When print was king, companies would hire press clipping services to track what was being written about them. This media monitoring service, also called a clipping service or clipping bureau, would provide clients with copies of media of specific interest to them. Today we have online tools, such as Google Alerts, that notify subscribers with alerts for specific terms/names.
How did clipping services work?
Employees of early services would scan periodicals (newspapers and magazines) for mentions of specific names. They would clip the article from the original source and forwarded it to the client.
As a down-home example, imagine that you submit a press release to all the newspapers and magazines within 50 miles of your business. Unless you subscribe to and read each and every one of those publications, it would be difficult to know which publications ran the release.
What is Google Alerts?
While press clipping services still exist, you can track online coverage yourself. Google offers a service called Google Alerts, which emails updates of relevant Google search results based on your choice of topic. You choose a word or subject matter and Google automatically notifies you when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches your search terms.
For example, we have alerts set up for our company name, Trevellyan.biz, and our names, Suzanne Trevellyan and Robert Trevellyan. Whenever these terms are indexed by Google’s search engine, we are notified by email with a link to the source.
Does Google Alerts track social mentions?
As of today, according to Keyhole.com, Google Alerts does not monitor social media mentions.
What does it cost to set up an alert?
Setting up Google Alerts is free, and you don’t have to have a Google account. Go to google.com/alerts and fill out the form.
Google Alerts is a low-cost way to monitor your company’s online presence. If you’d like help setting up an alert, give us a call at 518.392.0846 or email [email protected]. To learn more about the other services we offer, visit our Web Services and Design & Marketing pages.