Web Marketing: Keep Your Ear to the Ground with Google Alerts

August 26, 2008

Want an easy, quick way to understand your business reputation and your market?  Learn what others are saying about you and your niche by creating a few Google Alerts.

How Do You Use Google Alerts? Just register your email at this link, choose some keywords and say how frequently you want email notifications of results. It’s that easy. The interface is a single page. And, it’s free.

What Words Should You Choose?

Create one for your company name and one with your business phone number. You will get an email whenever the Google search engine picks up a mention of either. Your email, which will look like mine pictured above, has the link and brief copy. Just click and see who is linking to, or talking about, your business.

After you’re comfortable, identify two or three key phrases related to your business. Put each phrase in quotes and create more alerts. These will give you emails with links to Web sites and blogs which use those phrases. You’ll discover competitors and resources in this process. Experiment with the wording to get only info you want.

Why Alerts? Using Google Alerts improves your awareness of your online reputation and feeds you news and resources on your niche.

Why not try it for a month and then post a comment here to tell me what you learned?

Peg Corwin, SCORE Chicago
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Filed under: Growing, Marketing, Technology, Women in Business, Young Entrepreneurs

Tags: brand managment, Google Alerts, online marketing, public relations