Sunday, December 28, 2008 at 11:55PM Social Trending Using Google Alerts
This week switches focus from Search Engine Optimization to how businesses should monitor what’s being said about them and what exactly they do. Impression Management is at the core of SocialTrending, and this is an introductory glimpse into Social Media Monitoring.
A free service that tracks words and phrases in online environments (News, Videos, The Google, Blogs, or Groups) — Google Alerts sends email alerts whenever a specific word or phrase turns up somewhere on the internets.
Sign up for a Google Alert by visiting Google Alerts homepage and fill out some information in the “Create a Google Alert” box:
In the Search terms box, input a singular word, phrase, or website. Below we discuss terms set for a client when they begin with Google alerts. Use the OR operator for any name variation. Remember to format “keywords” as in “Steve Jobs” OR “Jobs, Steve” for all variants.
As for Type, Google sets category filters to search for information placed in the Search terms box. The options: News, Blog, Web, Comprehensive, Video, or Groups provide your company broad coverage in Social Media Monitoring. Default sets to Comprehensive, leave type Comprehensive to pull information from all category filters.
How often refers to frequency of emails you receive regarding the alert query. The options: once a day, as-it-happens, or once a week choose your level of alertness. Default sets to once a day, switch to as-it-happens, you’ll want immediate notification to information that requires further attention.
Lastly Your email, input the address where the alert will be sent. Having either gmail or a google account logged on Deliver to defaults your gmail address, the second option is feed. A google account can set up an unlimited amount of alerts.
Social Media Monitoring is more than news about your company. Beyond just keeping track of what’s being said, Google alerts offers to:
- Monitor competitors and their doings.
- Report breaking events and latest trends in your industry
- Notify linking to your site using “link:” keyword.
- Trend key words related to your company that currently create buzz
A brief Case Study into the Google alerts we set up for our favourite tea company teatreetea.
Alerts:
- teatreetea.com – provides insight to where the site is being discussed and when inbound links are built for the site
- buy tea online – primary phrase currently being optimizing for tea tree tea, any mention tells us what competitors, customers, and target audiences are looking for and discussing when using this phrase
- Great Tea – generic term that takes considerable time to sort through, we want anyone online who mentions Great Tea to be talking about tea tree tea
- Online tea shop – to make tea tree tea a dominant player in the online tea retail we make sure tea tree tea is part of all online tea discussions
- Online Tea – every item in alerts 1-4 we check daily, yet the sheer volume for this alert only permits selective review. We do not include an alert for Tea, the astronomical number of returns make this term ineffective.
With correct search terms, Google alerts can be a powerful tool for your Social Media Monitoring. If you want some help setting up your Google alerts search terms or for a look into using more powerful tools send us an email and we’ll give our best to help your company get the most out of Google alerts and Social Media Monitoring.
All the best for now, next week we investigate application of Google alerts in an SEO environment re-examining our friends at www.teatreetea.com
Reader Comments (2)
Wonderful post... Very informational and educational as usual!
Thanks for taking the time to talk about this, I feel fervently about this and I take pleasure in learning about this topic. Please, as you gain information, please update this blog with more information. I have found it very useful.just cavalli belt sales
The post is written in very a good manner and it entails many useful information for me. I am happy to find your distinguished way of writing the post.