also gives you a set of graphics, these graphics. Um, and again, I'm not— I don't have an affiliate relationship with Restream. I just, I I've tried a few and some of you have been with me through all of the pain of some of the platforms I have used. And this one's been pretty decent to me. And I love the idea of being able to create content, have timers, create backgrounds. I'm using this Lovefluencer thing. But here was one I think I'll just show you for Halloween. Oh, look at the little pumpkin show up. So cute. Okay, so gives you a lot of capability, um, and you of course can add your own overlays, which is part of the joy. So just so you— I always like to give you an idea of the tools I'm using as I'm using them. So let's go ahead and take a look at my favorite platform, and this is not the only one. There's actually quite a few out there. I'm in the middle of testing a new one right now, but today I can confidently say, because I have a few, that Anchor FM is my current favorite platform. Go ahead and throw in the chat if you have an Anchor FM— oh no, if you have an Anchor FM podcast. Let's go to this maybe, and maybe I had a weird cookie. It's possible. So I'm just going to click on— I think I clicked on it. Go to Anchor FM. Oh no, is that for real? Somebody tell me if that's for real. That can't be, that has to be a cookie or something weird. So I'm gonna try it again. All right, let's go here. Anchor, oopsie, gotta spell it right. Exhibition typing, man, it's a challenge. Let's see here. All right, I'm gonna try this one. What? 503 is not a good error. All right, that's unfortunate. Okay, I'm gonna go and see what you all are talking about in my Facebook group. Oh, oh, you're just doing your homework. Okay, awesome. Oh, look, and there I am. Inception Live. Okay, I love Anchor. Yay. Yes, but I haven't recorded anything. All right. All right. Well, I'm going to try it one more time and then we're going to go because a person always has a backup. Anchor FM. What is going on? All right, you all tell me if you see the same thing. Maybe it's just Noelle. Okay, so I don't have that. So what I'm gonna do instead, I'm gonna go back and I'm going to stop my screen sharing and I'm gonna do it live with you right here because I actually don't use the web browser that often. I'm on Chrome. I don't know, I have used it though. And what I'm gonna do is just show you the app. So go and download, if you have not done this before, the Anchor FM app or Looks like that. Oh, you know what I'm saying. I'm gonna go and install. I don't have to install it, but I'm gonna let you guys go ahead and install the app if you don't have it already. It's then going to ask you for an email, though you can use single sign-on and sign into any number of services. For example, you might use Google, one of your Google accounts, or you can use, I think you can use Apple ID now as well. So it'll come up and it'll say Anchor, and then it'll say, this is the easiest way to make a podcast. And I have to agree. Again, also, I am not affiliated with Anchor. I'm only sharing with you things that have exponentially given me the ability to do more in less time and for it to have a quality that I feel good about, right? That I don't feel bad putting that content into the world, even though as a mom with 4 kids and my dad and, and a full-time job, I don't have a whole lot of time to work on these things. So I'm going to sign up with my email address. Um, let's see. Oh, maybe I'll just go to Google and sign into one. Uh, oh, I think I was gonna sign up with a new one. Okay, so I'm going to continue. I'm gonna sign in with one of my many, many, um Oh my goodness, there we go. I'm gonna— I'm just signing in real quick. So if you're doing that as well, of course I used the wrong password, so I'm just gonna go in with my, um, my Apple ID because that one I know works. Oh, I actually clicked the wrong button. All right, here we go. So I'm just signing in really quickly, um, and so when I sign in, if you're doing it for the first time, it's going to ask you to authenticate, of course, and then it's going to ask you what you want to do. So if you've never been in the platform before with that email address, it's going to ask you to create your first podcast. And I'm just going to try and sign in again. Says failed. Oh no. All right, I'm going to try with Twitter, see what happens. That looks good. See what happens. So funny, technical live demos. People always tell me never to do them. I love it. I love living on the edge because guess what? You all go through these same problems. And so I always like being able to show people like it's not always super simple and easy, and sometimes it's— it doesn't work. And so you just have to keep trying. All right, I'm going to try one more time. With Facebook. Oh, someone just sent me a message. Oh, it won't let me log in. Okay, I'm just gonna log in with my email address then. Here we go. It won't let me log in. I don't understand why. Is anyone else having this problem? Okay, so not now. Okay, I'm gonna log in one last time and then I will just talk you through it. I also have done this presentation