Did you ever want a secretary that could answer questions all day? While Amazon’s Echo product can’t fetch coffee, it can perform all sorts of digital tasks that come up in daily life at work and at home. And since the holidays are fast approaching, you might want to think about giving one as a gift to friends, family, or colleagues.
The Echo Dot looks like a small speaker that sits on your desk or table, or in your car. It’s enabled with voice recognition and can be integrated with hundreds of apps. It can, for instance, answer questions, spend money, play games, control components of your house, play music, and act as an alarm clock. And that’s just for starters.
When you ask it questions or requests, its voice, named Alexa, then listens to your voice and responds. A few of the questions that Alexa is capable of answering correctly include:
- “Alexa, how old is Matt Damon?”
- “…Where is the closest sushi restaurant?”
- “…Could you order a stapler from Amazon?”
- “…Open Amex.”
- “…Set a timer for 20 minutes.”
- “…Order a pizza.”
- “…Play music by Lorde.”
- “…What’s on my calendar?”
With additional integrations, Echo can also even control room temperature and turn on lights. Echo’s range is one room in the house; the biggest Echo fans have more than one in their house and one for the car.
Echo isn’t just for the home, however; there are also many, many ways you can use it to help you with your small business. An especially relevant way it can benefit is through giving you insight in how your business ranks in voice search results. You can do this by asking it to suggest a local business in the industry you’re in. For example, if you run a hair salon, ask Echo to find a hair salon. Does it mention yours or your competitor? This is important because with more and more people using devices like Echo, it pays to know if you will show up in voice search results in addition to the typical places like Google.
In short, Echo can save you time, amuse your employees, and help you gain marketing insights into your business.