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Who’s using voice assistants and why? Infographic and resources for marketers

Who’s using voice assistants and why? Infographic and resources for marketers

Once there was a keyboard, then a touchscreen. Today there is a voice. A magnetic, robotic voice is becoming the helpful right-hand of Millennials, the caring assistant of busy Gen Xers and the quick memo reminder for Baby Boomers.

According to TechCrunch, 41.7 million people are using Siri, 23.2 million people are using S Voice, 19.8 million people are using Google Text-to-Speech, and while Microsoft Cortana is used by around 700k people, home assistants have stepped triumphally into the market reaching an interesting share — Google Home is already used by 4.7 million people and Amazon Alexa by 2.6 million.

How are people using voice assistants?

Numbers are speaking loud and clear. Since voice search is no more a buzzword, but a growing trend, marketers should better know:

  • what are all these people searching and doing with virtual assistants?
  • how often and for which purposes do they use them?
  • which technologies and devices do they prefer?

There is still a bigger question marketers should be wondering about. The Question. I will get back on this at the end of the article. Now, follow me. ?

In this infographic, Quill.com collected several data about how people use voice assistants. In a glance, you will see which commands are the most used, how different generations are performing different tasks through these technologies, how to use virtual assistants to be more productive, and which are the strengths, weaknesses, and differences between the most widespread solutions.

Not surprisingly, online search is the second kind of command performed by users. Have a look below.

Content marketing in the age of voice assistants

If content marketing is still a thing, it’s time to start thinking about screen-less interactions and to start redesigning content for users who don’t actually read content — but listen to it. And it makes a lot of difference.

Listening and reading are pretty much similar cognitive processes. But they are not the same thing. Most of the times conditions and degrees of attention are different.

Moreover, you have to optimize your content and think its format in order to be picked by machines as a result of a voice search — and you have to think about this technical filter. It’s not like you are going to talk your readers yourself. Nope. A robotic voice will pick your pages and read them, only if the algorithms behind the voice assistant value your content suitable enough for their user.

So, the big question is: how to write good content for voice search?

Here at WordLift, we have studied, written and experimented a lot about this subject. You may find useful the selection of articles below. If you need more, don’t miss our free webinar on machine-friendly content we registered with Scott Abel.

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