many times, so I'll send you all the slides, but it's not— I mean, the whole point of it is it's pretty easy. Um, okay, let's do this one. Okay, yeah, it won't let me log in. I don't know what's going on. I'm gonna try it again. Oh, look at that! Okay, I see. Maybe it's gonna work this time. Nope. So, okay, last time for reals, for reals. Awesome. Nope. Okay, so for whatever reason, it will not allow me to log into this. Um, so, and I've tried every account and even tried to create a new account and it wouldn't let me create a new account. So that's all right. Um, but if you go over to— so I'm gonna check the chat. Did anyone else see— I was bouncing around between Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, watching this live. Oh, oh, okay, great, cool. Thanks for telling us that. Oh, good. All right. So that's weird that you get a 503 on Anchor. Poor Anchor. So hopefully it's— everything's going okay with that. We'll have to check into them later. So if you can't get into it now, that's all right. Well, I would like to see— I do know that it works because I gave the same exact talk in one of my lives on Lovefluencers a week or two weeks ago, and people were able to create their podcast that way. So hopefully that is the case. If not, that, like I mentioned, there are actually several other platforms for building podcasts in a low-code or no-code manner, meaning, you know, very, very simply. Do like Anchor though, so we'll come back to that one. The next thing though, let's go and do something fun. The next thing I want to show you all is How to build an Alexa skill. And it's actually very similar. Thank you for posting to Facebook, my YouTube. Yes, latency is weird because I am broadcasting on a bunch of platforms. And so each platform has different latency, I guess, allowances. So thanks for doing that homework. Looks like YouTube is the best if you want low latency. Okay, so what we're gonna do now is just take a look at a no-code Alexa skill development platform, and it's called blueprints.amazon.com. And thank goodness I don't have a 403 here. So this is a platform that allows you to build a skill. Joe actually has done this as well, so really cool. But remind— just be aware that these are relatively simplistic and you have very little control. Over them. So when— because that is the case, you might be like, wow, I really want to kind of learn a little bit more and build a skill with code. But low-code, the nice thing is, is that you can get a skill up and running on the platform pretty quickly. Another option you have is to create a flash briefing. Now, a flash briefing is a skill that you have to provide content for on a daily basis. It's basically what happens My device is muted. Mute your devices. When you say, "Alexa, good morning," or "Alexa, start my flash briefing," it will then go through a choreographed list of skills that the user has put together. And you can create your own flash briefing that you can then encourage people to add to their morning routine, which is kind of fun. I do have one called Daily Affirmation. And it would get added to— like, people would search for it when they were figuring out their flash briefing, and then it would play for them, and it would just be a very quick affirmation. And then it would say, I've sent this to your phone so that you can have access to it all throughout the day. And it was really nice. People liked it. But it was the creating content every single day that got a little bit difficult for me. But there are now platforms that help you do this. So looking at these skill blueprints, all of these There are ways of building an Alexa skill with no code. So we'll look at some of the featured ones. I don't see anything in here that I really like. Let's see, I'm just gonna keep scrolling until I see something that I feel like you could use right away. So learning and knowledge is definitely one of my favorites. You can, depending on what your product is, you can create flashcards, ways for people to get tested on their knowledge of certain terms. You can also create facts, a fact skill. So, if you wanted to provide random facts about whatever, random facts about Black History Month or random facts about all the vice presidents that have ever been, right? You could actually create a skill that just does that. And so, one of the things you wanna think about is what's a fun and engaging way for someone using audio to learn more about your product, your service, or the thing that you're trying to do in the world. You can also see rather than just plain facts, there's inspiration. So this is specifically for motivational quotes. If you— and this— the nice thing about this, and I'll just click on this one, is you get to choose the quotes, right? So I'm going to— it'll give you a little bit of instructions.. But I'll just say make your own so you can kind of— oh no, I'm not sharing my screen. I bet. Dang it. Ah, so let me share my screen. Um, here we go, there we go. All right, let's do this. I'll share the link again. So the link is up here. I'll even throw it into the chat for you. blueprints.amazon.com. I'm gonna throw that into the