So you want to build a Google Plus presence for your business. What do you need to know?

The fact is, not every business needs to be on every social networking platform. If you deal primarily with white collar professionals, you’re probably not missing out by lacking a Tumblr page. In fact, it’s possible to project an off-putting air of desperation by clogging up your business’s web presence with a dozen or more social media badges — and you may overtax your resources by trying to make regular updates to Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare — well, the list goes on.

The first step, then, is understanding both your target audience and the user base of the social network in question. Rather than desperation, you want to project the cool, professional certainty that you understand both yourself and your market.

The user base of Google Plus is generally tech-oriented and professional. Bloggers, coders, folks who spend a lot of time thinking about SEO. Many Google Plus users migrated there out of frustration with Facebook, unsatisfied with Facebook’s privacy practice or UI consistency but still desiring the sort of large-scale social media infrastructure that a large company like Google can provide. It’s a generally urban crowd, typically aged between their mid-twenties and forties.

If this sounds like your target audience — or part of that audience — then a Google Plus presence could make sense for your business. So what’s next?

Sign up

Head to the Google Plus for Business page and either sign in with your existing Google account or create a new one.

Select your category

Next, Google will ask you to choose a Category. If you’re a small or place-based business — a restaurant, winery, or bookstore — choose “Local Business or Place.” If you’re promoting a chain, brand, agency, or widely distributed product, select “Product or Brand.”

Pick a good image

You’ll be prompted to enter a Page name, website, business sub-category (“food,” for example), and a 10-word-or-less tagline. You’ll also have the option to upload a profile photo, which you should absolutely do. Take care with your choice of picture, though — this is going to be the defining visual element of your Google Plus presence, and like a book’s cover, it will instantly inform your viewers’ perception of the business.

Add people to Circles

Google Plus organizes your contacts according to “Circles,” which may overlap or stand separately. As an individual, you might have separate Circles for friends and family, so you can post only the most relevant updates to each. As a business owner, the default Circles are “Customers,” “VIPs,” and “Team members” (and of course, you’re free to create new Circles). Go ahead and start adding friends, employees, and close associates — people who will expect the invitation and help you spread the word.

Update Regularly

Your social media presence needs to demonstrate that you’re actively engaged with your audience — if you barely use it, viewers may find you passive or apathetic. Post regular updates on your products, services, or specials. Consider ways you can use unique features of Google Plus like Hangouts — a group video-chatting platform. Answer questions and respond to feedback.And of course, when people follow your updates, make sure to add them to your Circles!

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About the author: Lisa Shoreland is currently a resident blogger at GoCollege.com, where recently she’s been researching writing scholarships and subsidized loans. In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing and hogging her boyfriend’s PlayStation 3. To keep her sanity she enjoys practicing martial arts and bringing home abandon animals.

This post was written by guest author Sean Haubert. Find out more about Sean below.

Hi, my name is Sean, and I’m an early adopter. I spend way too much money on new gadgets, and pester all my friends to join me on new websites. I sign up for every social site I can find. I try every iPhone app my credit card will allow - much to my wife’s chagrin!

Seriously, it’s a problem, and I’m getting help.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to throw myself into the world of geo-social location services, Foursquare, Yelp, and now Facebook Places. The problem is, I’m just not getting it. I’m forcing myself to use it, to see if I can start to justify using it at work.

For instance, the other day we took our niece and nephew out for ice cream on Long Island. Perfect chance to take Foursquare for a test drive. I checked in. And I found a deal. $1.00 off at Starbucks. On Friday afternoon. I was 2 days late. Is this thing on? Is there anyone out there?

Who exactly are all the people using these services, and where are they hiding out? I think I need to hire Foursquare’s publicist. They are really doing a lot with their 3 million member audience, certainly they’re garnering a lot more press than they deserve. Or are they?

Now Facebook has joined the fray, as they just launched Places. On the day of the launch, Foursquare announced their busiest check-in day ever. In the week since Places has gone live, I have had one FB friend check-in. It was from his couch. He wanted to unseat his wife as mayor of their living room.

Dennis Crowley, the co-founder of Foursquare, was recently quoted as saying Facebook Places is not that great or interesting.  It’s a pretty boring service, with barely any incentives for users to keep coming back and telling their friends where they are.

To me, the most interesting thing about Places is that it has a potential audience of over 500 million people around the world but that can only be a good thing for location-based services, like Foursquare, as Facebook will educate the masses about check-ins. Plus, take a careful look at their logo. Notice anything unusual? Yes, that red icon is eerily similar to Google’s own Places. And what is the icon placed on? Look at the map carefully, and you will certainly see a number 4 – a direct shot at Foursquare!

