10
Ways to Use Google Alerts for Business and Social Media:
(Plus Tips to Improve Search Results)
By
Stephanie Chandler
One of
the most useful services released by Google in recent
years is its powerful Google Alerts (http://Google.com/alerts).
This free tool allows you to receive e-mail
notifications when keywords and phrases that you specify
appear on websites, blogs, online news channels and
more.
Here
are 10 ways to leverage Google Alerts for your business:
1.
Business Name
– Keep track of websites that mention your company. This
is an opportunity to send a note of thanks or address an
issue if something derogatory is posted like a complaint
about customer service. Big companies track mentions of
their businesses online and you should too.
2.
Personal Name
– Find out where you’re mentioned online. This is
especially important for prominent figures such as
authors, speakers, celebrities, and individual service
providers.
3.
Website
– Track where your website is mentioned by creating an
alert for your domain. Leave off the leading “www” and
instead just specify your domain and extension such as “authoritypublishing.com.”
4.
Blog
– If you host a blog, follow the website guidelines
above to create an alert for your blog domain. This
should also produce results if your blog link is posted
somewhere with a specific pointer to one of your pages.
5.
Titles
– If you distribute articles for online marketing
purposes, create an alert for each article title so that
you can track where your articles are appearing. Authors
can use this same strategy for tracking book titles.
6.
Industry Research
– To stay on top of industry news, create alerts for
keywords and key phrases for your industry. For example,
I have alerts for “publishing industry” and “business
book.” This makes it easy to stay on top of news,
competition and much more. If you are using social
networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter,
this can help you locate useful content for
micro-blogging or to give you topic ideas to cover in
your blog.
7.
Competitive Research
– If you want to find out who is talking about your
competition or where they are being mentioned, create
alerts for each competitor’s business name and/or
website URL.
8.
Lead Generation
– If breaking news can produce leads for your company,
use Google Alerts for related phrases. For example, if
you own a human resources firm and want to find out what
companies are hiring in Sacramento, you could create
several alerts: “now hiring Sacramento,” “job posting
Sacramento,” and “job listing Sacramento.”
9.
Lead Research
– If there is a company or client that you want to land,
create alerts to stay on top of their most recent online
activity. This can provide valuable insight into what
they company is up to and who is talking about them.
10.
Top Client Research
– Track activity for your top ten or twenty existing
clients. This can give you valuable insight into what
they’re up to, and also provide you with reasons to
contact them. For example, if one of your clients
receives major media coverage, you will learn about it
right away and can send them a note of congratulations.
Useful Google Search Tricks
Exact Keyword Search:
You can specify exact keywords by putting a plus sign
(+) in front of the word. For example, if you search for
the word “publish,” Google search results would include
“publishing” and “publisher.” Adding a plus sign to the
beginning of the word (+publish) will ensure that you
only receive exact matches.
Exact Key Phrase Search:
When you search for a phrase, Google results will
returns anything that includes all of the words in the
phrase, not that exact phrase. But if you enclose your
search in quotes (“how to publish a book”), the results
will only include that exact phrase.
Alternate Keyword:
To return a search with alternate results, use “OR”
between the words (the letters OR must be capitalized).
For example, “author OR writer” will return results with
either keyword. For a more complex search, you can put
part of the phrase in parenthesis: (author OR writer)
“business books”.
Synonyms:
If you want your search results to return related terms,
use a tilde (~) in front of the word. For example, if
you use this feature to search for the word “~author,”
Google returns results that include “book,” “writer,”
and “literature.”
Search a Single Website:
If you want to track new entries on a specific site, you
can use the “site:” operator. For example, if you want
to track mentions of business books on the New York
Times website, your search would look like this:
“business book” site:nytimes.com.
About the Author
Stephanie Chandler is an author of several business and
marketing books including “From Entrepreneur to
Infopreneur: Make Money with Books, eBooks and
Information Products.” She is also founder and CEO of
http://AuthorityPublishing.com, which
provides custom book publishing and author marketing
services for business, self-help and other non-fiction
books. For author and speaker details, visit
http://StephanieChandler.com.
*This
article can be reprinted in full provided the author
resource box is included with the publication.
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