What’s coming next in content marketing? Voice-activated search! Semantic search is the future for search engines, and people search for topics using questions. In this presentation, you’ll learn voice basics and the specific things you need to do to get your content ready to drive more patients to your website and your services using voice-activated search.

1. Build your “Skills”:
Getting your Content
Ready for Voice and Chatbots
Ahava Leibtag, President
Aha Media Group
2018 #MCSMN Annual Conference
November 15, 2018

2. @ahavaL | #MCSMN

3. Issues
1. Intent: What is the piece of information the person really
wants to know?
2. Context: What are they doing?
3. Assumptions: What does the VAD think we know?
4. Prosody: How many different pronunciations, rhythms and
tonality does the VAD need to anticipate?
5. Visual: There’s a complete lack of GUI

4. The Why & When of Voice
• Accuracy: Google’s voice recognition has reached 95%
accuracy, the same as a human listener.
• Frequency: More than 40% of adults use voice search at least
once per day.
• Some bad news: According to Voice Labs: Once a user enables
a voice app, there’s only a 3% change that they’ll be an active
user by the second week
http://www.ncvs.org/ncvs/tutorials/voiceprod/tutorial/quality.html
https://www.kleinerperkins.com/perspectives/internet-trends-report-2017
https://edit.co.uk/blog/locationworld-2016/
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5. TSRL: Typing, Speaking, Reading, Listening
Type: 40 WPM
Speak: 150 WPM
Read: 250 WPM
Listen: 130 WPM
INPUT
OUTPUT
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6. Capital One Alexa Skill

9. Web MobileSearch Social Voice/
Conversational
AI
20 years, 5 waves of digital disruption
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10. Source: Google
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11. What problems could we solve?
{ APIs }
User Needs Device
Limitations
Available DataContext

12. Voice 101

13. Vocabulary
• Virtual assistant: A cloud-based service that understands
voice commands and completes tasks
• Apps: Third-party applications called “skills” or “actions” that
help virtual assistants

14. The Big 4 Assistants and Their Search Engines
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15. Voice 201

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17. Front end/Back end
Content/SEO considerations
Keyword research
Questions and answers
Featured snippets
Context
Conversational tones
Dialects
Length
Back-end considerations
Structured data
(www.schema.org)
Speed and security
(HTTPHTTPS)
Mobile optimization
Best practices for SEO
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18. SEO

19. Content that ranks highly in
desktop search is also very likely to
be used as a voice search answer.
75% of voice search results are
from the top 3 desktop results.
Source: https://backlinko.com/voice-search-seo-study

20. Entity
Authority:
Authoritative
domains tend
to produce
more voice
search results
Source: https://backlinko.com/voice-search-seo-study
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21. Where do answers come from?
Google: Uses answers from featured snippets at top of search
results
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24. Keyword Research
1. Long tail keywords are very important
2. Look at competitors whose content is inside of featured snippets
3. Think about keywords in terms of:
• When?
• How?
• What?
• Who?

25. Questions and Answers

26. Answer
questions
with your
content
Source: Google
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29. Context

30. A linguistic lesson
All language is contextual.
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32. Conversational

33. Managing Utterances
Skill Building
“Alexa, ask Northwell for the wait time at Huntington Hospital.”

34. Speech pattern recognition
• Regional accents
• Phrasing
• Prosody
• Pronunciation
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35. Length

36. The average
voice
search
result is
written at a
9th grade
level
Source: https://backlinko.com/voice-search-seo-study
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37. Voice search
prefers
concise
answers, the
average
response is 29
words long
Source: https://backlinko.com/voice-search-seo-study
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38. Your content considerations
• SEO: You must focus on structured content that communicates
meta data to the search engines
• Write the way people talk: Think conversationally but still on-point
for your brand (for your answers, not their questions)
• Formulation: Context needs to be paramount
• Length: It has to be short and quick, or it won’t work in a voice
world
• Elocution: Need to think about how people actually speak
• Information satisfaction: Did the user get the information they
wanted?
Source: https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-prepare-your-website-for-
voice-search-2e35f0c3d290
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39. Voice 301

40. Schema and Markup

41. Schema
helps search
engines
know when
to serve
your
answers
Source: https://backlinko.com/voice-search-seo-study
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42. Why structured data?
1. Hello. It’s the future.
2. Communicate key information with search engines
3. Boost content visibility
4. Reach target audiences
5. Use can also now use the markup “speakable”
Source: Search Engine Land, Why does structured data matter for SEO? 10/19/18
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43. Follow accessibility guidelines

44. Final checklist for voice
Content/SEO considerations
Questions and answers
Featured snippet
Write conversationally
Consider the way people
speak regionally
Keep it short
Think context
Back-end technical
considerations
Structured data
(www.schema.org)
Speed and security
(HTTPHTTPS)
Mobile optimization
Follow best practices for
SEO
@ahavaL | #MCSMN

45. Chatbots

46. Chatbot Flows
• The Golden Path (The Happy Path): the designed intent or the
main purposes of your product
• Error Paths: Can the bot recover when it doesn’t understand or
receive input?
• Escalate to Customer support: Should a human agent take
over?
• Linking to Accounts and Other Platforms: How do you need to
integrate with other services? Examples include purchase, add
to shopping list, message someone, call someone
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47. @ahavaL | #MCSMN
What do I
want?
Error Paths
Other
services
Human?

48. Other Chatbot Considerations
• Use chunking to aid comprehension
• Use shorter responses
• You don’t want to ask a question where someone can say no
• Quick replies: buttons at the end that anticipate what the
user may want
• Take advantage of web links
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49. Business considerations
1. Is our audience typically made up of early adopters?
2. Do we make our content experience valuable and
contextually relevant to users?
3. Do we know what to expect from our efforts and how will
we evaluate those successes?
Source: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/10/voice-activated-technology/

50. EXAMPLES

51. Health Guidance by VOICE
Video Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9xcxakwgahxmvv/Alexa_MC_FirstAid_Burn.mp4?dl=0@ahavaL | #MCSMN

52. Health Guidance by CHAT BOT
MEET MOLLY…
Molly is a nurse avatar developed
by Sensely ― an empathy-first
patient engagement platform.
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53. More About Molly
Molly leverages Mayo Clinic
content to assess patients and then
direct them to the most
appropriate level of care such as:
– Self care
– Clinical advice
– Scheduling an appointment
– Nurse line (telephonic)
– ER direction
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57. www.ahamediagroup.com
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58. Thank you
Ahava Leibtag
Founder & President
ahava@ahamediagroup.com
Alexa, are there
any questions for me?