An important part of building a successful business is managing your online reputation and making sure that all your company information is correct and up to date where-ever it might appear.
There is a free resource from Google call "Google Alerts" that you can make use of to get free email alerts when your company is mentioned online or in the media. A good way to think of Google Alerts is to imagine it as an automated Google Search that delivers reports for each of your search terms to you at set intervals.
Google Alerts is completely free and easy to set up. Here’s how to get started:
- Go to https://google.com/alerts and sign in to your Google account.
- Enter the name of your business in the search bar to add it to your alerts. Click on the “Show Options” drop down to choose how often you get alerts, the sources you want alerts from, language, region, how many alerts you want, and what email address Google should send the report to.
- After you select your preferences, click “Create Alert.” You can now view all of your alerts as a list and change your alert preferences as-needed.
- tip: try putting quotation marks around your search for more detailed results: e.g "Sea Dragon Web Design"
Lead Generation
Another creative use of Google Alerts is for Lead Generation. One way you could use these alerts would be to set up alerts for potential sales leads that fit your target buyer persona.
For example, if I owned a small floral shop in Folkestone that focused on weddings and I wanted to find sales leads, I might set up Google Alerts for the word “engagement” in the Kent region. This way, every time an engagement was announced in Kent, Google would flag it and then send me a daily email of a list of potential customers (brides- and grooms-to-be who are now planning a wedding) that I could then market my services to.