chat. There you all are. It is now live on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, so you should see that. Um, yes, sorry. Okay, there we go. Um, okay, Restream, uh, catch up to me. Okay, there we go. I forgot to do that in— in— oh, I know, I'm telling you, man. Um, I've— it happens to the best of us, right? So don't be— don't beat yourself up if you ever do it. I mean, of course I'll beat myself up later when and I'm like going through the notes and being like, dang, I should have checked. I should have a little Post-it, you know, some mechanism to keep myself reminding myself. But I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen now. There it is. All right. Okay. So this is, oh, I'm gonna back up. So these are the Alexa blueprints just so you can see them. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of them, right? I'll just flip through all of them. But some of the ones that I like are in the knowledge section. Section, which is learning and knowledge, where you can build a quiz. My daughter— or my son built a unicorn, a mythical unicorn trivia quiz. And here's the fun fact: built it when he was 9, and now as a 13-year-old has started to get— for— started off at $40 a month, and now during quarantine and the pandemic, more and more people are using it. And so now he's making $75 a month on a skill he wrote when he was 9. So not off, not terrible. So how does that work for some of you who are like, wait, you can make money building skills, especially these kinds? Yes, you can. Because the reality is, is that Alexa needs good content. This is why Lovefluencers are so needed in the world. The world needs better content, content that helps, that serves, that makes people's lives better. And building a unicorn trivia skill made people laugh and have fun. And that was something that now Amazon is paying for that, the usage of that skill. I have a bunch of skills on the platform, but 5 of them have about a million unique users across them. And I get paid today by Amazon for the use of those skills to make sure that I keep those skills up to date and keep them going, um, which is really kind of cool. So that is an opportunity. I don't encourage you build skills for the sheer developer rewards benefit because it's haphazard and, and not consistent. It's not consistent revenue. It's something they can take away at any time. But it does encourage you to build content that makes a difference and that matters to people. So looking at the inspiration. So again, just going into blueprints.amazon.com, going into inspirations, they give you a little tutorial and then you select Make It Your Own. So when you make it your own, you'll see here you can customize it by adding quotes and the author. Now it's not going to be your words. This is— Alexa is going to read these back. And you can actually test out what it sounds like. But this gives you the ability to go in and add your own quotes. Let's say you wanted to create quotes from a specific religious, like maybe a pastor, right? I have an amazing pastor who says really cool things on Sunday. And if I thought about it, I might write all that down and just give that, right, as a gift to that church community and say, hey, you remember all these like one-liners that were really great from the pastor? That we hear every Sunday. Now you can go hear, you know, quotes from the pastor by asking for it on Alexa. So really interesting. And of course, this is just Alexa. There are other platforms out there, Google Actions for the Google Home. There's also the ability to build for Bixby, which is the Samsung platform. So there's lots of opportunity to build for increasing platforms, but the market share is led by Alexa. So I do encourage you, if you wanna start somewhere, Start here, it seems. And, and of course, my Google champions will come in and say, actually, start with Google. It doesn't really matter. It's just one more opportunity you have to get your voice into the world. So I'm going to back out of this just to go back to the blueprints list and show you— oh, I better close out instead— and show you one other thing that I wanted to just bring up. All the way at the bottom, I think, is where I saw them before. I don't want to scroll too fast and make you, uh, sick. But here's one thing: the Storyteller. You can create interactive choose-your-own-adventure stories on Alexa with no code. Yes, the content takes some time to build, but wow, it's kind of fun. So I just wanted to share that with you. Um, greetings and occasions, uh, and then also way down here which is one of my favorites, the onboarding guide. So onboarding, business Q&A, what happens like if a new customer comes to you and you want them to know certain things, or better yet, if you have a business and you wanna onboard a new employee, what better way than to give them a, you know, $20 Alexa or $45, whatever version you get, Alexa device, give them a headset and they can just ask Alexa like, What is the policy on this? How do I find this? Where is this located? Send me an email about this. And Alexa can do some of that work for you. So that's pretty cool too. There's also