7 Tailored Uses For Google Alerts

If you don’t have a Google account yet, then Google Alerts is a very good reason to go through the hassle of creating a Google account. (So is the Google Homepage, but that’s another post).

There’s some specific ways of using Google Alerts that anchored authors will find useful, and incredibly time-efficient:

1. Your own name

As you get more deeply embedded on-line, and your marketing efforts mature, you’re not always going to know when people are talking about you or using your name.  While plugging your name into Google’s search function does the same thing, Alerts will search endlessly and report back to you whenever it finds a new entry.  You just set and forget.

2. All your book titles

Set up a separate alert for each new book title, for the same reasons as (1).

If your book title is long and complicated, or short, but very generic, then consider setting up two alerts for each book title. Set up one as (for example) “The Incredible Lightness of Being”, (including the quote marks), which will report back only on the exact phrase.

Set up a second alert for any and all combinations of the incredible lightness of being (don’t use quote marks).  News sites, websites and blogs using any combination of those words will be reported back to you, ranking sites with more of the words in your alert higher than sites that use less of the words.  This also gets around any misquotes, typos or spelling mistakes that sites may make if your title is complicated or easily misquoted.  (You may want to use this same quotes/no quotes double alerts set-up for your own name, too – I have two for my name, as the hyphenation and spelling are often cited wrong.)

3. The subject and research matters of your upcoming book

If there is a specific country or subject matter that you’re researching for your next book, create an alert, or several alerts, using key words and phrases for those subjects and places.  Google will bring back to your email in-box any sites using the terms, and keep you right up to date with your topic.

4. Keep up with your industry

I have several alerts for romance novels, romantic suspense, and other variations of key terms in my publishing genre, (including my publishers) and Google Alerts will keep me posted on any breaking news or gossip on blogs, etc. Set up alerts for your own genre, and other key terms in the publishing industry. You’ll be surprised what Google digs up…and you’ll never miss anything important again.

5. Material for your blog and/or newsletter

Build Alerts that deal with the subject matter of your blogs and newsletters, and you’ll receive the latest information appearing on sites and blogs that you can relay back to your readers, or comment upon, link back to, ping or trackback.

6. Networking and collegiality

I have alerts set up for the names of fellow authors that I know, high-profile authors, editors and other popular fiction personnel.  It keeps me posted on what everyone else is doing and is great for keeping me on top of industry gossip.

7. Personal interest Alerts

I have alerts that keep me abreast of cyber conversations about raw food diets, health and personal fitness, and personal productivity.  I often discover new-to-me or just plain new sites and blogs that I can add to my RSS feeds and stay updated.  Some of the information and sites also feed back into my blogs and newsletters.

I also have “temporary” alerts on momentary matters of interest.  For instance, when Kevin Kelly first published his post, 1,000 True Fans, on his The Technium blog, the buzz the post generated was phenomenal.  As the matter was of deep interest to me, I created an alert on the term “1,000 True Fans”, just to keep up with all the noise it created.   (As an anchored author, you’ll find the post worth a read, too.)  Once the alert dries up to a trickle, or your interest wanes, you can delete it.

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Over time, you’ll realize that some Alerts provide more relevant and useful links than others, and you can tweak, create and delete as needed to keep Google bringing all the good stuff right to your door.

If you’re an Alert addict already, do you have any uses for Alerts that I haven’t mentioned here?

First appeared on Anchored Authors on June 6, 2008

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Tracy Cooper-Posey © 2009. Cannot be copied or distributed without permission.