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Hello, hello, welcome to day two of Flash Briefing February. My name is Peter Stewart and together with Susan Cooper, what we're doing over the course of the month of February, is giving you a day by day step by step guide to the skill set the mindset and the marketing to build a better briefing. So today, we're going to be talking with you about what Flash Briefings are and why you may want to have one for your business, your brand, your company, your hobby, your society, your group, your charity, or nonprofit, or even just feel yourself gosh, there's a whole load of reasons that you may want to Flash Briefing. So Sue's let's, let's start off with you with one of those. Why should people want a Flash Briefing?

Wow. Now as you've just said these are really really so versatile and can be used for so many different things. So Flash Briefing is essentially a really audio file that plays out on an Alexa smart speaker is very specific to the Amazon Alexa devices. And there are ways you can hear them by the Google Home and the Google Assistant, which I'm sure we'll talk about later on in the month. But they asked a specific skill that is available to the Amazon Alexa devices. Now, it's a bit like a short podcast, basically. And we kind of believe that the sweet spot for creating these things is kind of somewhere between three and four minutes and four minutes is probably way too long. We're talking in a flash information you can get to people in a really, really quick, flashy, smart, zipped up audio file that they then add to their playlist basically, and listen to and it's something that people listen to every single day, isn't it, Peter?

Absolutely. That really is the important thing because if people are going to be subscribing to your Flash Briefing, they're going to be hearing the rundown of your Flash Briefing and other people's Flash Briefings every single day. And the last thing you want is for them to go. I've heard this one already skip. And to do that every single day, they're just going to get fed up with hearing the same thing and having to say the same thing to go to the next item every single day. And you know what, I've done it before. And I'm sure as soon as as as well, after a while, after three or four days of this, you think, oh, blow this regain my soldiers, what I'm actually going to do is deleted because I would prefer not to hear an updated episode once a week, then to have to say, skip six times a week, you know, it's not worth the bother. It's not worth the ROI. So you've really got to be there seven days a week, I'm okay. I may give you five days a week because the weekends could be a little bit different. But even I think that's a bit of a cop out. But we'll come to content and the duration and how often you should be uploading a little bit later on our 28 day course. But why it? Might you want a Flash Briefing? I think a lot of it Susie's down to visibility, because it's a way to kind of interact with your audience, isn't it? If you're a brand or a business, to be able to offer them some content, where they are already living and working and occupying to have some content of yours that's kind of drip fed into their ear, day by day, these are two good opportunities.

Absolutely. I mean, and these are people that have opted in to hearing from you, you know, you do have to physically go and enable these things. And whether that be by voice or via the Alexa app on your phone, so people are choosing to hear from you every single day, which is just a marketer's dream, really, that you can get your message out there and listen to in such a kind of consistent way. And of course, in terms of visibility, you're also in the Amazon search engine. You know, we're talking about the massive Amazon kind of ecosystem once you create a flashpoint thing, if someone is searching for something on the topic that you have last chance that your Flash Briefing might appear in their search results. So, you know, you're actually putting yourself out there in front of a massive, massive audience. And actually, there are very few Flash Briefing creators and you know, in context at the moment to the amount of speakers that are out there. So it is a really good time to be picking up on that and to give yourself that visibility, and to be seen in a place where perhaps your competitor isn't being seen.

And it doesn't take much time to do it doesn't take much take to do it doesn't take much money to do takes a little bit of foresight, a little bit of planning. Yeah, you've got it. But then anything that's worthwhile is going to take a little bit of time. And after all, that's what we're here for to lead you through the month of February with our 20 a guide of Flash Briefing February. Of what to do and how to do it and all of these episodes are really short, the maximum time for a Flash Briefing. Is 10 minutes. So none of these daily episodes will be longer than 10 minutes either. And of course, another great thing about Flash Briefings is that if you're doing it for, well, maybe you're cycling group, there's a cycling group in the UK that does a Flash Briefing about the care and the maintenance of people's bicycles and also routes that people can go on to their cycling club. And then, once a week on a Friday, what they do is they upload a Flash Briefing, which tells people where the cycling club is going to be meeting on the Saturday morning, where what time or the terrain is likely to be where the weather is likely to be, how far the distance is going to be, where the pub lunch stop is going to be all of these little bits of information. And you know what is delivered to them via smart speaker rather than a takes rather than a WhatsApp message rather than an email, which is maybe not going to be opened at all because frankly, we all get far too many emails very often. Don't So this is another way to distribute and disseminate and pass on the information. And your information could be sitting alongside some really, really big brands. They could be sitting alongside a brand such as well, the BBC does Flash Briefings, for example, PBS does Flash Briefings, for example. Also, a lot of the National Quality newspapers in the UK will do Flash Briefings as well. Some of the other broadcasters are doing Flash Briefings. So imagine if people are listening to your content alongside maybe their favourite sports team like an arsenal or a Manchester United or Mr. Manchester City or something like that, next to a newspaper doing some latest stocks and shares information. And nestled in between rather snuggly is your information. So the quality of everyone else's content is kind of rubbing off on you. So it kind of gives you an extra perceived value which is really, really Important. And also Sue's you know, you kind of touched on it a few moments ago, there's a fast there's a first mover advantage isn't there for getting in fast and actually making a name for yourself. Both Susan, I Incidentally, have been doing Flash Briefings for well over a year. So we were already kind of solidifying our place in the Flash Briefing listings.

That's right, you know, I think it is showing that you're future thinking and forward thinking and using this new technology. And it's also quite exciting and fun to do. And to kind of have to sit there and think about how you could pull apart an idea and and chunk it into these kind of very short little slices and pieces of information for people. And on the other side of it, it's quite interesting to be able to really personalise the information that you're getting from your smart speaker. So as a Flash Briefing listener, you know, thinking about the experience from the other side, the information that you're getting is Exactly what you're interested in. And as you say, you might be hearing news from your favourite news provider, then something from your football team and then something from, you know, a creator like us, he's kind of giving you that extra piece of information on something that you might not get somewhere else without kind of googling or having to kind of put in an awful lot of effort. And this is all done by voice through your smart speaker, probably while you're doing 300 other things in the kitchen or sorting out things in the living room, and you know, wherever your device might be. So it's a super way of kind of really putting your business and brand out there and being really first on top of what is still a really new technology. Lots of people have got the speakers. Now the creators are coming through and really building and making useful stuff for them. So now is the time if you're thinking of getting in on this new tech to really get your thinking cap on and work out how your brand and business can benefit from it.

We are going to help you with that. Susan I are broadcasting professionals here in the United Kingdom have been for for several years. I'm a little bit older than Suze, that does have to be said, but between us we've got a whole wealth of experience that we're going to be passing on to you through the month of February and tomorrow we're going to be back as a day three of Flash Briefing February continues. And we're going to be explaining a little bit just to put everything into context how Flash Briefings actually work and told you a little bit today about what they are but how they work not going to get too techie was just so you can see kind of what you need to do to make them available for other people to listen to. That's as Flash Briefing February continues tomorrow, right here. Bye bye for now.

We'll see you then.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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