Tuesday 18 May 2010

Business blogging: Google Alerts

I thought I'd do some irregular blogging on some information, which you might find useful or not. Most people might well do any or all of these, but I figured....why not. So, for today...have you heard of Google Alerts? I *love* Google Alerts! They are a nifty little feature of Google - if you go here: http://www.google.com/alerts, you'll see the box shown here. Type in your search terms and your email address, and I'd suggest you set it to once a day. Now, I use it to keep an eye on my business, hubby's business, and my workplace, so I have alerts running on my name, my business name, etc. - you set up a different alert for each one. First thing in the morning (usually), I get an email - one for each alert - with links to the pages where the terms I have flagged up have cropped up over the last 24 hours.

The internet is vast, and we can't be everywhere at once - and Google Alerts aren't failsafe! Still, it's a great buzz when I find that a link takes me to the website of somebody who bought some beads off me a while ago, and is now listing a beautiful piece of jewellery they made with it. Google Alerts also catch Flickr photos, Facebook links, blog posts, etc., so if one of you were to blog 'I read this interesting blog post on Sabine Little's blog' or 'the Little Castle Designs blog', I'll find that in my inbox the next morning.

You could go further and use it to track trends or ideas - but be prepared for a lot of reading and clicking! If, for example, you track 'lampwork jewellery', that'll give you lots more results that little ole 'Little Castle Designs'.

Anyway, I hope you can use this info to get a bit more info about how and where your business name is appearing on the Internet!

If you'd like more of these posts, let me know, please? Apologies to all to whom I've just done the granny-sucking-eggs thing to!

And..trying a new thing - this *should* be a retweet button:

6 comments:

  1. Wow - quite handy Sabine. I hadn't come across this one. There are so many sites and blogs and links etc etc you can sign up to it's hard to know them all - but this looks good. I'm off to have a look!

    Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Thanks Sabine, you learn something new every day! I have now set one up for Orchy Design and will be interested at what comes through!
    Now following your blog and will be looking out for more handy tips, Susanne :)

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  3. Thank you Sabine - this is very interesting and a new one on me - I will be trying it.
    Loopy-Lou

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  4. I use a similar service to this called something like Social Alerts - I just wish I could set it to not tell me every time I post about myself!! Off to check out Google Alerts, thanks Sabine xx

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  5. Lol, Julie, you're on about yourself? ;o) Will check out Social Alerts, thanks :o) I'll think of what to blog on next - what good is a PhD in online stuff if you can't use it? :o)

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