TheSocialWhat.com

Practical, tactical advice for your social business

  • Sales
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • HR
  • Operations
  • IT
You are here: Home / Management / 5 Google Alerts Every Business Leader Needs

5 Google Alerts Every Business Leader Needs

October 24, 2012 by Joel Marans

5 Google Alerts Every Business Leader Needs

Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google search results for terms you specify. They are one of the best and cheapest (read: free) ways to keep up-to-date on news and topics you (and your customers) care about. For executives, managers and smart sales people, they’re an indispensable way to stay informed – and get the leg up on the competition.

While some folks have started to leverage social media to add value to customer conversations, the beauty of Google Alerts is that the tool is email-based – which means scanning the content is quick and familiar for everyone.

Creating Google Alerts is super easy. Visit www.google.com/alerts and fill out the short form. Google offers you a number of different content source and delivery options, which let you tune your various alerts based on your preferences. Their help section provides a clear breakdown of what all the options mean. And because this is a Google tool, many popular Google search tips & tricks work here too.

Here are five Google Alerts that I consistently recommend to business leaders. I’ve listed them in rank order, so you can prioritize your efforts accordingly. If you use other alerts, tips or tricks, please share them in the comments below. I’ll add them to this list.

1. Your own name

If you only create one Google Alert, this is it.This is a very easy way to manage your reputation online by monitoring what people are saying about you, and where your name is being used online. For folks who spend time in the public eye (like a CEO or VP) this can be very useful.

Tip: If you have a common name, use negative terms to remove useless results. For example, if you have the name Michael Bolton, add the negative terms -musician, -singer, -songs and -music to your search (which would now look like this: “michael bolton” -songs -music -musician -singer). Add as many negative terms as you can to get your results as focused as possible.

2. Customers and prospects

Second to your monitoring your own personal brand is monitoring your customers – both existing and those in a prospecting pipeline. Creating Google Alerts for these companies ensures that you know right away when something newsworthy is happening with those organizations.

Tip: To take this alert to the next level, create additional Google Alerts for the names of key contacts at these customer accounts. This is particularly useful if you’re dealing directly with senior executives who are prolific, and appear often in trade publications and other media sites.

3. Your own company

For all employees (especially for folks in remote branches) it can be tough keeping up with any news coming out of HQ. New product releases, key hires, coverage in the media, new marketing campaigns – the list keeps going. A Google Alert for your organization’s name is an easy way to stay up to speed on the noise your company is making in the marketplace.

Tip: In addition to company mentions, Create Google Alerts for key brands and products your company offers. Especially those you manage, or are involved with.

4. The competition

The best defence is a good offence. Keep tabs on the competition with this Google Alert. Things you can expect to find with a well-crafted Google alert: new marketing content (like videos), updates to their website and press releases announcing what they feel is newsworthy.

Tip: For people who cover a specific territory, add the name of your geographic area to your search query. For double bonus points – add the name of your adversarial rep so you can really keep an eye on what they’re doing.

5. Areas of professional interest

Google alerts are a great way to discover remarkable news, insights and resources in a particular industry or professional interest. Use the content you find to create relevant conversations within your organization and with customers. Search terms to consider: key/hot topics in your industry

Tip: Share the information you find in a timely fashion through your social profiles. Twitter and Linkedin are ideal. This will also help people see you as a reliable source of relevant information.

A note about social: 

At this point, realtime content from Twitter and other social networks isn’t included in Google alerts. For this kind of social media monitoring and management, a dashboard tool like Hootsuite is a good option.

Update: There’s a new service called Mention that I’ve been using. It positions itself as an alternative to Google Alerts. I’ve been impressed – check it out.

Related posts you may like:

Filed Under: Management Tagged With: Alert, brand management, competitive intelligence, Google, Google Alerts, google alerts for business, Google Search Results, Google Tool, managing a personal brand, monitoring, news, reputation management

Avatar

About Joel Marans

Joel loves making people and organizations look, sound and feel great through creative uses of technology. When he's not fulfilling duties as a proud papa & husband, he leads communications and events at Top Hat, the leading cloud-based teaching platform for higher education.

Search

Joel Marans
 
TheSocialWhat.com provides practical, tactical advice to organizations looking to get the most out of social media.

It's written and curated by Joel Marans. He's a creative technologist, a digital marketer and visual raconteur. He's also a husband, a daddy, and a geek. More about Joel.
 
About.MeLinkedinTwitterGoogle+

Tweet Tweet

Tweets by @schnitzelboy

Recent Posts

  • For business leaders, using social media part-time is a full-time job
  • Facebook’s big privacy change: What you need to know (and do) right now
  • Another story of baggage handlers caught on camera. Except this one’s different.
  • 5 Ways to Build A Network of Trust Through Social Media
  • The Problem With LinkedIn Endorsements – And 6 Quick Fixes
  • 5 Ways For IT To Put Social Media To Work (At Work)
  • 4 ways to avoid a Twitter PR disaster
  • Why I Won’t Connect With You On LinkedIn

Popular Tags

B2B best practices CEO collaboration content marketing ebook endorsements Executives facebook Google Google Search Results governance guidelines guides linkedin managing a personal brand measurement onboarding personal brand popluence presentation presentations Professional Social Protecting Employees Recommendations relating research sales senior leaders Social social business social crm social media social media strategy Social Media Tools social networking Social Savvy solution selling Tips training triage Twitter Using Social Media yammer yammer help

Copyright © 2021 · Metro Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in