Google Alert update.

A few days ago, I blogged about using Google Alerts to find out if somebody’s talking about you online. Google offers a zero cost, essentially passive way to monitor your online reputation, keep an eye on the competition, and create opportunities to touch customers when their names are mentioned.

Sad note: I got a Google Alert this morning that told me a customer’s mother had just passed away in another state. I’m on my way to pick up a card to send my condolences. Email just won’t work for some messages.

You might reasonably ask, what does this have to do with marketing? Well, if marketing is about relationships, and I believe it is, then driving to the Hallmark Store, writing a sincere note and dropping the card in the mail will help build an important marketing relationship. If not, who cares? It’s the right thing to do.

Keep your company’s message fresh.

Small to midsize companies struggle to keep their message fresh and their websites up to date. So do marketing coaches and other service providers. Fortunately, there are free tools that make it easy to get the word out. There may be dozens, but I want to talk about FeedBurner.

This morning, I wondered of I could use my blog posts to drive fresh content to the home page of my website. I had used FeedBurner to set up an RSS feed, so readers could subscribe to my blog. I wondered if they might have a way to deliver the feed to my website.

Five minutes of research tops and I found the answer. They call it BuzzBoost. In effect, it turns a portion of a webpage into an RSS reader. You click a few buttons, complete a couple data fields, and SAVE. When the BuzzBoost page refreshes, it gives you a little bit of html code to copy into your webpage. Here’s a link to my home page so you can see the result of my efforts.

Here’s how I did it…

Hey! Somebody’s talking about you.

Somebody’s talking about you, your company, or your products… and you can find out what they’re saying, whenever they say it. All it takes is a few minutes of effort and zero cost thanks to Google Alerts. Free and easy competitive intelligence.

It will take about 10 seconds to set up an alert for your name. Another 10 seconds for your company’s name… 10 seconds each for your product names. Just enter your search terms, type of search and frequency. The tricky part is the email address. If you have the time, enter your own. If you don’t, assign a dedicated surfer. Ask them to visit the links and report back or forward anything significant.

So, somebody’s talking about you. What’s next? Join the conversation. If they’re saying something nice, say thank you. If they’re saying something negative, say thank you and add some positive comments that might turn them around.

You can also try a customer-focused marketing twist. Set up alerts for key customers, companies, products. If somebody says something nice, send a personal note including the link. If somebody says something not so nice, teach your customer how to use Google Alerts.

Vanity google? Designated surfer.

When was the last time you Googled your company’s name, your product names, your own name? I’m not talking vanity here or paranoia. I’m talking competitive intelligence.

This question occurred to me this morning as I Googled myself. It was relatively painless. I do it every now and then, and I wondered about other folks like you.

My clients are CEOs and senior managers of midsize companies. They don’t have a lot of spare time for Googling themselves, but somebody should. I encourage them to look around for someone in their lives who could be their designated surfer. It could be their child, an employee, a friend or acquaintance. It could be several people with different points of view.