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Hello and welcome to day 14 of Flash briefing February. Today we are going to be speaking about your intros and outros, and why they aren't so important in your Flash briefings. My name is Suze Cooper I am a presenter, a news broadcaster on a local radio station here in Kent and also produce news for Google via London Evening Standard. And I work with vixen labs over in Shoreditch as well creating skills and actions and all kinds of voice experiences for brands and businesses around the world and myself and Peter Stewart's have been bringing you the skill set the mindset and the marketing to creating a better briefing all throughout February and here we are on day 14 about to speak about intros and outros. So Peter, over to you.

We're halfway through guys. Thanks very much indeed for for watching and listening for the last 14 days. Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day to you Suze? She's a married woman. But you know, in a in a friendly kind of way. And I'm Patrick Stewart live from from London town, as you can see behind me from my Penthouse Suite overlooking the fantastic city, the best city in the world. My background is not only in working for the big British Broadcasting Company that I'm not allowed to tell you what it is, but it's quite obvious, bizarre rules and guidelines. I also have various Flash briefings. And also I contributed to the Oxford University and Reuters report in 2019, about about voice about smart speakers and so on, and also spoken at several conferences about voice techniques and Flash briefings as well. So the importance then of the ins and outs of your Flash briefing, we've spoken before about how you need to get to the meat and potatoes how you need to get to the content as quickly as possible. So essentially What that means is, if you've got a theme shoot, don't let it go on for several seconds. Now, I have listened to a Flash briefing before where the Introduction Music goes on for 10 seconds. And then the presenter comes on and says in a slightly boring, tedious voice, who they are, what it is they're doing the name of the Flash briefing again, what they're going to be talking about. And it's a good 20 or even 30 seconds sometime before they actually talk about the actual content before they bring you anything of value. By that time. I've moved on. I've said skip to Alexa. I don't I don't. Now, in fact, it's deleted. So I don't listen to that Flash briefing anymore. What you need to do is you need to need to get in and out really, really quickly. The essay is the Special Air Service the elite force of military in the United Kingdom, one of their mottos Who Dares Wins Another one is get in and out quickly. And that's what you've got to think about when you're producing your Flash briefing when you're presenting your Flash briefing. So, a couple of seconds intro, then say what it is that people can learn from you over the next 90 seconds or so, and then bring that to them almost immediately make them stay with that initial teaser tells them what it is that they're going to learn. explain to them why it is worth investing their time in the next 90 seconds of their lives with you. And then get on we've actually, we've actually bringing them that main content of value. So getting quickly and make it valuable to them to invest their time in you. And then of course, comes the content. We've spoken about the content before. And then the outrage and the outro is just as important because you've got various things that you want to Haasan various bits of information, various calls to action that you want them to do. And let's hand over to pop over to Suze's for for her advice on how you get out of your Flash briefing.

That's right. So the outro is actually quite an important part of the Flash briefing because this is where you can encourage people to take action on what they've heard. And perhaps it point them off to somewhere else within your marketing strategy that might get them to sign up for something, follow you somewhere on social media, visit your website, all kinds of different calls to actions that you can come up with. Now, what you don't want is your outro. To become an advert. People don't want to be listening to this two minute piece of content. And for a whole minute of it to be a big ad for you kind of trying to hard sell whatever it is, your brand or your businesses is trying to sell onto people. And what you want is for it to be short and pithy and snappy, and a really simple instruction to people remember people are listening to these Flash briefings while they're doing other things. You know, it's not real kind of active listening, it is quite passive. So whatever instruction it is that you're going to give needs to be really simple and really easy to remember. So it might be that you want someone to follow you on Twitter, I've certainly used that call to action myself at the end of my briefing going onto Twitter follow at Big Tent social and and that sums up the end of my Flash briefing. As I say you might want to give a web address and and you might want to suggest that people download something a bit like how voice works, newsletter, you know, go along to voice works dot info and download and sign up to receive our weekly Flash briefing briefing, you know that there may well be something you can move them on to certainly a Flash briefing can be used within a marketing strategy in that way so that it is another one of your steps towards your funnel or whatever else it is that you might be looking at to try and put Someone towards a product or downloading something online. And you know, and certainly can be it can be thought of and used in that way. So your call to action can be used as your outro, and can actually be a really quite important part of your Flash briefing. And it's another reason why the Flash briefing should be short, because you want to make sure that people hear that, that last action, and hopefully they will take action on it, as well. So what you want to do perhaps, is to have a different call to action for every day of the week, perhaps change them up every month, and you know, don't keep that call to action, the same. certainly be creative with it. Perhaps one day you might want to direct people over to your Instagram account and other day, you might want to send them to your website or your landing page. And you know, there's lots of different things that you can think of to use as a call to action in that space. So make good use of it, but make it short, pithy, make it snappy. So that's day 14. That's all about intros and outros during our Flash Briefing February. Peter, is there anything else that you've got to add about intros and outros,

I think also another thing that you may and other call to call to action and we could probably spend a short minute or so just talking about reviews that are asking for us. Really important to you don't actually beg for reviews. But you do once people have left your review. It's quite nice. It's quite polite to thank them for doing that. Maybe read out what it is that they've said about you if you could be a bit flattering, someone so you don't mind doing that. But also press mentioned the person that left that people like to hear their name like to have confirmation that the review has been left that the review has been noted as well. Obviously reading out a review is going to add time to your Flash briefing. Probably best at the end then so people can skip through it if they want to get to another Flash briefing. Be careful when you're asking for reviews. You don't game the system because it's a real temptation to Start leaving reviews yourself for your own Flash briefing or to ask friends and family to leave reviews for you. These are people who've never actually experienced the Flash briefing directly. Now, as soon as you perhaps know a bit more about this than I do, but I think that if you've got people associated with the same Amazon account, ie, the same home address, it's going to be really difficult for them to leave a review for, for the same thing, because obviously, that is kind of gamification gaming the system. And also you've got to be careful about how recently you bought something from Amazon because if you've got an Amazon account, but didn't buy anything for the past three years, it's probably just not going to recognise that you exist much anymore.

That's right. It's, it's, it is a bit of a system. The whole kind of leaving with us is quite a hot potato in the Flash briefing. So I think you'll agree, Peter, and but you know, certainly they are quite tight on the fact that like my husband couldn't leave a review for My Flash briefing because we are within the same account, we've got a shared amazon prime account as well. So you know, they, they do kind of spot that in there. The other thing is, I think I think I'm right in saying that part of the regulations when you sign up and agree to the terms and conditions when you're creating your Flash briefing is that you don't actually ask directly for reviews. So you kind of have to be, again, a little bit creative. You can't be hammering, hammering it over over the head, you know, hammering your listeners over the head with it every single day. And it might be that you want to direct them to the skill store. And you know, you have to be a little bit clever with the way that you're asking for it because, you know, they will pick up on these things and and obviously, you know, your certification and authentication by Amazon is the reason that you're they're doing the Flash briefing, so you don't want them coming down on you and say, No, you can't do it anymore because you've you've broken the rules. So do check that out in the terms and conditions when you're signing up to put your Flash briefing together.