this one, which I think was the last one I wanted to show you, which is the ability for you to actually have your blog or vlog read back to your users. So you can see here, welcome back to Geek Girl Blog, which happens to be my blog. Now on, uh, onto the latest episode, to Dave's blogs about, uh, empowering girls of science. So it allows you to use, notice this, an RSS feed. So you write your content once from yesterday, you then grab an RSS feed, which is usually a product of either WordPress or GoDaddy, grab the RSS feed, feed it to Alexa, and every time you post the skill gets updated with that content. I'm a big believer, especially as you know, with my life situation and all the people in it and how little time I have to create good content. What would happen if I could create my content once and it gets distributed to a bunch of different channels? So this is one way to do that. Build your blog or vlog, create an RSS feed and feed that RSS feed into Alexa, and Alexa will then auto-update your skill with that content. Now, there is no magic discovery mechanism I have found, and I don't know if I have access to it right now, so I'll have to look it up and share it with you in the, in the Facebook group. But one of the things that I have uncovered is that Alexa in and of itself is not the financial hub, or maybe You should be careful about making that the financial hub of your business, but it is instead a way of marketing your business, of sharing your message with the world. So let's say you have, I don't know, you've created a journal that you want to sell, or you've got an Etsy store or a t-shirt store, um, or you sell courses, or you, you know, whatever it is, you can use Alexa to share little bits of what that is and what it's about and why you did it so that people can be like, oh man, that's cool. I want one of those t-shirts. Or, oh, I always wanted to learn more about this technology or about this topic. And so you use Alexa as a vehicle to spread the word. There are over 110 million homes on Alexa. So it's not uncommon that when I do a TikTok, for example, I say, And for those of you who have Alexa, you could do this. And a lot of people will engage because many people have it. 5 years ago when I first started doing this, I would say, and for those of you with Alexa, and people would be like, what's Alexa? But now that's different. And so I encourage you, and I also don't want you to, like, I'm going through 25 or 21 tips. I may end up with 25 by the end. 21 tips over these 5 days. And we're going to do a big collection of them on Friday in the longer session. But when I share these with you, I wouldn't have the expectation of being able to implement all 25, like, or all 20, or whatever they end up being, right? When you hear a tip that resonates with you where you're like, oh, Lexis Skills, that's so cool, then do that, right? I try and, um, and adopt that instead of like, oh, Noelle talked about building a domain. I built a domain, and then I built a website, then I built an email list, Then I built an Alexa skill. Like, you won't be able to actually implement all the things. Some are gonna resonate with you and some you're gonna come back to. All of these will be recorded. They're in our Lovefluencers group. So you'll be able to go back and be like, I remember Noelle talking about this thing and you can go back and look at it. So don't, um, necessarily dive deep on all of the things that I'm sharing with you because it's gonna be hard to execute on all of them. I encourage you to pick one or two, and in our case for the challenge, pick one thing per day to move in the direction towards. And maybe it's, maybe it's Alexa. I will keep trying Anchor and be like, wow, maybe they just had like something happen with them. I don't know. So I'll just keep trying. I'll let you all know in the, in the group what's going on there. But blueprints are super fun. And if you already have content or already thinking of content, it's a really great mechanism and relatively easy mechanism of getting that content into the world.. But then the next step is starting to talk about it, telling everyone you know, like, hey, did you know there's an Alexa skill for that? I built an Alexa skill for this thing. Oh, I created an Alexa skill to share with you, you know, top quotes that'll inspire you, or a gratitude skill, right? Whatever it is. But it is part of your message. It's not the only message. And I think that's true with podcasting as well. These are all parts of a brand., and you'll want to pick and choose what parts you embrace. And so the last thing that I wanted to share with you was really around, like, we've talked about building a podcast. Sorry we couldn't get that to work. I will probably end up doing a— as soon as I— either, either it'll be on Anchor or I will record a separate session for those in the Facebook group where I just walk you through building a podcast on a different platform. Either way, you can build a podcast, you can create an Alexa skill, or you can just start distributing content with your voice. And I mentioned that by going to your, like, even in Twitter, or by