Google Alerts: How to Leverage Google Alerts "Intel" to Build Your Writer Platform
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Transcript of Google Alerts: How to Leverage Google Alerts "Intel" to Build Your Writer Platform
Google Alerts How to Leverage Google Alerts “Intel”
to Build Your Writer Platform
YourWriterPlatform.com
Code name: “Author”YourWriterPlatform.com
What is Google Alerts?
A powerful web monitoring tool.
Receive automatic email updates of the newest, relevant Google results (from the news, web, blogs, video, and discussion groups), based on your search query.
YourWriterPlatform.com
Why Use Google Alerts?
Gather personal and competitor “intel”.
Source industry or genre-specific news.
Generate leads and track client activity for freelancers and non-fiction writers.
YourWriterPlatform.com
How to Create a Google AlertGo to www.google.com/alerts and enter your search term or keyword.
Choose the type of Google alert (“everything” will give you all result types).
Specify how often you want to receive the alerts.
Decide if you want all results or only the best results.
Add an email address, click “Create Alert” and you’re done!
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Gather Your Intel: Personal
Track mentions of your name, pen names and/or business name. This can provide opportunities to connect with supporters (or note detractors).
Create an alert for your website, author blog and/or book blog. Specify the name and extension, like so: “YourWriterPlatform.com”.
Tracking mentions of your book or articles provides a great opportunity to thank those who mention your work, and note where your articles are appearing online.
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Gather Your Intel: “Competitor”Keep an eye on competing or comparable titles and authors by setting up alerts for their name and book titles.
Where are they being mentioned? Who’s talking about them? Note what they are doing that works (interviews, media coverage, speaking engagements) and tweak it to fit your marketing campaign.
Also track mentions of their blog/website. Those that reference author blogs in your genre or area of interest may be receptive to your content or point of view as well.
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Gather Your Intel: Industry News & Stats
Create alerts for keywords and key phrases for your industry, or for your genre or topic.
Use alerts to track relevant industry or genre-specific news and statistics to use for blog posts, to share on social media or to use as supporting data for media and PR coverage.
Engage with your target audience (as well as “competitors”) by using new and relevant industry info to add value to conversations. Blog commenting, forum discussions and social media outreach are all avenues you can use to contribute meaningfully to the conversation and demonstrate your expertise.
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Gather Your Intel:!Lead & Client Research
Freelance writers and some non-fiction authors can track their clients’ activity, like media coverage, mentions or possibly even complaints.
A timely note of congrats for a big win, or a heads-up on a negative discussion or story on your client, will help build relationships and provide valuable insight moving forward.
If you’re a freelance writer, use Google Alerts to help generate new client leads by creating alerts for your specific niche–like copywriter or web writer–and add “wanted”, “jobs”, “job listings”, for example.
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Google Search Tactics
Exact Keyword Search - add a “+” sign to the beginning of the word to receive only exact matches (not variations of the word).
Exact Key Phrase Search - enclose your search phrase in quotes (if not, Google just returns anything with all the words in the phrase).
Related Terms - use a tilde “~” in front of the keyword to get synonyms or related terms.
Alternate Keyword - Using “OR” (capitalized, no quotation marks) between your keywords will return results with either keyword.
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Keep your eyes peeled
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for intel!
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subscribe to www.youtube.com/user/WriterPlatform
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