A is for Alert

Google Alerts, that is. Do you use them? I am very fond of them and think they are an absolute must for monitoring your internet presence - a big part of marketing. (This is essentially a recycled post, but I bet there's a bunch of you who haven't read it.)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google Alerts, here's a blurb from the Google website about what this nifty function does:

Google Alerts are emails sent to you when Google finds new results -- such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs -- that match your search term. You can use Google Alerts to monitor anything on the Web. For example, people use Google Alerts to:

• find out what is being said about their company or product.
• monitor a developing news story.
• keep up to date on a competitor or industry.
• get the latest news on a celebrity or sports team.
• find out what's being said about themselves.

If you aren't using Google Alerts, please do!  It's the best way to track your image through the web and find out what people are saying about you. You can track as many terms as you like with this tool, even your competition or things you just like to follow. I recommend you at least follow your name or author pseudonym and your book title(s). Maybe you also want to follow your agent or editor, up to you. You can specify how often you get the alert so you aren't inundated and you can end at any time. Sign up for your alerts here. 

How do you use Google Alerts? Has it been helpful for you? 

Google Documents

Last week I shared my love for Google Reader.  This week I'm continuing my Google praise by sharing Google Documents.

Google Documents allows you to create and edit documents online.  Here's the highlights:

1. It's online.  This is really the best thing about Google docs.  You can upload your word processing document or spreadsheet to Google Docs and then anywhere you have internet, there's your document. I love this. I use it for lots of items I want to keep with me always.
2. Sharing.  If you are collaborating on anything, this is the way to go.  Say you want to work on a project with someone in another location.  You can both edit your document in REAL TIME.  You can see changes as the other person types.  I used Google Docs last year for a class project.  So much easier than emailing back and forth.
3. Privacy.  Even though you can share your docs, you don't have to.
4. Documents can be created or uploaded.  Either start your documents from scratch in Google Docs, or you can upload a word or excel sheet that you've already created.  
5. Publishing.  You can easily publish your documents to your website or blog.  Or email as an attachment.
6. Thousands of templates available.  Here's some examples: calendars, family budget, contact forms for websites, resumes, presentations, schedules, calculators, surveys, the list goes on.
7. It's free.  No explanation necessary.

There's more. Seriously. Take a tour and find out yourself.

Do you use Google Docs? Do you think it could be useful? Do you love Google as much as I do?

Following Blogs: How Do You Keep Up?

Oh, me, oh, my, I'm sure posting late today.  It's been a crazy week with my jobs that pay.  All my real work is keeping me from reading and writing!

And that leads me to my post for today.  It's actually a question for you awesome followers, and I seriously want feedback.  How do you keep up on the blogs you follow?  I'm not talking about the blogs you just say you follow, I mean the ones you actually read.  What are your methods for keeping up and sifting through?

Now I have my own method of blog sifting, which I'm happy to share: Along with following a blog, the ones I really want to make sure I don't miss I subscribe to through Google Reader. Not familiar with Google Reader? From their website:

Stay up to date
Google Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content. Whether a site updates daily or monthly, you can be sure that you won't miss a thing.

Simplify your reading experience
Google Reader shows you all of your favorite sites in one convenient place. It's like a personalized inbox for the entire web.

Discover new content
Millions of sites publish feeds with their latest updates, and our integrated feed search makes it easy to find new content that interests you.

I have Google Reader on my computer and my phone.  They link together so that when one updates, so does the other. Whenever I find myself waiting in line or with my kids at the playground, I can sift through a couple of blog posts. I skim through posts until I find things I'm really interested in. If I love a post, I star it as a favorite.  I'm pretty happy with this, but I'd like to hear from others.

Now your turn.  Do you have a better method? How much time do you spend reading blogs? I would love to hear what it is.


Also, congratulations to all the finalists in Deana Barnhart's blogfest first 200!  While I'm sad to not be a winner (boo hoo) I was sincerely impressed by the talent I saw in the other excerpts.  If you haven't had a chance to check them out, please do.

Be Alert

I am far from alert at this moment as I am in a household of sickness.  Everyone of us, except my husband who is usually just the one carrying the bug, has come down with strep throat.  Boo.

So I am only giving a quick tip today, but one I am very fond of: Google Alerts.


For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google Alerts, here's a blurb from the Google website about what this nifty function does:


Google Alerts are emails sent to you when Google finds new results -- such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs -- that match your search term. You can use Google Alerts to monitor anything on the Web. For example, people use Google Alerts to:

• find out what is being said about their company or product.
• monitor a developing news story.
• keep up to date on a competitor or industry.
• get the latest news on a celebrity or sports team.
• find out what's being said about themselves.

Here's how it works:

1. You enter a query that you're interested in.
2. Google Alerts checks regularly to see if there are new results for your query.
3. If there are new results, Google Alerts sends them to you in an email.

For general queries like [ football ], you can get a summary of the new results every day. For specific topics, like[ cardiovascular atherosclerosis ], you might not get an email every day, but you'll find out when something new and relevant is published.

If you aren't using Google Alerts, please do!  It's the best way to track your image through the web and find out what people are saying about you. You can track as many terms as you like with this tool, even your competition or things you just like to follow. I recommend you at least follow your name or author pseudonym and your book title(s). Maybe you also want to follow your agent or editor, up to you. Sign up for your alerts here.

UPDATE TO THIS POST: From some of the comments I think I better mention that you can specify how often you receive alerts. I usually get them once a day or once a week depending on if I'm monitoring something for myself or a client. When I get them, I receive one email per alert term with a list of everything that the internet found for that time period grouped in type of item (Twitter, web, etc.). It's easy to scroll through or just ignore any time I choose. Plus you can end your alert at any time. Hope that's a helpful addition to the post!

How do you use Google Alerts? Has it been helpful for you?