Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Why set up Google news alerts?

Greg Pincus has a great blog post about this feature. I've got several set up and can say he's right on the money. They help you monitor your own brand (and see when people mention your work), research topics, and stay up to date with industry news, among other things.

I use them myself for researching magazine articles and seeding blog topics. Here's what Greg has to say:
Google Alerts – email or RSS updates of the latest news, web, and blog Google results on any topic of your choice – can be a very helpful tool for anyone who is doing business or trying to build a platform online. What follows in this post, part one of a two part series, is a brief description of why you might set up alerts. Part two will give a brief overview of how to set up basic alerts. There are other alert services, but I quite like the easy, free Google Alerts. So…

Check out his whole list (and stay tuned, because there's a Part 2). [NOTE: THE LINK HAS BEEN UPDATED.]

3 comments:

Kirby Larson said...

Hey, Martha, I get an error message when I try to click on the link to get Greg's whole list.

I, too, love google alerts! Easy enough for a techno-goof like me to use.

KellyJo Houtz Griffin said...

Martha
I am also having problems with the link.

I love google alerts. I started writing reviews for Library Journal back when I was a librarian and continued for 15 years. Now, thanks to google alerts, I know when one of my 20 year old reviews is being used to sell a book I thought should have gone out of print 20 years ago. It's amazing that they can take the one complimentary sentence from the review and use it to sell a book I thought was trash. Most of the books I reviewed were adequaate or even great, but it's the bad ones that seem to be popping up most often. Oh well, I don't own the rights for the reviews, so not much I can do.

Martha Brockenbrough said...

Hi, guys! I fixed the link (that'll teach me not to blog before coffee).