The Identity Architect – Positioning & Personal Branding Blog

One of the best tools you can use to build, manage, and monitor your identity is Google Alerts.

If you don’t already use Google Alerts, you should. It’s a simple, but powerful tool. And even better, it’s FREE.

Google Alerts is simply a service that Google provides that will alert you by email daily, weekly, or as it happens – when certain key words or phrases you want to monitor appear anywhere on the web – on web pages, news groups, blogs, news, and even video.

All you do is set up an account and enter the keywords of phrases you want to monitor, when you want to be notified (daily, weekly, or as it happens) , and what you want to monitor (blogs, news, etc. or all).

Here is how I use it.

1. Monitor your name. You’ll want to know when people are talking about you and what they’re saying. When your name appears on certain blogs or websites you’ll be able to visit those sites and contribute to their blogs, forums, etc. for even greater exposure and links back to your own sites.

2. Monitor your email address. You would be surprised where your email address ends up. Sometimes people will refer others to you in news groups or even blogs by your email address. You’ll also be surprised that forums or news groups you’ve posted to many, many years ago trigger an alert by your email address.

3. Monitor your website address/domains. The same thing goes for your web domain as with email. Just something else that’s tied to you that you ‘ll want to watch.

4. Monitor your key words and phrases. This will alert you to what people are talking about, trends, news, events, etc. relating to your key words. For example, if you’re an image consultant and one of your key words is “well dressed” or “poorly dressed” you would have been alerted to current articles evaluating political candidates and their appearance – or perhaps articles about high-profile court cases talking about how the defendant appeared in court. Both of these would be excellent ideas for commentary on your own blog, as ideas to pitch a reporter for a story with you as the expert talking about how these people dress differently to affect their perception in public. You get the idea.

You’ll also be able to keep up to date on your areas of expertise and spot trends that you can capitalize on.

5. Monitor your competitors. This is an easy way to keep an eye on what they’re up to.

6. Monitor your colleagues, key clients, and key centers of influence. Wouldn’t it be nice to know when a key client appeared in the news? When this happens, it’s a great time to send a quick “saw you in the Wall Street Journal – Great job!” note to keep you on their radar.

7. Monitor key thinkers in your area of expertise. Want to know when a certain person of importance in your industry or area of expertise speaks? This is a great way to keep up with new ideas and trends in your own field or market.

9. Finally, your children. This doesn’t have much to do with your identity, unless of course you’re someone highly visible and powerful person like the President, but it’s something you should think about. Monitoring your children’s names, email addresses, etc. will help you know what’s going on in places you probably don’t even know about. This one is more of a safety issue than anything – and could even be more important than all the rest.

Here’s a link to Google Alerts. It takes only about 10 seconds to set up an alert – literally.

http://www.google.com/alerts