Foursquare is probably more concerned than Dennis lets on. As for now, Facebook’s geo-social service is very bare bones. With a ready-made audience of 500 million, it’s hard to believe that Facebook won’t start fleshing out their service, perhaps start offering partnerships with brands and events. Basically, look for Facebook to follow Foursquare’s build out plan.

But Facebook certainly was a little creepy in their rollout. By default, everyone’s Facebook privacy settings were stacked in Places’ favor.

Whether you knew it or not, you had the ability to check-in. And your friends had the ability to check-in. And THEY had the ability to check YOU in. Kevin Rose and Doug Albrecht demonstrated this on Diggnation when they logged on and checked in their vegan producer at a nearby steakhouse. In fact, Facebook got a lot of slack about it, and posted their own video on how to control the manner in which you and your friends’ information is shared on Places.

Can Places win the geo-social war? Only if Facebook changes the default settings to Private and disable the status tagging feature without user opt-in. Facebook needs to give back privacy control to the user.

I get it. Maybe we could do it in a less creepy, big-brother kind of way?

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After a 10+ year career in advertising, Sean Haubert realized the decades old advertising model was no longer relevant. So, he started a Social Media Marketing consultancy to help his clients start a whole new type of conversation between all the stakeholders. Sean is now the Social Media Manager for the New York Road Runners, the world premier running organization. He recently received his MS in Integrated Marketing Communications from Manhattanville College, where he wrote his thesis on how to introduce analytics into SM marketing campaigns. Sean also has no problem writing about himself in the third person. Learn more about Sean on Facebook and Twitter.

*Photo by AshtonPal

No matter your experience with web design, data measurement, or blogging, you’ve most likely heard of Google Analytics. To sum it up, Google Analytics (or Analytics as we will affectionately call it from this point forward) is a powerful tool that is used to measure various web site statistics, such as visits, number of page hits, and your most popular content. Basically, when you review your Analytics report, you can learn a lot about the functionality of your site and the people visiting it.

The only complaint that most people have about Analytics is that it takes too long to track down valuable data.  If you’ve interacted with Analytics before, you might even shy away from regular use because of the amount of time it takes to pull and process data.

After this article, time won’t be an issue. In fact, you’ll be able to pull and analyze your essential stats in less than five minutes. So, if you’re like me, the tips in this article might allow you to have time to grab that tall mocha frap you’ve been craving before heading to your off-site web analysis meeting.

The Essential Data

Once you’ve logged into Analytics, you’re going to want to pull the most essential information before anything else. This will let you find out the most information in the shortest amount of time. Here’s a quick tour through the essential content you’ll find in your Google Analytics stat sheets:

Visits: You can access your site visit stats through the summary screen that appears as soon as you load Analytics but you’ll probably want to see it in more detail. To do this, select the report for your site using the “View report” option and click on the “Visits” link under the Site Usage section. This will allow you to see your visits by day and Analytics also tells you the percentage of total visits that came through on that specific day.

Pageviews: The number of pageviews your site receives is quite different than the number of visits. Pageviews are the number of pages that are accessed by your community, not the number of visitors to your site. Dividing these two numbers can help you find out how many pages are being viewed per visit. For example, if you have 2,000 pageviews in a month and only 1,000 visitors, it’s safe to assume that on average, each visitor accessed two pages.

To pull your pageview data, simple click on the “Pageviews” option in the left menu bar. (It’s under Visitor Trending.)

Visitor Loyalty: Knowing visitor and pageview stats are considered valuable information but they are nothing if you don’t know your visitor loyalty. The visitor loyalty stat shows you the number of times a visitor has arrived at your site. Analytics breaks this down by number of visits, not user. This data will shed some light on how many people diligently visit your site and it paints a more accurate picture of your community.

The Visitor Loyalty data is shown by clicking the “Visitor Loyalty” option on the left side of the page.

Top Content: The last of the “need to know” Google Analytics information is your top content. When you have an understanding of your top content, you can begin to find themes in your writing and what appeals most to your audience. To find the top content for your site, navigate to the Content heading in the menu bar and select “Top Content.” As you can see below, the top content for Folk Media revolves around how-to articles and DIY instructions. This is our niche and seeing our top content only re-enforces what we’re doing.

Other Measurables

The information outlined above is simply a starting place for you and your business. There are other things you can measure to dig into your site, your visitors, and how you’re meeting their needs.

