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Blog: Technology As An Organizing Tool
 Using Alerts to Monitor Online Information
One of the biggest challenges most of us face these days is information
overload. Whether it's staying on top of trends in your industry or monitoring
mentions of you or your business online, it can be pretty time-consuming to
check for new information on a regular basis. Fortunately, there are online
tools that will automatically run searches for you and send you the results.
Probably the most well known of these tools is Google
Alerts. You simply enter the keyword or phrase you wish to monitor, indicate
the type of search (news, web, blogs, video, groups, or comprehensive), how
often you wish to be emailed (as-it-happens, once a day, or once a week), and
your email address. You don't even have to create an account, but I recommend
it, because it makes it much easier when you wish to make changes. In addition,
when you sign up, you have the option of receiving alerts by RSS instead of
email, if you prefer.
I recently became aware of a similar service offered by Yahoo! called, not
surprisingly, Yahoo! Alerts. When you go to their site,
you're faced with a number of choices, including Breaking News, Sports, and so
on, but to track specific information, you'll need to choose Keyword News. Next,
enter your personal name, business name, or other words you're tracking in the
"Include" field. Yahoo! has an additional feature that's lacking in Google, a
"Do not include" field where you can filter the results, which could be very
useful. For example, let's say you have the same name as a movie star. Rather
than receiving an alert every time that celebrity is mentioned somewhere, you
could exclude any results that include the word "film."
You can choose to receive your Yahoo! Alerts as they happen, or once per day, at
either your Yahoo! email address, via Yahoo! Messenger, or on your mobile
device. You must sign up for a Yahoo! account before you can create any alerts.
Do you use Twitter? You might want to sign up for TweetBeep. You can create up to ten alerts at
no charge, and specify too many criteria for me to mention here, which will
reduce the number of irrelevant alerts you receive. There are also three levels
of paid service; the number of alerts increases with the price paid.
A more basic Twitter Alert service is offered by Twilert, which
does simply a keyword search.
Using any or all of the above services saves you the time and effort of going
online to search on your personal name, your business name, or any other word or
phrase you're monitoring. In addition, because you're not doing online searches,
you avoid the distractions that can occur all too easily.
If you're worried about your inbox filling up with alerts, set up a rule to
automatically move them to a specific email folder, or use a separate account
dedicated for this use, making a point of checking it on a regular basis, at a
time that won't interfere with your other activities.
If you don't have time to even monitor your alerts, consider delegating this
task to your virtual assistant. Have the alerts go to your VA, and he or she can
quickly filter through them, forwarding to you only those that will be of
interest.
posted on: 8/6/2009 8:30:00 AM by Janet Barclay
category: Business
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Technology As An Organizing Tool
by Janet Barclay
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About Janet:
Janet Barclay is a Master Virtual Assistant and the founder of Organized Assistant. Specializing in supporting entrepreneurs in the Organizing and Career Services industries, Organized Assistant provides top-notch Internet marketing services to business owners of all shapes and sizes. Janet's Website:
www.organizedassistant.com
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