going to Periscope. I'll open up Periscope for you as well, just so I can show you what it looks like. And when I click on the broadcast button, you'll be able to see— oh, actually, let me go back to Restream and stop sharing so you can see my screen a little bit larger. But you can see all these different options here, and the microphone option, as opposed to the video option, the microphone option will allow you to broadcast in video only. So that's kind of cool. I don't know what would happen since I'm streaming through Restream on Periscope if I I actually hit the broadcast. Should I? No, I'm not going to do it. I don't know what would happen. Like, I'd be simultaneously streaming in two different places. I'm not sure. Okay, so hopefully you were able to see my screen. Hopefully you got there. Okay. Do you find that your reading voice and speaking voice are different? So yes, definitely. However, when I create content, I never read, like, ever. This is why I asked that question earlier on about— oh, I should— I'll just put this on here. This is the question that just came up. One of the things that I try to do is I try to figure out, or I do this work, I will identify what I want to talk about. And I stay as close to things that I'm very passionate about as possible. Yes, that's okay. You should only see me right now. I'm not sharing anything. My screen isn't sharing. Should I be sharing something? I don't think so. Oh, I was just showing you on— I actually, for a second, I was showing it to you. Oh, the fam. I was showing it to you on my phone, but I'm not sharing my screen, so we're good. But yeah, I don't read. I try not to read ever if I can avoid it, because there is a distinct difference in my engagement level. Like, if I'm reading, I couldn't look into the camera like this. I would be looking like this reading something right now for voice only. Even then, I find like there's this cadence that kicks in when I'm reading content, and I really want people to like feel like I'm just talking to them.. But that is Noelle's brand, right? My brand is like, I just talk off the cuff. I maybe missay things because of that. I don't run on a script. It's why most PR, public relations teams within companies that I work for are always like, all right, Noelle, just make sure you're clear on these 5 facts or whatever, because I like to go off the cuff. I feel like it's more natural. I feel like it's more engaging. Um, but yeah, I would say 100% my reading voice is different. Um, but I do try to limit the amount of reading I do to people, um, as opposed to talking from my heart, um, and talking from something I'm passionate about. So now's that time in the conversation where we will open it up for questions. So if you have any questions, now's your chance. It can be about anything we've talked about. I'll briefly recap what we've done over Monday and Tuesday. Um, but let me know what, what, pray tell, you have questions about. I'm also going to, um, just keep pinging Anchor and see if they fix their thing. Um, and then I hope we don't see some kind of weird announcement company-wise about Anchor tomorrow or later today. Um, so if you have questions, jot them down. Um, I am also going to just pull up a different tool that might be helpful to you as well, because there's lots of different tools out there, and I just think it's important for you all to, to be able to go and take action in that way. All right. Oh, great. Oh, thank you for rephrasing that. So the question was actually more about if you have like Alexa read your content, or if you're repurposing your content, is your written voice different? Yes. So this is a great point. So when I write my— when I write, I write the way I talk. That is like— there are literary people who shiver at the idea that that's how I write. They also would not be attracted to my books because I definitely do it that way. So that is something to be aware of, is that you could have a distinct difference between them, between your written word and your voice. I don't. If you go and look at my blog posts, they sound just like as if I'm talking to you. And therefore, when Alexa reads my blog posts or my blog snippets, snippet in a flash briefing, it kind of sounds like how I would speak, like the same, uh, way that I talk. But that's not necessarily the same. So yeah, your question is more like, uh, do I notice a difference? And I definitely do. Um, but I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's okay, uh, for you to— if you want to have a difference there, you can. My only, my only caution to you is not to let the perfection of like literary greatness impede your ability to deliver content consistently to your audience. So that would be my only, um, my only other thing. Um, cool. Any other questions? Uh, I keep seeing— I'm gonna go over to— I see lots of— all right, um, that's so funny. Okay, all right, I see stuff here. Let me rephrase that. All right, sounds good. Thanks, Dale, for posting. Oh, it's Dale. All right, awesome. I was able to find, um, that it is you. Facebook is not telling me that it's you. Maybe it's because we're not friends. Um, so I'll