Some other information includes:

Bounce rate: The bounce rate listed on most of the pages represents the percentage of people who leave, or bounce, from your site after viewing only one article. In the content section of Analytics the bounce rate represents the percentage of people who navigated to another site after reading a specific article. The lower the bounce rate the better.
Average time on site or page: This one is pretty self explanatory and although it doesn’t seem valuable, it can be very useful. When you see the average time listed, go to the specific page and attempt to read your content aloud and time yourself. Depending on how fast you read the content, you can judge how much information your users digested. If you read the article in three minutes but the average person only spent two minutes on the page, you can safely assume that they only made it through 66% of your content. What went wrong? Why did they stop reading?
Traffic Sources Overview: How your visitors get to your site is almost as important as their visit and the content they view. The good news is that Analytics show you how your visitors arrived at your site. Using the Traffic Sources Overview section (available on the menu bar under Traffic Sources), you can see if your customers are arriving to your site via search engine, direct URL, or referring sites. Once you have a grip on this data, you can push marketing and ad campaigns to appeal to a great number of your customers.

Honestly, the list goes on and on but since I told you that all of your information could be gathered in five minutes or less, that’s all we’re going to cover in this post. However, more information on Google Analytics will be arriving next week. I’d like to go over a few action steps…

• Set up a Google Analytics account and download the Ultimate Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. The plugin will make it easy to link your site to Google Analytics.
• After a few days, check out the information given for your site. See if any of your assumptions match up with the data shown.
• Brainstorm other stats or data that you’d like to learn about. If you set up your account (which should be done since it was the first action step…) play around with what is measured. Email me any suggestions for future blog topics. We’d love to cater our content to you.
• As always, please share this article via your favorite social media network.

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Eric Alpin is the Associate Editor of Folk Media and works for a telecommunications company in Baltimore, Md. He is a social media enthusiast, blogger, writer, and student with a passion for leadership and self-development strategies and techniques. Find out more about Eric on Twitter.

*Photo by miamiamia

It is certainly true that organizations can, and do, revive dead products.  Case in point – Nintendo.  Before the Wii, Nintendo struggled to compete with Microsoft and Sony in the Game Console Race.  Microsoft and Sony burned Nintendo every year in sales, game production, and user satisfaction.  Until the Wii.

Once Nintendo’s revolutionary gaming console hit the market, the Nintendo empire regained its dignity and was finally able to complete with its rivals again.  Products that have gone by the way side or that have an associated stigma can be renewed but most product revitalization initiatives fail big time.  Most companies don’t get it right.  Most dead products don’t come back to life.

And Hotmail is one of them.

Hotmail, Microsoft’s web-based email system, emerged during the .com boom and was widely popular.  But then, something happened.  Somewhere during the late 1990s to early 2000s, Microsoft stopped caring about Hotmail.  They became static in their approach to email.  When Gmail hit the scene, Microsoft remained uncompetitive.  When Yahoo! revamped their web-based email client, Microsoft did nothing.  Sure, maybe Microsoft jacked up the storage space limit or added a small feature here or there but they did nothing to compete with the likes of Google or Yahoo!.  In fact, most Hotmail customers have stopped using the service as their primary email and, instead, use it as a spam box for online offers, newsletters, and junk email.

Basically, Hotmail is the trash can of web-based email.

Now, after the success of Bing, Microsoft has integrated a boat-load of features into Hotmail, ranging from social networking tools to email filtering.  The email service now can complete with Google and Yahoo! in the web-based email race.  Will Microsoft be the next Nintendo?  No.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, saving Hotmail is a worthless move that won’t pan out.  Fortunately for you, a few things can be learned from this last-ditch effort to save a dead product.

First, the lines have been drawn.  Internet users already have stereotyped Hotmail to be a tool for spam, hacking, and anonymity on the Web.  This isn’t going to change.  The Hotmail brand is forever regarded as the inferior product to Gmail and Yahoo! Mail.

This teaches us that once a customer or potential customer has a perception about your product, whether its real or not, its tough to get them to think anything else.  Sure, it’s possible but not common.  Take pride in the perceptions your brand sows and make sure that you address them in a timely manner – not a decade after the fact.

In addition, Microsoft’s attempt to revamp Hotmail shows that when the going gets tough, the mediocre join everyone else.  Microsoft isn’t doing anything revolutionary; they’re pretty much recreating the efforts of Google and other web-based services.  Instead of going along with the crowd, Microsoft should have reinvented web-based email, much like Nintendo did with gaming.

