3 Ways to use Google Alerts for your Business
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There is no reason to hide that I’m a big fan of Google products. At the end of last year I switched my e-mail from Outlook to Gmail and I’m loving it. In this post I want to share with you how I use another tool offered by Google: Google Alerts.
What is Google Alerts ?
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries. You can enter up to 1000 alerts !
How do I set it up ?
It’s very easy. You go to http://www.google.com/alerts and start entering your search queries. You can enter just single keywords, or whole sentences. Here are some tips for your queries:
- Use quotes around a group of words or sentences if you are looking for them together. For exampe: ”Mike Smith”
- Put quotes around a single word to match that word precisely as you typed it, excluding synonyms and spelling variations. For example: Michael “Jacson” (to stop Google including results for Michael Jackson)
- Use a minus sign (-) in front of words that you want to exclude. For example: apple -fruit
Once you have entered your queries you will have to decide whether you want to have them delivered to your e-mail or to an RSS feed. If you are using an RSS feed congregation tool such as Google Reader, I highly recommend having your alerts delivered there. This way you won’t clutter your inbox. If you are new to RSS feed content curation with Google Reader, you might want to read this post to find out more.
Sounds interesting, but how can I use this for my business ?
Here are 3 Ways to Use Google Alerts for your business:
Brand monitoring
By adding some new alerts on Google with your brand & your own name you can easily monitor your brand on the net. Every time your brand is mentioned on the web, in a blog post, article, press release etc. you will immediately be informed through Google Alerts.
Blog commenting
You might have heard that the more in-bound links your website has, the more credit it will get from the Google search engines. So it is a good habit to comment on other people’s blog posts. “But I don’t have time researching all these blog posts in my field of expertise that come out every week” you are saying. I totally agree, and that’s where Google Alerts come in. Once you set up the keywords that you want to be “alerted” about, Google will automatically inform you about new content that is published on the internet. You will learn about new blogs that are of interest for your industry and I would encourage you to leave your comments at the bottom of the posts.
Content curation
Google Alerts can also help you discover new blogs, not only to comment on, but also to use in your content curation strategy. Once you have found some blogs that are of interest to you and your audience, you can subscribe to their RSS feed and never miss a new blog post from that blog again. Here is that link again for more info about content curation.
Is this something that you might implement ? Which other Google tools would you recommend to small business owners ? Comment below !
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