Harness the Power of Google Alerts

I was reading a post over at Working Author, that really inspired me to write this post.

In a previous post on surveys, I ranted on (and on an on) about surveys and why they are important.

The crux being that in order for companies to serve us better, they need information, they need to know and respond to customer concerns as well as know what they are doing that is "Great" so that they can keep doing it.

It then dawned on my how easy it would be for a company to quickly respond to customer demands (and needs) using Google Alerts.

Google Alerts is a service that has been around from google for quite some time. It simply allows Google to send you an email (Daily, Weekly, etc) of all content that meets a certain criteria.

Now, at first glance, this might not seem like a "BIG DEAL", but let's think about this for a minute.

Most systems weather they be Surveys, or the latest social media - facebook, etc. allows companies (or governments) to easily setup a site and get feedback from "the people". But there is one problem. People using these services are biased, and don't necessarily represent the public as a whole. Plus not everyone uses one particular social media.

Enter Google Alerts

In just a few minutes you can add an alert for YOUR WEBSITE, using the "inurl:" tag. For example let's say you are pizza hut. You can add the alert "inurl:pizzahut.com". Now, whenever anyone on the web write an article, review or comment about your product or service, you'll get an email to let you know, and you can respond accordingly.

And it doesn't require your customers to subscribe to a certain service to get feedback, you'll get it no matter where they are and what service they are using, for free!

As René Garcia notes > Google Alerts is A Powerfull Tool