Everyone knows about Google and Yahoo’s free clipping services. Or do they?
I’ve found myself on more than one occasion extolling the value of Google and Yahoo alerts as brand monitoring tools and have been somewhat astonished at how many people still don’t know about or use them.
It’s a reminder of the enormous amount of information resources that are out there, and that in many cases each of us is using an entirely different set of tools to obtain our news and info. President Bush was asked not long ago if he used Google and he replied, “One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps.” (watch interview). Translation: It’s pretty obvious W. does not regularly use Google because nobody says “the Google”. That’s as obvious a “tell” as when someone declares themselves a fan of “Star Trak” or the “Jerry Steinfeld Show”.
Anyway, I’m digressing. Back to topic. If you haven’t done so already, sign-up for Google and Yahoo! alerts immediately. By no means should they replace traditional, comprehensive clipping services like Cision (formerly Bacon’s) or Custom Scoop but what they do provide are additional monitoring devices that every marketing professional should take advantage of. And did I mention that they’re free? Simply sign up and enter your choice of query or topic and you are sent an email each time your search term is referenced on the web (you control the frequency of the emails you receive). You can even set the alerts to troll the blogosphere to clue you in whenever your company (or name) is mentioned by a blogger.
Here are the links:
Google Alerts: www.google.com/alerts
Yahoo! Alerts: alerts.yahoo.com