832: ACTION SATURDAY (setup Google Alerts!)

Today's action is one that EVERYONE can benefit from, including all of you wantrepreneurs all the way up to the 7- and 8-figure entrepreneurs! Setup Google Alerts for free on both YOUR personal name as well as the name of your business, course, book, podcast, or any other projects that you have to constantly monitor your presence and mentions on the internet. Plus, you'll hear some strategic ways that you can monitor your local competitors to gain insights into their traffic sources, marketing channels, and lead sources.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 (00:00):
Hey, what is up?
Wantrepreneurs andentrepreneurs all over the world
.
It's Brian LoFermento here,host of the WANTrepreneur to
Entrepreneur podcast, and thisis an Action Saturday episode
that I'm really excited for,because it's really hard to sit
down and think of an action thatapplies to WANTrepreneurs and
entrepreneurs all across theboard.
But this is an action that Ifeel like I take for granted,

(00:21):
because I have personally beenusing this thing, this tool,
this strategy that I'm going toshare with you in today's
episode, since 2008.
That is gosh.
That is 16 years that I've beenusing this action and somehow,
even though I've been using thisfor 16 years and it's been
around a lot longer than that alot of people still aren't aware

(00:45):
of this tool and how they canuse it to their own benefit.
So this action is quite simplyand it's free, by the way, this
is a free tool that I'mintroducing you to.
This action is to set up GoogleAlerts.
Set up Google Alerts.
I honestly cannot believe thatwe have gone 832 episodes before
I talked to you about GoogleAlerts.

(01:07):
But what are Google Alerts?
So Google Alerts is obviously.
Google is the search enginethat we all know.
It crawls the web all day,every day.
It's always finding newwebsites, new LinkedIn posts,
social media posts.
It's finding everything thathits the web, and so what Google
has made available to all of ussince the early 2000s is Google

(01:29):
alerts, where, basically, youcan go just just Google, create
Google alerts and you'll find it.
It's a very simple page.
This is such an incrediblysimple action, which is why I
feel like every single one ofyou needs to take action on this
.
But basically, how it works isyou tell Google what search
words or keywords you want tomonitor and anytime it sees

(01:51):
those words pop up on the web,it will email you with a link to
wherever it's mentioned.
So this is incredibly importantfor all of us as entrepreneurs,
because we all have companynames, for example.
So, 100%, you want to set yourcompany name up as a Google
alert If anyone writes anythingabout your company on the
internet.

(02:12):
You want to find that.
In fact, early on, when Istarted my soccer blog, which
was called Premiership Talk,that's how I found so many
places that we were beingfeatured.
That's how I found PR that Ididn't even know about, because
we were being featured inEnglish newspapers.
How I found PR that I didn'teven know about because we were
being featured in Englishnewspapers.
I didn't live in England, I'venever lived in England, and so
Google Alerts was picking upthat these English newspapers

(02:34):
were mentioning my soccerwebsite and I was getting an
email about it.
So you might be thinking, well,why is that beneficial?
How is that actionable?
Well, what I would then do isreach out to the journalists
individually and I would say hey, thanks for finding my website,
thanks for mentioning us inyour recent article.
I'd love to connect with youand see if there's any more
opportunities for us to actuallycollaborate on some stuff

(02:56):
together.
And that led to so manyopportunities.
But that's an example of PR.
You obviously want to monitorit for way more than just PR for
potential customer service, fortestimonials, for reviews, both
good and bad.
Don't think about Google Alertalerts as just trying to find
bad things or just trying tofind good things.
You want to find allopportunities.
If anyone's talking about yourbusiness, you want to be aware

(03:18):
of it.
And if you're sitting therethinking, well, brian, I don't
have a business just yet, ormaybe you don't have an
established brand just yet, noone's talking about your
business on the web, on theinternet, well, guess what?
You should have.
Every single person listeningright now must have a Google
alert set up for their own name.
So I have a Google alert set upfor my own name for people who

(03:39):
are involved in my differentbusinesses.
I have Google alerts set up fortheir names so that I can
monitor things and see ifthere's anyone talking about any
of our businesses so that wecan jump into the conversation.
If someone is talking about uson Reddit or on social media or
someone left a review somewhere,we want to be able to find
those.
For me, particularly when Ilaunched my book Wantrepreneur

(03:59):
to Entrepreneur that was back in2015, I set up a Google Alert.
Most things that I launch, Iset up a Google Alert and in so
many instances, I actually foundout that people were tweeting
about my book or they werewriting about my book on their
blog or they were including itin a list for Christmas time.
My book was published in thefall.
They were including it in alist for Christmas time of

(04:20):
here's the top 10 books that youshould buy the new entrepreneur
in your life.
And it was so cool to see thoseblog opportunities because I
reached out to them, or thoseblog posts because I reached out
to them for more opportunitiesto say, hey, do you want to do a
live stream together?
Do you want to do a webinartogether?
Do you want to create a blogpost together?
Do you want to create an onlinecourse together?
I was constantly looking forthose opportunities, but it

(04:43):
stemmed from Google Alerts.
So, at a minimum, you wantGoogle Alerts on your personal
name.
You want Google Alerts on yourbusiness or businesses' names or
online course names or yourbook's name, whatever it is.
You want to set up GoogleAlerts, and this is something
that you set it up once and itstays forever, which is really
cool.
Now, if you're sitting thereand thinking, brian, there's not

(05:05):
gonna be much action right nowon my brand names or my personal
brand name, how can I useGoogle Alerts to get an
advantage?
Well, quite simply, if thereare competitors that you want to
mimic their success, you wantto more deeply understand their
success roadmap, their marketingchannels, their PR channels,
where they're investing theirtime and their energy.

(05:28):
You can also set up a GoogleAlert on some of your local
competitors.
You'll start getting insightsthat you cannot get simply by
going to their website, becausegoing to their website is cool.
You can learn certain thingsabout them, but you won't see on
a day-to-day, week-to-week,month-to-month basis.
What is it that they're doing?
Where are they popping up?

(05:49):
Where are they being talkedabout?
Where are they generatingtraffic and leads from?
If you set up a Google alert,you will get an email, either as
it happens, as Google finds it,or you can set it up and say,
hey, just email me once a daywith all my Google alerts, or
once a week, whatever frequencyit is that you want to set up in
Google alerts.
But these are just somereallife, practical use cases.

(06:10):
You can get very creative withthis, but this Action Saturday
episode is all about introducingyou to the wonderful, strategic
, helpful world of Google Alerts.
So go out there, take action.
I'll see you right back heretomorrow with another Solo
Sunday episode.