make sure we friend each other because I couldn't see your name. Um, and there is definitely a delay, so don't be too worried about that. Uh, okay, I'm gonna go back to the stream and see if we have any other questions. I think we're good. So what have we done this week so far? So the first thing we did was talk about your presence online. Now in my mind, you have— you should consider, or maybe I would encourage you to consider, a home, like a home base where everything will live. Every podcast you get to be on, every, right, like every, um, podcast you do, every blog you post, like there should be a place that that lives. It doesn't have to be the only place. For me, I have content all over, but there should be a home for that. And the nice thing about that is that as you, for example, for me, I've got content on Instagram, Instagram Reels, content on TikTok, content on Twitter. Um, and for the big pieces, like what I call pillar content, pieces that are evergreen, that lots of people are engaging with. I want that to live somewhere. And so, for example, I've written some of these pieces on medium.com. That was— I didn't mention that yesterday in our written word, but creating places or using additional spaces for broadcasting your content is— oh, no problem. Thank you. Good luck. And let me know how I can help you with your college thing. Dale is in community college, and I would love— Man, more people. That's one of the reasons for this platform is like, how can we get more people to know some of the cool new things that we're doing that are available without, you know, necessarily having to like go and take a whole Udemy class. You know, sometimes you just want like super quick. Can I just have 4 things that I could do right now? So anyway, thanks for joining us, Dale. Oh, good question. So another question just came up around video, which we're actually going to tomorrow be focused on video, um, but tomorrow YouTube or Vimeo. So I do have an opinion, but it is just that, my opinion. I do encourage you to do your own research and figure out, right, what would work best for you and your brand. But here is the reality from my world and the content I've created and the benefit of each. So Vimeo, I really like I have used. It's created a place for me to store content. It gave me a lot more control over how I embed it and host it in other places. However, one of the biggest benefits of YouTube is the, is the fact that YouTube is tightly correlated to the algorithm that is Google search, which is an incredibly powerful place for your content to be. So Vimeo, I've used it. Actually, the things that I host there are like my add videos, um, where I want to control the player that it sits in, where with YouTube that's not as easy to do. Um, but if it's content that I want people to see, that I want people to engage with, I put it on YouTube. Um, and, and tomorrow I'll talk all about like how to create your channel, but most importantly, like some of us already have channel, how to create a channel that's more engaging and that people find. So I have haphazardly created, I don't know, 10 YouTube channels. Oh, and you can create lots of channels, by the way. I've haphazardly created them and some channels took off and other channels didn't. And so I've learned a lot in doing that and I'll share those lessons with you all tomorrow. Um, but yes, I would say YouTube, if you want your content to be organically found, if you notice, if you go and do a search for anything, um, when you— in Google, when you look in Google and you do a search, it also provides videos that match that search. Now here is where search engine optimization becomes really important. The keywords that you use, the way that you phrase your headlines and the descriptions, how will YouTube crawl your video to find out when should it show it to people when they're looking for something? Those are all intentional activities. And so yeah, you're gonna want to— I would, I encourage you, if you're building content, build it for YouTube because it can organically show up for someone when someone's looking for it. To give you a very specific example, I created a video about ClickFunnels. It was a very specific problem on ClickFunnels, and I titled it as such, right? What to do when you run into this problem. And I have to this day at least like dozens and dozens of people every single day watch that video. And I created it kind of just for me and maybe a little bit for people I know that I could point them to if they ever ran into that problem. But I was surprised how many people organically happened upon that video. That channel that it's in is completely solitary. It has no other videos in it but this one., but that video keeps getting traffic, keeps getting traction. And it's— this is another Lovefluencer kind of methodology, right? I did it in a way that's super helpful. And so I get lots and lots of love on that video, right? Oh my gosh, you saved me. You saved me hours. Thank you for this. Oh, I saved— you know, like when people are looking for a very specific solution to a problem and you can target the, um, your content to meet that