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 “The Author’s Guide to Building an Online Platform”
and “From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur.” She is also founder and CEO
of
AuthorityPublishing.com, which provides custom book publishing
and author marketing services for business, self-help and other
non-fiction books. A frequent speaker at business events and on the
radio, she has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, BusinessWeek,
Inc.com and many other media outlets. For hundreds of resources for
entrepreneurs, authors and speakers visit
http://BusinessInfoGuide.com. For author and speaker details,
visit
http://StephanieChandler.com.
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