As more Internet users are participating in online activities like blogging, discussions, sharing their thoughts on social networking platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, reading reviews of products & services, rise of social media is not a trend you can ignore. As a business, you will want to know what others are saying about you and eventually, respond to them. While larger businesses need complicated social media intelligence software that can harvest larger sets of data, segment them, identify sentiments or trends, small businesses will probably find basic social media monitoring methods good enough.
What is Google Alerts?
Google Alerts is one of the easiest way you can keep tab of your brand and product mentions. To put it simply, it allows you to utilise Google’s search products (news, web, blogs, videos, etc.) to inform you of new search results by email updates without having to manually do a search.
Using Google Alerts for basic social media monitoring
The usage is simple:
- Enter your search terms (more about this below) as you would when doing a search on Google.
- Choose the type of topic you wish to monitor. You almost always want “Comprehensive” for including all sources unless you are getting a whole lot of updates in which case you might want to revise your search terms or engage a firm for your social media monitoring needs.
- Choose how often you would like Google to check for new results. I recommend “as-it-happens”.
- Finally, just enter your email where you wish to receive these updates. It is a good idea to get a Google Account so you can manage your alerts (if you have multiple ones set up) or have the updates delivered to a feed.
There is a list of FAQs should you want to learn more about Google Alerts.
So, What Can You Monitor?
You will be able to monitor essentially everything you can search for as with the normal Google web search. Assume we have Joe who runs a spa business, Spacialty (pardon me for the fictitious names), in Singapore whose competitors include spas like Spa Botanica and Estheva. Joe provides services such as Aromatherapy and Hydrotherapy. Monitoring the search terms below can provide some insights on his business.
- spacialty
Monitoring mentions of brand name can help identify conversations on the services provided, customer satisfaction, negative remarks, etc. - hydrotherapy site:forums.cozycot.com OR site:flowerpod.com.sg
CozyCot and Flowerpod are leading Singapore communities that are female-oriented so it helps to identify potential customers talking about the services which Spacialty provides. - “spa botanica” OR estheva
Some times it helps to learn more about your competitors too. If conversations about your competitors are almost always positive, what are they doing right?
There are definitely more to the list here and what search terms to monitor is solely dependent on your business. Monitoring your brand with Google Alerts gives you a no cost entry to experience the usefulness of social media monitoring. Have fun!
