It’s 100% true…
Glenn Livingston was arrested for drinking on January 4th, 2012, and you can see his mugshot here.
It’s pretty scary what you can learn using Google Alerts!
Like most marketers, I have routine alerts out on my name, and for just a moment when I saw this come through I wondered if perhaps I’d been out on a bender I’d forgotten last week (even though I haven’t had a drink in 20+ years… not ’cause I’m an alcoholic–I detest that term–just because I find life more interesting and satisfactory without screwing with my mental state)
I also learned, of course, about the myriad of people stealing my products (we pursue them legally now), and a few things about yet ANOTHER Glenn Livingston who’s a pastor in Illinois up to some interesting things from time to time.
But none of these rather mundane results from Google Alerts come anywhere close to the REAL power of this FREE utility…
(Even though tracking your namesakes’ activities can from time to time generate an attention getting headline)
Because most marketers have absolutely NO idea how to use it…
The REAL way to leverage Google Alerts is to first know with crystal clarity EXACTLY what keyword defines your ideal prospect, plus a very small set of related keywords which surround it. Taken together these become your “archery target”… the small space which defines EXACTLY WHO YOU WANT TO BE on the internet, and allows you to more or less ignore everything else.
Once you’ve done that, you can combine Google Alerts with Google Reader Feeds (and some anti-RSS-spam code) to automatically collect pretty much EVERYTHING that happens on the internet that’s relevant to you…
And stop getting distracted by everything else…
Which is the ONLY way to build a hyper-responsive marketing system in my humble opinion.
Have any of you found effective-yet-novel uses for Google Alerts we should know about?
Tell me, I’d like to know!
Dr. G 🙂
PS – I’m considering organizing my network and resources to build a “performance-pay-based-conversion boosting-done-for-you” service. Curious if that’s of interest to any of my readers today