If you’ve fallen behind the competition, don’t join them to compete – outdo them.  Want to win back some of the market share?  Change the market.  Revolutionize your industry and exploit the weaknesses of your rivals.  Don’t just rebrand their product.

I could be wrong about this whole thing.  Microsoft might be able to regain some of the web-based email market with its new Hotmail.  But, I have feeling it won’t.  I have a feeling that Hotmail will continue to lie dead in cyberspace.  Why?  Because Microsoft isn’t offering anything new and Internet users have moved on from Hotmail.  That was so late 90s.

If you want to succeed in revamping your industry, go big and go different.  Don’t follow the crowd and make sure that they’re working for you, not against you.  No one else is going to make your brand successful.

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Eric Alpin is the Associate Editor of Folk Media and works for a telecommunications company in Baltimore, Md. He is a social media enthusiast, blogger, writer, and student with a passion for leadership and self-development strategies and techniques. Find out more about Eric on Twitter.

*Photo by istartedsomething

This article was written by guest blogger Chris Tompkins.

Do you have a Google Adwords campaign that is a total stinker? How about a great click rate on your ad but the conversion on your site is less than stellar? Believe me, we have all been there. This can be especially true if you have many different products you are trying to promote in different ads and then visitors become confused and don’t stick around on your site. It can really leave you pulling your hair out.

This is why I suggest trying out a landing page. If done correctly, it can maximize your conversion rate and your budget. Rather than “clicking through” to your website, you will send viewers to a dynamic product/service specific landing page.

A landing page (also known as a “squeeze page”) is a web page that is best used to convert leads from media and online advertising, direct mail offers, methods of promotion. You might consider using a landing page rather than your website because the landing page will sell or promote a specific product or service – the item your visitor is interested in. For example, rather than featuring all of the services you offer at your toy company like your website would, your landing page would focus only on your strategy board games for teens.

Here are some quick tips about setting up your landing page:

• It should be hosted at a different domain than your business (so instead of www.thetoybox.com/teenstrategygames, the landing page domain would be simply www.teenstrategygames.com).
• Since you are not confined to the design structure of your website, you have full freedom to create a new layout and design.
• The copy is written to be much more compelling and sales oriented than your business site and blog in order to convert a prospect.
• Offer at a minimum one or more incentive(s) to drive conversion.
• Your landing page will contain (sometimes numerous) opt-in boxes that support conversion.

The most important part of the landing page is arguably the copy. When writing the copy for your landing page, keep your Google Adwords advertisement handy. Your landing page needs to be the natural progression from the prospect clicking on the ad to reaching your “landing page.” Remember, in this day and age, “bait and switch” techniques are old hat.

Make sure that your headline reflects the message on your ad. For example, if your Google ad says about “The Secret to Wrinkle Free Skin” then the headline on your landing page needs to be “Want to Learn the Secret to Wrinkle Free Skin in 7 Days?”

Make sure that your landing page is full of valuable information that builds the credibility of you and your business. Make liberal use of quotes from famous clients, testimonials, video, graphs, press coverage, awards…basically anything that makes you stand out among the crowd. If you have a lot of this information to share, it could result in a long page – but not to worry. Even with longer pages, the effects can be astounding. In the same manner, short and powerful landing pages can be just as effective!

Since your page is built around an offer, there are two things you need: an attractive incentive and opt-in technology. Free evaluations, free consultations, eBooks, eCourses and reports can work wonders in terms of attracting consumers.

For a short, one screen landing page, one opt-in box is sufficient. As a rule, for every screen length, you should add one and a half opt-ins to the body copy of your landing page. This is a good measure as to how many times you should request this information. Don’t worry if it seems redundant. People scan the copy on landing pages, so many times they will not read every word you have written. With that in mind, you want to make sure you don’t miss one opportunity to generate a lead!

However, remember that nothing is full proof. You must keep a close eye on the effectiveness of your pages. A simple headline tweak, color change, or testimonial addition can swing the conversion rate either way. View your landing page as a “real time” experiment and make sure to install Google Analytics to track the activity. Measure one week against the next, and tweak where needed. Also, note that there is no such thing as too many squeeze pages. If you have 100 products, you can make 100 squeeze pages. Overall, the goal is to be as targeted and completely aligned with the messages of your marketing plan.

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Chris is the CEO of Go! Media International, LLC – an integrated marketing firm specializing in cutting edge social media strategy and online marketing campaigns. Chris is a fundamental supporter of education in the online marketing technology sector (for companies and individuals) and speaks at national and international conferences alike. If you’d like to find out more, visit his blog or follow him on Twitter.