need, when they find you, they're grateful and they show that gratefulness. And guess what? The YouTube algorithm likes that, and so it starts showing it to even more people. So yeah, I'm a big fan of YouTube for that purpose, is that it creates more organic capabilities. It also allows you, um, to be found even if you're not broadcasting, uh, your, you know, doing paid ads and things like that. It's just a natural part of organic search, and I I think that's an important thing to, to have. Um, that's my opinion, but like I said, you should do your own research just like I did. I tested it out. I do have content on Vimeo. I ended up gravitating towards, um, I ended up gravitating towards YouTube. Um, does YouTube pay you for so many views? It— so YouTube does pay people for their views. I have monetization but it's negligible. I think I, I should show you— I shouldn't show you my checks, but I do get checks from YouTube. They're just baby checks. Um, but one of the other things that I teach through learning is that right now I'm kind of a tester of all things. I don't dive deep and like build content on one platform. Um, it is one of the things I encourage all of you to do, which is what I kind of mentioned with the I'm giving you 21 tips. Pick one, maybe two, and go after it. Um, like if voice is— I always, uh, give written word, um, voice, and video as three separate pillars because I do think that some of us are gonna be comfortable with the written word and you should go after that. And some of us are gonna be comfortable with the spoken word and you should dive into that. And some of us are gonna be great on video and you should dive into video., and you should kind of go all in in that medium as opposed to spreading yourself really thin and being in a bunch of places a little bit, as opposed to one place all the time and creating your community there. So like TikTok, I went all in on TikTok in, uh, when the pandemic started, like in March, and started building content every single day. I just passed— oh, I should celebrate in my last minute. I just passed 100,000 likes on that platform. Like, what? I'm doing these fun 15-second videos. They're super, like, just, I like them. It's not really for anybody. And I was just really, really excited. It is my most engaged platform today. LinkedIn. Thanks for joining me, everyone. LinkedIn is the other platform that I have. That is the most engaged platform. So those two platforms, whether you choose to go all in writing with audio or with video, I encourage you to pick one medium that you feel natively confident in and go after it. And if you don't feel confident in any of those, let's talk, because I'm sure you're good at one of them and you just probably don't know it. All right, we're doing TikTok tomorrow. Yeah. Oh, I'm so excited. I can't wait to share with you all the fun things, the massive failure and the success that I have found. So TikTok, YouTube, um, and a video in general is tomorrow. So I know it's Thanksgiving, so do not worry if you can't catch it tomorrow, it will be available on the replay. I am doing it at noon, so, but it'll be shorter. But it'll be fun. So anyway, um, I hope you'll join me there. Uh, yeah, it's been great. It's always great talking to you all. I'm so glad I figured out— I know latency for some platforms is an issue. Um, I would apologize, but I have zero control. The good news though is that this video is being captured by Restream. I download it, the latency is gone, and I upload that to YouTube as well as to the Facebook group. So there is a no-latency version coming your way. And then for all of you who did the homework, I saw 2 people add to the homework while I was talking. We will be doing a raffle for the Snowball microphone in about 10 minutes. So all I have to do is add people's names to the little spinny thing, and then I will go live and show you the winner of that. So thanks everybody. It was amazing. So much fun. I can't wait to see you all tomorrow for Turkey Day video training, um, and to show you all what I have found on the video platforms I've chosen to go with. Uh, it's been great. Yes, I— thank you so much. I am grateful for you all for taking the time and just being willing to have some fun with me this week. It's been really fun. I know a lot of people are like, how are you doing this on your vacation? You should be enjoying yourself. I totally am. So this is amazing. I love you guys. You guys are amazing. I think You know, what better way to spend an hour? So thanks for being here. I'll see you all tomorrow. And, oh, homework. Oh, I almost forgot. So your homework for today is to build a no-code Alexa skill, or if you already have a podcast, throw it down, share your podcast with us, build an Alexa skill. And if you want to, and Anchor is working, or you know another platform, Build a podcast today. Get your first podcast episode up. Don't know what to say? Introduce yourself. We all want to know who you are. Okay, so thanks, Lovefluencers. Hang in there. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks a lot. Okay, and I'll post the homework in the Facebook group. See you later. Bye.