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It seemed that last year was the year of the voice assistant. The marketing was everywhere, the discounting was heavy and early adopters were talking about them at every opportunity.

Like many households, we received an Alexa for Christmas. These are my observations of note from our first few weeks with her.

Losing the phone

Until Alexa arrived in our home, in order to listen to music a phone needed to be present. This is no longer the case. It makes little difference in terms of the process of playing music, but when you don’t need your phone on hand to control the music, you slip into using it less as you sit there. I’ve noticed that I use my phone a little less at home. That’s probably a good thing.

Parental controls

Losing the phone has also meant the children don’t need our phones to play music. Our kids are quite young and we’d like to filter out some of the stronger swearing in some songs. It turns out neither Alexa nor Spotify let you do this.

This raises a question: do we switch to Apple Music, which does have parental filters? At the moment, we’ve decided against the move, instead taking the view that swearing happens everywhere and that it’s our responsibility to monitor our children’s use of Alexa. We might rapidly change our minds though. It’s only been a few weeks. This is not a settled position.

Mood music

How do you choose what music to listen to? I tend to ask for specific albums or artists. Occasionally, I ask for a playlist I know. My son, however, just says “Alexa, play bmx music please.” Music then begins. Is this how people generally choose music? To me, at least, this is a new and interesting option. It goes beyond the compilation to something more random.

Fragmented media

Another thing I’ve noticed is how fragmented media is. The kids want to hear the songs from Horrible Histories as much as they do pop songs. Alexa has real trouble sourcing songs from the former much to the annoyance of the children.

Manners

Lots of parents I’ve spoken to have concerns about children demanding things from Alexa and whether that’s a good thing. More by luck than skill, we’ve got our kids saying “please” to Alexa (a mumbled request by me was not heard by Alexa, the kids are now convinced it’s because I didn’t say please, they believe you have to say please for it to work).

Is there any point in saying please to a machine that will never say no? Is it just nice manners disguising the development of a habit of making random demands and expecting then to be fulfilled immediately? Am I overthinking it all? I don’t know.

Volume

Alexa had a volume range of 1 – 10. We rarely need to go above level three. So, really we have a range from 1 – 3. It’s not a decent level of control. I’m not harking back to the infinite control of analogue dials, but give me more than three choices please.

What the future holds

A lot of uses for Alexa seem pointless (whale facts, fart noises, knock knock jokes). However, there are some that I think have potential.

I’ve discovered that in the US, owners of a WiFi enabled Roomba (a robot vacuum cleaner) can ask Alexa to clean their home and the Roomba duly obliges. This is the type of smart home integration, which goes beyond switching off lights, that is genuinely useful. But it’s mainly useful because a robot vacuum saves a task. Alexa only adds small amount of convenience on top.

Routines, where a series of tasks are bundled into a single command could make a real difference. With the right purchases, and a bit of time setting it all up, it’s possible for Alexa to wake you up with a news bulletin and turn on your coffee machine. The bundling of several small tasks into a single command is useful and materially time saving.

1. How will 280 characters change the narrative arc of a tweet?
2. Why won’t Facebook allow us to write the calls to action on buttons?
3. Ditto Google My Business.
4. Do your brand guidelines take a view on emojis?
5. And stickers?
6. When you say you want your brand to be more human, which particular human do you want it to be like?
7. If you want the call to action to say “buy now”, does the link actually take people to checkout or will it disappoint them by landing them a few clicks away?

LinkedIn has been part of Microsoft for a few weeks now. As you’d expect from a firm with new owners, there’s been a steady stream of news it seeks to turn change into momentum. So what are they building?

A new wardrobe

The most immediate changes are cosmetic. LinkedIn has long had a reputation for being startlingly clunky network. A series of cosmetic changes, which began to rollout before the deal was complete, have updated its appearance and tweaked some of the structure; profile pages are easier to access, as are company pages for page managers. Navigating LinkedIn is still testing at the best of times, however, so expect more changes to come.

I’m not looking for a job

LinkeIn’s last reported revenue ($960million) showed a year-on-year increase of 23%. It’s impressive growth, but almost two-thirds came from its talent solutions offering.

We all have anecdotal evidence that people only really begin engaging with LinkedIn when they’re looking for a job. Be honest, when was the last time you brushed up your profile? LinkedIn needs to breakaway from its reliance on its talent solutions income.

Social CRM

It looks like one part of the solution is CRM. Microsoft has an established CRM tool, Dynamics, but it’s clunky, focused solely on the enterprise (where the money is) and unloved by anyone who uses it. LinkedIn has the potential to become a strong mobile CRM. Last week, through a calendar integration, they enabled mobile app users to see the LinkedIn profiles and updates of people they have meetings with.

This is a really simple but key integration. Better, more current information about the connections you’re actually dealing with, rather than the ability to spam people you’ve never met might be something more people are willing to pay for. And getting people to pay is critical if LinkedIn is address its financial dependency and the reputation limitations of its recruitment solutions. In its last quarterly results, LinkedIn said less than a quarter of its users visit the site at least monthly. It doesn’t, however, break out how many of those regular users pay for premium accounts. It’s likely to be a small fraction.

The calendar integration is a simple first step. Integrating with email services and other social media (where possible) could see LinkedIn become a very powerful, incredibly simple social CRM that sits in your pocket. It could become a hub that helps you manage relationships.

Header image by Nan Palmero

PR as a management discipline

Last week, the second edition of FutureProof was launched at an excellent event hosted by the PRCA. Edited by Sarah Hall, the book contains 39 chapters written by leading communicators. It includes a chapter I wrote on CSR.

The book instantly became an Amazon bestseller within its category. You can download the Kindle version here. You can buy a printed edition here.

If you want to learn more about FuturePRoof, Stephen Waddington has written an excellent post titled ‘A story of two books about public relations – separated ‘by 25 years’. As has Paul Sutton, who describes it as, “call to arms for the PR industry.” Meanwhile you can listen to interviews with some of the authors on the C-Suite Podcast, whose team came down for the launch and spoke to some of the authors.