*Photo by PinkShot

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few years, you’ve probably realized that Google is everywhere.  Yes, everywhere.  Not only is Google.com the most popular search engine on the Internet, the company also runs one of the most popular webmail clients (Gmail), an advertising agency (Google AdWords), and even photo management software (Picasa).  In essence, your online world is becoming Googleland.  The Google enterprise is much more than just a simplified search engine; it’s a company that is giving you the tools to do your job in a more efficient manner than ever before.

Are you taking advantage of all the resources Google gives you?  Do you have your road map for Googleland and do you harness the power of all the tools that are available?  If you’re like most people, you’re lost and you don’t know where to begin.

Let’s take a look at a few of the tools that Google offers to you – for free – and how you can maximize your productivity.

Gmail

This is probably the most famous Google tool next to the search engine.  Gmail first came on the scene in 2004 and was smash hit with techies and time management gurus.  Google revolutionized the webmail industry, offering perks and benefits that were unheard of at the time.  Nearly 150 million people use Gmail and the number of users continues to grow.

Gmail displays all of your emails like threads so they are easily organized.  Instead of having 7 different emails with “Re:” in the front, Gmail creates threads that display your message data in a continuous stream.  Also, each Gmail user is given 7.5 GB of email space so there is no need to ever delete your messages to conserve room.

If you sort through a lot of email each day or have an email address that receives a lot of messages, I would suggest using Gmail.  (Gmail supports mail forwarding so feel free to forward emails from one address [sample@yourdomain.com] to a Gmail account.) Also, there is a Gmail app for nearly ever Smartphone and can be accessed remotely.  Gmail will save you a ton of time and effort.  I promise.

Google Docs

Google Docs launched in late 2005 and 2006, allowing users to create online word processor documents and spreadsheets.  Over time, Google introduced the ability to create presentations and forms.  Now, Google Docs allows you to upload any file and share it with others, whether they are using Google or not.

This is a great tool for collaboration and for sharing information.  If you are in business with one, two, or fifty other people, Google Docs will save you headaches and technical problems.  Folk Media uses Google Docs for nearly 80% of our collaboration and publishing and we don’t know how we’d function without it.

Also, if you are on the road a lot, Google Docs is a great place to store your files for remote access.  No more cumbersome flash drives or online storage accounts.  Google Docs will take care of everything you need.

Google Wave

Google Wave is one of the newest Google tools, debuting in late 2009.  Google Wave is a unique tool that allows people to collaborate real-time in “waves,” or brainstorming windows.  For example, if I am organizing a party and I need to know what everyone on my guest list will be bringing, I can invite everyone to a Google Wave and we can share what we’re bringing.  Wave differs from Google Docs because the user is able to see what another individual is typing at any given time.  If I want to bring brownies, Sally next door can see that I am typing “I will bring brownies” and she’ll decide to bring drinks.

Other cool features of Google Wave include formatting options for each user and the ability to edit anything within the Wave.

What is a practical use for Google Wave?  Anything relating to brainstorming or sharing.  Let’s say that you want to have a brainstorming session regarding some new social media marketing tactics but every member of the team has a different schedule and can’t make it to a face-to-face meeting.  Create a Wave, invite everyone, and get the ideas flowing.  It’s that easy.

Google offers an enormous amount of resources and most of them can help you out in your day-to-day life.  Using Google products will allow for you to be an efficient and easily-managed individual and, if you own a small business, a better business person.  Organization is key in this maddening world of the Internet and Google gives you the tools to stay ahead of the curve.  If you’ve never used them, I challenge you to begin using them today.  If you’re already a Google user, try a different tool that you’ve never touched before.  See what Google can do for you.

Don’t be like Alice.  Get a map and master the world of Googleland.

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Eric Alpin is the Associate Editor of Folk Media and works for a telecommunications company in Baltimore, Md. He is a social media enthusiast, blogger, writer, and student with a passion for leadership and self-development strategies and techniques. Find out more about Eric on Twitter.

*Photo by nilob

Content is only valuable if it can be found

When it comes to using blogs for online marketing most professionals will tell you…

“Create compelling content.”

So let’s assume for the purpose of this article that you’ve gone through the basics of content creation. That’s a great start. But it’s also important that Google and other search engines can easily find your stuff.

By using the updating service built into WordPress, you are able to send alerts to pinging services across the web. Don’t let the word “pinging” confuse you. It is simply a way that blogs and websites tell search engines that new content has been added to your site.

