Yesterday I reviewed my daily Google Alerts  and came across an interesting article featuring two of our university’s student interns. As usual, I forward useful links on to our Marketing Department (actually, my wife) and this was no exception. In fact, this article directly related to an upcoming feature of the university.

To my surprise, 4 cupcakes similar to those on the left appeared in my office. A thank you from the vice president over marketing.  Paired with a Mountain Dew, my breakfast was complete.

Seriously though, I’ll be sending all my colleagues in the Marketing/Communications a walk-through to setup their own Google Alerts. Why? Because I’m the Manager of Web Services and the SEO guy. It’s not my job, but I do love seeing what it picks up.

There are plenty of free tools out there, and Google Alerts is only the start for managing your online reputation.  It’s useful to know where  people are talking about you, but more importantly, it’s useful to know where people are talking bad about you. Finding blogs that complain about your brand or forums where opinions are less then stellar, gives the opportunity to follow up and improve those relations.

Sign-up, it’s free. It’s useful. And you never know what might show up on your desk tomorrow morning.

Filed under: Google, Marketing on March 14th, 2008