AiC Episode 68

In this episode, Teri shares the lessons that he has learned from producing a flash briefing for an entire year.

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Flash briefings are a fairly new media based on the fact that very few people have done a flash briefing consistently for a whole year. That makes this episode quite interesting because Teri will talk about some of the challenges and definite successes that he has seen as a result of doing a flash briefing for a year. He will be very transparent about where he is at with his Voice in Canada flash briefing and what the flash briefing’s statistics are like so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not you would want to start a flash briefing.

Starting the Voice in Canada flash briefing

  • When Teri started the flash briefing, he was looking for a way to engage with the audience of Alexa in Canada on a regular basis. He realized that it was a great way for someone to create a relationship with their audience.
  • He was hoping the flash briefing would give his audience a lot of value, enable them to continue participating in the community, strengthen the community, and also teach them how to use Alexa to the greatest degree. So far this has been achieved over the past year.

Cons of Producing a Flash Briefing

  • Teri advises people not to start a flash briefing unless they can be really committed to it because one cannot be there one day providing their audience with value and then all of a sudden disappear.
  • It’s a lot of work producing a high-quality flash briefing on a regular basis.
  • Teri tries to create the flash briefings in batches when possible unless there is some unexpected news or event in the world of Amazon or Alexa.

Pros of Producing a Flash Briefing

  • In the process of creating a flash briefing every single day, Teri has become an expert on the Amazon ecosystem and Alexa.
  • He gets to help his listeners and the Alexa in Canada community. He enjoys answering questions that show up in the Facebook group and sometimes takes questions that are emailed to him through the contact form on his website.
  • Because of doing the flash briefing, some people now refer to him as a thought leader on flash briefings, which has opened up opportunities for him. He had an opportunity to teach at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, he has created a flash briefing course and has been asked to speak at various conferences about how to create flash briefings.

Lessons Learned from 1 Year of Flash Briefings

The Numbers

  • Teri started the Voice in Canada flash briefing back in February of 2018.
  • He’s been keeping track of his own statistics.
  • In February 2018, he had 315 unique Amazon listeners (mostly based in Canada) The flash briefing is now in all five English speaking regions including Canada, the US, India, Australia, and the UK. Canada is the flash briefing’s biggest market.
  • In January 2019, he had 1,539 unique listeners.
  • He had 1,350 unique plays in February of 2018 and by January 2019; he had over 13,000 individual plays or downloads of the flash briefing episodes in one month.
  • The Voice in Canada Flash briefing skill was activated about 400 times in February 2018 and by the end of that year was being activated close to 1,000 times every month.
  • When those numbers are added up to February 2019, the number of downloads/listens has been over 100,000 listens, and that is across Canada, the US, India, Australia, and the UK. This demonstrates the great opportunities in creating a flash briefing.
  • About 85% to 90% of the listens come from Amazon Alexa devices, but there are also people who listen to it on web browser (Teri creates an audio of every flash briefing on his website), as an Apple podcast (he feeds the flash briefing as a podcast), and on an Apple watch.
  • The Voice in Canada flash briefing is listened to mostly in the morning when people are getting ready, between 7 AM and 9 AM. The flash briefing gets about 8,000 listens at around 7 AM, 8,000 listens at around 8 AM and about 1,700 at around 6 PM.
  • The top countries where the Voice in Canada flash briefing is listened to are Canada, the US, Ireland, the UK, Brazil, India, Thailand, Barbados, Australia, Spain, and others. The flash briefing has now been listened to in 54 different countries.
  • For anyone who has a hobby or a business, there is an audience out there for them and an opportunity for them to become a thought leader in the area they want to be a thought leader in because there are very few flash briefings out there.

Current Challenge and its Solution

  • One of the ways that flash briefings and skills, in general, are found in the Amazon ecosystem is by luck, because when a person searches for a skill, it’s hard to find the good ones.
  • Teri created the first and only flash briefing network; Briefcast.FM, which presents the best flash briefings on Amazon Alexa.
  • Teri is welcoming people with great quality flash briefings to join the network which is growing slowly but surely because he is more focused on ensuring only the best quality flash briefings appear on the network.

Courses

  • Teri created a flash briefing course known as the Flash Briefing Formula where he teaches people how to create a flash briefing, from concept all the way to how to market it, and everything in between including all the technical stuff. The course is now entirely free.
  • One doesn’t need to be a technical person to create a flash briefing.

Reviews

  • The Voice in Canada flash briefing has been the number one flash briefing in Canada since Teri launched it. This has been due to great listener reviews.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

Other Useful Resources:

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