3 Steps To Pinging

By adding in a list of pinging services to your WordPress blog, you are able to update Google and other search engines more quickly. Here’s how…

Step 1 – Open up settings

Step 2 – Click on the writing tab

Step 3 – Copy and paste ping list into the update box at the bottom

Scroll to the bottom and paste the list below into the box. Click update.

Here’s the list of ping services:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/

http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php

http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

Your content … found

Having great content is the foundation for online marketing. But your audience needs to be able to find that content. Now go take action and update your WordPress blog.

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Joel Mark Witt is the Publisher of Folk Media and author of 21 Days To Twitter Leadership and How To Use Social Media To Find A Better Job. He is a producer, author, and speaker who consults with businesses and nonprofits on how to use social media in marketing and communications. Get more from Joel on Twitter or Google Buzz.

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*Photo by mknowles

Do you often wonder what people are saying about you or your business online?  Have you ever performed a Google search for your name or business?  Sometimes the results can be humorous and at other times insightful.  Even still, this probably isn’t a task that you perform on a regular basis.  It isn’t something on your daily to-do list.  However, it could be beneficial to your exposure and profit margin.  So, what do you do?

The answer is Google Alerts, a free tool that alerts the user when a new Google search result is created based on a specific topic or term.  For example, if I set up an alert for Folk Media, Google will send me an email whenever a new search result for using the term “Folk Media” is created.  This result may come from a news page, such as CNN, or it could be directly from the Folk Media website.  Google Alerts removes the legwork from searching.

Google Alerts is a great tool for businesses because the gap between company and competition or customer can be shortened.  Above all else, Google Alerts can become the catalyst for company change and improvement.

Keep Your Friends Close…

Google Alerts allows for your company to have eyes everywhere on the web.  It is rare that a website would elect not to have their material indexed on Google because of the number of visitors what might visit the site.  Plain and simple, the laundry will be aired on Google – both clean and dirty.  Through Google Alerts, you could track the positive PR you’re getting on the web and also the concerns your customers have about your product or business.

…But Keep Your Enemies Closer

Not only can Google Alerts give you a heads up on what your customers are saying about your company or product, the system can tell you what your competitors are doing.  Who wouldn’t love to have insight into how the competition is interacting with customers and when they are expected to launch a new product?  Google Alerts can help you keep up the pace in your industry.

Odd and Ends

Google Alerts doesn’t help with only customer and competitor insight, it can also help with industry standards and other information.  Five categories that deserve a Google Alerts notification might be:

• Industry information
• News on a specific topic or brand
• New products or product rumors
• Employees and contractors
• Manufacturing data

Getting Started

You have some basic knowledge of Google Alerts and you’re probably ready to try it out.  Follow the simple steps below to set up your searches.

1.  Visit http://alerts.google.com and sign in with your Google account.  (Don’t have a Google account?  Sign up for one for free!)

2.  Create a new search by entering all of the pertinent information on the right side of the screen, including:

• Search terms – This is the term or phrase you want to find online. Boolean operators are accepted in this field, meaning that values such as parentheses, AND, OR, and NOT can be included.
• Type – The options are pretty self-explanatory.  “Comprehensive” includes all of the options.
• How Often – Decide how often you want to receive the alert in your inbox.
• Email Length – Select if you’d like to receive the top 20 or 50 results in each alert.
• Deliver To – You can choose if you’d like to have the results sent to your GMail account or your Google Reader feed.

3.  Select “Create Alert” to finalize your alert settings.

If you’d like to edit or delete previously created alerts, select the option at the bottom that states, “click here to manage your alerts.”

Sample Alerts

• (“businesses” OR “non-profits”) AND (“social media” OR “Facebook” or “Twitter”)
• (“Your Company Name” OR “Your Industry”) AND (“social media” OR “Facebook” or “Twitter”)
• (“Twitter” OR “Facebook” OR “LinkedIn” OR “YouTube”) site:cnn.com OR site:foxnews.com OR site:nytimes.com OR site:washingtonpost.com
• (“Your Company Name” OR “Your Competitor”) site:cnn.com OR site:foxnews.com OR site:nytimes.com OR site:washingtonpost.com
• link:yourwebsite.com
• “your company name”

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Eric Alpin is the Associate Editor of Folk Media and works for a telecommunications company in Baltimore, Md. He is a social media enthusiast, blogger, writer, and student with a passion for leadership and self-development strategies and techniques. Find out more about Eric on Twitter.

*Photo by Panoptica…