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Home » The Famous Blog » Google Alerts For Social Media & Community Development

Google Alerts For Social Media & Community Development

July 30, 2011 - Last Modified: August 19, 2011 by Lavall Chichester 2,029

Google Alerts For Social Media

This post is for all you Social Media Managers, Bloggers, Community Developers and Community Managers who want to be on the pulse of the conversation happening around your blog, brand, competition or industry.

I know what you are thinking, he must be talking about Radian 6 but alas my friends I am not. PHILO is a start up so we were on a boot strap budget and were not willing to shell out $600 a month for Radian 6 so I had to concoct a magical alternative for conversation monitoring. What kind of sorcery is this I speak of you ask, it is called Google Alerts and its free. Google Alerts has a special place in my heart because it made my community development work at PHILO 100% more effective. I could be anywhere PHILO or our competitors (GetGlue, Miso, Tuner Fish, Into Now etc) were mentioned. Better than that I could be anywhere my industry “Social TV” was mentioned. That means minutes after you kick back and hit publish on that well crafted blog post of yours, I was making love to your comment box like this.

How Google Alerts Can Help You

Before we get it on with Google Alerts here are the reasons you should add Google Alerts to your social media tool box.

Join The Conversation

Social Media is about joining the conversation around your brand. Being able to find and join in the conversation where people are talking about your company, your industry and your competition is key to your success. Leave a great comment and people will follow you back to your site. Most of the time I found that none of my competitors even new these posts were going up, so I was able to mingle with the readers of various blogs and introduce them to PHILO regardless if the blog post was raving about how great my competition was and did not mention us. I was there so we were represented.

Reputation Management

There are two sides to every story. When a blogger is giving it to your brand because they felt your company wronged them in some way, their audience only hears their side of the story. If you join that conversation to note your side if you are right, or grovel for forgiveness if you are wrong, it will show that someone from your company actually cares. Sometimes admitting you are wrong is the best way to regain a lost customer’s respect. However, finding out they have a beef with you after it has spread through various social media channels because you failed to find the customer’s rant first, can tarnish your reputation and be very embarrassing.

Influential Blogger Out Reach

As you visit blogs and leave comments in response to bloggers in your industry, you will start to develop a relationship with them. This makes it easier for you when you need to reach out to influential bloggers for a campaign. They will be willing to work with you more because you are not a stranger, you are Mr.Chichester just another friendly member of their community.

How To Set Up A Google Alert

Let the magic begin! Here is how you set up a Google Alert.

Go to Google.com/alerts

 

Type in the search terms you want to trigger the alert in the box provided.

create google alerts

 

I keep “Type” as everything, I change “How Often” to as it happens and “Volume” to all results  because I want to determine what I think is worth checking out. Then enter your email address and hit create alert. You can play around with these settings and see what you like best. If you don’t have a Gmail account they will send you a verification email so check your mail and make sure you follow the instructions to verify your setup.

google alerts keywords

If you have created more than one alert it will look like this.

google alerts done

When a blog is posted with your keywords in them they will be sent to your email like in the picture below.

google alerts email blog keywords

Then the fun part. You can visit the blog post and well I already told you what I do to comment boxes. 😉

google alerts comment

I hope you find this Google alerts post useful, and would like to hear some other Google alerts’ tips.

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Filed Under: Google, Social Media

About Lavall Chichester

Follow @mrchichester

Mr.Chichester (Lavall Chichester) is the Lead SEO at Profero. Prior to this he was the Social Media Director at PHILO. He won the Shorty Award for Sustainability because of his work at spreadlove.org. He spreads love daily to help make this world a better place.

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{ 13 Responses }

  1. courtney stodden says:
    I started to sign up, but the signup page doesn’t ask you for any keywords nor does it explain how that part works. This helped though so thanks for the help again.
  2. Kristin says:
    Thanks for this post, I did not know about google alerts...(did I just admit that??). :-)
  3. Richard says:
    Hi, I Want To know if Someone Has been misusing my name for bullying and other purposes online.... How Can I Know and, how much does it cost if anything is needed? Thank You, Sincerely.
  4. Wasim Ismail says:
    Google has many products, which we can all use to make things simpler, efficient, and also save us more time. Google Alerts one of the many, and what a great tool, helps quickly keep our pulse on whets happening on the internet,
  5. Bruce Stevens says:
    I keep reading people bashing Google for the likes of Panda updates, slow PR changes, banned Adsense accounts etc, yet the do offer an awful lot of excellent services, and all for free. A prime example is Google Alerts.
    • Lavall Chichester says:
      Bruce, And Google Docs. Google Docs is free and so useful for team collaboration. Of course it has its cons but it has saved me on several occasions when tight presentation deadlines had to be met. Spread Love, Mr.Chichester
  6. Blazing Minds says:
    I've been using Google Alerts for quite a while and I've found some great topic to blog about and blogs and social networks to read and comment on. It's certainly an under used system that not a lot of people know about ;)
    • Lavall Chichester says:
      You are so right. I did not even think about using it as a source for blog topics. That is the best part about being a blogger, inspiration and new ideas come from everywhere. Thanks for that. Spread Love, Mr.Chichester
  7. doug_eike says:
    This article is interesting, but I don't see anything about how Google Alerts finds the keywords that trigger the notifications. A few weeks ago, I started to sign up, but the signup page doesn't ask you for any keywords nor does it explain how that part works. Can you clarify this, please? Thanks for the tip!
    • Lavall Chichester says:
      Doug, Google Alerts is of course connected to the Google search engine. So when the search spiders find web content with your keywords in it, it triggers your alert and they send the website that trigger the alert to you email. When you get to the Google Alerts some page it should look like what is above. Do you not see the search term box on the home page? Thanks for reading the article. Spread Love, Mr.Chichester
    • Lavall Chichester says:
      Hey Doug, When you get to the set up page for Google Alerts what do you see? Do you have a gmail account? Can you let me know exactly what you see so I can help you through it. Thanks.
  8. Dave Lucas says:
    Excellent article! I really think people who are't using Google alerts are missing out on a nawful lot of free and helpful information! How do you think I always know what's going on as fast as I do? Yup! Google Alerts!
    • Lavall Chichester says:
      Dave, I now use Tweet Alerts and Social Mention as well. Put that together with Google Alerts and you've got a very powerful system for monitoring what is going on in your industry, getting feedback regarding your brand and finding out what is going on with your competition. Glad you liked the article. Spread Love, Mr.Chichester

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