Keeping You Updated

Staying up-to-date with news within your niche can be a lot of hassle. Thankfully, though, Google Alerts can be utilised to automate this process, keeping you updated without needing to monitor what’s going on constantly. So, what needs to be done to implement Google Alerts?

This Is Why It’s Important

  • Monitor your brand: whether a customer or client, know what’s being said about you for that essential reputation monitoring.
  • Track competitors: watch for whether they’ve got positive or negative press, any new releases, and link building for SEO purposes.
  • Keep an eye on the industry: industry trends matter, so look out for events, shifts in attitude and new entrants.

Tracking Mentions With Google Alerts: Step-by-step

1. Head to the Google Alerts website.

2. Enter your preferred term for monitoring. Unsure? Consider elements such as your industry’s key terms, your competitors and what searches your customers may be doing. Or even better, head to Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Google Trends.

3. Look at your alert options. Enter your alert, but don’t create it (yet). There are some points to configure from the drop-down options menu that should appear:

• Language – which language do you want your monitored content to be in?
• Sources – any particular sources to take into account? For an eclectic monitoring overview, keep it automatic.
• Region – any specific countries in mind for targeted monitoring?
• How many? – do you want alerts for everything or just the best?
• How often? – when do you need to be alerted? Daily? Weekly?

4. Get previewing – if you’re happy with your selected options, you can go ahead and click “create alert”. Of course, just repeat the process for any new alerts you want to create, and edit and delete as needed via the trashcan and pencil icons.

Any Downsides To Google Alerts?

Just one: it doesn’t monitor social media, which obviously has a lot of brand/industry buzz daily. However, there are other tools for this available online such as Mention.

The Best Tool For Basic Monitoring

Google Alerts is easy, quick, and free, making it ideal for the basic levels of brand monitoring. As long as you don’t overwhelm yourself with alerts, it’s a great way to keep an eye on your niche with minimal effort.