The Simple Solution

For any entrepreneur or professional starting to dabble in the world of online marketing and blogging,  Google Alerts is an invaluable tool for keeping up with industry chatter.

Basically, this program allows Google to “alert” you any time a particular word or phrase is mentioned on the web or in the blogosphere.

I’m going to explain how to set this up in a minute, but first lets discuss some useful and practical ways to leverage Google Alerts for your business.

First and foremost, Google Alerts is great  reputation management tool. Online professionals and brick-and-morter owners alike should always set up an alert with their company name and name of each employee to monitor what people are saying online regarding your business or or personal brand.

Google Alerts is also a great way to keep up on breaking news within your particular industry– which is of course a great way to come up with relevant blog topics that draw traffic from your “ideal clients” searching for answers/ help in that particular area.

So now that we’ve discussed some of the ways to properly use Google Alerts, the following is a brief tutorial on how to get  set up.

Step 1: Log into your Google Account. Do this by going to http://www.google.comand signing in at the top right hand side of the page. If you don’t have a Google account, you will need to create one to sign up for Google Alerts.

Step 2:Once you login, click on “Alerts” under “My Products” on the main dashboard.

Step 3:Enter your desired term in the “search term” box. Then choose how often you want to receive the notifications (once a day, as it happens, etc) and make sure the alert will be delivered to the proper gmail address. *Note: use quotation marks on your alerts to keep specific words together– such as “medical malpractice” in the image shown below

Step 4: Hit “create alert” and you’re all done! Now just sit back and wait for the notifications to start hitting your inbox!

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Online Business Manager and law firm marketing expert, Laura Lee Sparks, is one of the most authoritative and well respected voices on attorney outsourcing, internet marketing and being a virtual assistant for professionals on the web.  Her advice and internet marketing campaigns have helped many well-known professionals reach and surpass the million-dollar mark in their businesses numerous times thanks to her straight-forward advice and ability to make online marketing principles easy to understand and implement.  For further information on virtual outsourcing and online marketing programs or to contact Laura Lee directly, please email support@thesimplesolution.com