Social Media Marketing

Much like Google Alerts, Google Trends lets you track and monitor brand names, products, services and people in the news. However, where the two differ is in end result; Google Trends leverages the Google News service to highlight those trends over time, with news activities acting as punctuators on a graphical chart.

Compare brands

You can compare multiple items, such as: “Apple, Microsoft, Linux”, Or: “HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Halifax” for example. You even have the option to export your new-found trends as CSV (Comma-Separated Variable) files, to use in Microsoft Excel, or even Google Docs.

The data used to build the graph is taken from Google’s own search engine. So the number of people searching for the keywords you choose to compare defines the properties of the graph itself. In that sense, you can see the relative popularity of certain people, companies and brands over time.

In the news

By having the news items linked into the chart, you get to see what the sources of certain defined spikes and troughs are.

Each news item is listed to the right of the graph as a link, so you can follow those news items up for yourself, to learn more. Additionally, there are charts for regions, cities and languages. Also, you can refine your search by region and by year, offering even more information about those keywords you’re hoping to learn more about.

Google Alerts are a great way to keep track of brand names, products, services and people in the news. Google Alerts sifts through the news to find anything that matches the words or phrases you want to find.

Reputation Management

If you’re a large enough company with products and / or product brands, or you’re a business with a large presence, you might find that Google Alerts could help you keep track of any conversations where your company or brand names feature.

If you’re lucky, people are saying good things about you, which you could otherwise miss out on. On finding these praise-worthy news items, you can follow them up, thank the publishers and use those news items as testimonials, as well as using them within other marketing materials.

However, there’s also the possibility that people are saying bad things about you or your products. Here’s your chance to engage with those people directly and deal with those issues head on.

Tracking industry trends

As an example, I have Alerts sent to me for: “Social Media” and: “Social Networking”, which helps me keep abreast of changes and of new people, emerging technologies et cetera.

If you’re a marketeer, or a business that needs to track trends, you’ll find Google Alerts to be very useful and complimentary to your broader activities.

Once you’ve chosen what you want an alert for, you can have them delivered to you via email at different intervals, such as right away or as compendium once a week.