Want To Know What People Are Saying About Your Business? Set Up Google Alerts
Feedback from customers is important, whether that’s good feedback or bad feedback, there’s always something to learn from it. But we all know that waiting reviews or trying to get a customer to fill out a survey can be frustrating.
The truth is, people are probably already talking about your business online, they just might not be doing it in the places you are looking. One way of checking what people are saying about you online is to use a Google Alert.
What are Google alerts?
Google regularly crawls the internet as part of its search algorithm. A Google alert is an automated messaged which lets you know that a new appearance of your chosen keyword or topic has been detected on a recently crawled site.
It is common for celebrities and media figures to have Google alerts set up to alert them (or their management) when new stories about them have been published. However, very few businesses think to do the same thing.
You do not need to be a celebrity or a business to set up a Google alert, anyone can do it, for free.
What sort of content will you be alerted to by Google alerts?
The main places you are likely to receive alerts about are:
- Videos
- News articles
- Blogs
- Website pages
- Videos
- Books
Do Google alerts also cover social media posts?
Google Alerts do not currently detect most posts or comments on social media platforms. This means Google Alerts are not a great way to monitor what people are saying about you on social media. However, most social media platforms have their own search functions.
It is good practice to regularly search all the major social platforms for mentions of your business separately. Try picking a day each week and setting a calendar reminder to spend 5-10 minutes searching Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
How to set up a Google alert
– Sign in to your Google account
– Go to Google Alerts
– Enter the phrase you want to receive alters about in the box at the top of the screen.
– Click on “Show options”
– From the options menu you can choose which sources you wish to receive alerts about (videos, news stories, blogs, etc.), which languages you want to check for results in, how often you would like to receive your alerts, and which email address you would like to receive them.
– Click “Create Alert”.
You will now receive your Google alerts to the email address of your choice.
How To Use Google Alerts?
Google alerts let you know what has been posted about your business online. For example, if you ran a restaurant that had been given a 5-star review by a local paper, you might never know about it unless someone mentioned it. A Google alert would let you know, and you could then repost that review on your own social media, or even print it out and put it in your window.
Equally, if someone was posting inaccurate information about your business online, you might never know without a Google alert.
Need Help Managing Your Online Presence?
Hopefully, after you’ve read this, you’ve set up at least one Google alert (for your business name). Monitoring what people are saying about your business online is a key part of maintaining a good online presence for your business.
As part of our digital marketing campaigns, we take what people are saying about our clients seriously. To learn more about managing and improving your online reputation, speak to our team today.
