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So how will this help you?
1. It allows you to keep your pulse on what happening in your industry.
2. Have the ability to provide breaking news in your industry to increase your authority and expert status.
There are many different types of Alert services out there. An alert service basically sends you information on particular topics you’re interested in.
There are many different types of tools to use for Alerts, personally I like to use Google Alerts.
By using Google Alerts you can see what is popping up in your related industry without actually actively searching for the information. This allows you to keep your blog up to date and be one of the authority sites in your industry.
7 Steps to effectively use Google Alerts
1. First I recommend creating a separate email – preferably with Gmail.
2. Sign In to Google Alerts using your new Gmail email address
3. Write down a list of keywords related to your niche
- Industry words – keywords related to your niche
- Vanity Alerts – keywords related to your name, blogs name, company name, brand name etc.
4. Click “New Alert” and enter in each keyword. Make sure you change the “Type” option from “Email” to “Feed”! I also like to receive updates “as it happens”.
5. Now that you have all your keywords added into Google Alerts it time to open up Google Reader (use the same details as your email address)
6. This is where all the alerts will show up for your keywords. Click the “All Items” tab (usually bolded). Then on the top right hand corner there is an option to view as “Expanded” or “List”. Choose “List”! It will save you hours of time as it’s easier to scan through it and find the content that will benefit you.
7. After a week of using Google Alerts log back in and evaluate which keywords to get rid of.
You will find that some of the keywords you choose will bring in good content which is actually beneficial. There will most likely be a lot of keywords that are rubbish and dont benefit you at all.
Limit the time you research!
Sometimes it’s easy to get distracted and start reading all kinds of blog posts and new content. I like to set my timer to 30 minutes. During that time I will look at the alerts and read through any posts that interest me.
As soon as my timer goes off after the 30 minutes I stop immediately! It’s important to stay strict on yourself.
So now you have an insight on using Alerts I highly recommend you go and set up some alerts straight away. It’s easy to do and it saves a lot of time in the long run. It allows you to keep up to date in your industry and therefore have better content for your blog.
Have fun,
Ben Brandes
