It is important to be constantly monitoring how your brand and business show up online. However, you’re also super busy – scheduling meetings, designing product, networking, and trying to live your life outside of your business. Trying to monitor all social networks, blogs, online newsletters, discussion groups, and more is just too time-consuming. How can you monitor your brand more efficiently? Besides hiring a marketing agency (like Callan Group!) to take care of your online reputation for you, you can also set up Google Alerts to be sent right to your inbox!
What exactly is a Google Alert?
A Google Alert is essentially a custom Google search, tailored to your needs. This search is continuous, and results are sent to you automatically, at a frequency of your choosing. Google Alerts is a convenient and handy tool for reputation management and brand monitoring, but can also be used in many other ways! Follow people and causes you care about, topics that interest you, a phrase you’ve trademarked, and more!
Ready to set up a Google Alert? You’ll be ready to go in just a few simple steps:
- Make sure you are logged into Google with an email address that is registered with Google, and go to google.com/alerts
- Type in the name of the business, topic, or phrase that you would like to set an alert for in the “Create an Alert About” search bar.
- You can keep it at default settings or go to “more options” to receive more frequent updates.
- Repeat as many times as necessary for as many businesses, topics, or phrases as you’d like! You can add up to one thousand alerts per email address.
While using Google alerts makes brand monitoring and reputation management very convenient, it is not an end-all solution. To really get the most out of reputation management, you will need to use other methods in addition to Google Alerts. For instance, social media and review sites should be monitored daily, and all comments or reviews should be responded to in a timely manner. If this sounds a bit too overwhelming to you, Callan Group Communications offers brand monitoring and reputation management as part of our services.
To find out more, contact Diane, diane@thecallangrp.com.
Written by Justine Mancini, September 2018
