contributed by eric hall of eh design & consulting

Keeping track of your brand can be a difficult task. With all these on-line, social conversations happening it can be difficult to really know what is being said about you, your company, your products, etc. But knowing what is being said about you, your business, your key markets is CRITICAL. As I’ve said before, if you don’t know about these conversations, you can’t join in the conversations. And, I guarantee, conversations are happening. The only question is – are you going to participate.

So, if we agree that there are conversations happening online (blog posts, product reviews, twitter posts, facebook comments, youTube videos, etc.), the question is “how do I find out about these conversations and join in”?

Well, that a great question and there are a lot of good answers. In a previous post (Two Simple Business Uses For Twitter) I described one method – using the Advanced Twitter Search based on location. This is a great way to find people who are twittering about you or a topic of interest within a certain distance from you (i.e. anyone talking about “antiques” within a 50 mile radius). But, what if you want to join in on conversations happening on other mediums? What if you want to know about blog posts, web site updates, facebook posts, etc.?

The answer now is Google Alerts! Google Alerts are a great way to get regular updates any time Google finds a web page with your search term. Using Google Alerts, you could get an e-mail every time Google finds a new web page that mentions the search term you chosen. You can choose to get e-mails immediately, and daily or weekly digests (summaries). You can also choose to have the results delivered to an RSS feed – my personal favorite. Assuming you choose instant e-mail notifications, you would receive an e-mail every time Google finds a new article, blog, video, image, etc. that contains your search term. What an awesome way to join in the conversation and help to control your brand.

Here’s the basics of how Google Alerts work:

1. Visit www.google.com/alerts and create your Google alert. The main screen (once you are logged in – you will have to have a Google account) looks like this:
   Simply type in your search terms, select a type (for instance – if you only want to get results from blogs, etc.), select How often, and select where to deliver the information to (you can choose RSS later)
2. After you click “CREATE ALERT” you’ll be in the manage screen. It looks like this:
   You can see from this screen shot that I had two Google Alerts set up – both being delivered to an RSS Feed, updated immediately (as-it-happens). So, any time the words EH Design (my company) or Eric Hall (my name) appears in a new page in Google, the RSS Feed will get updated. I’ll know immediately whenever sometime is talking about these terms. Since this time, I’ve added a couple more Google Alerts – basically centered on my around some of my key SEO terms – Fort Wayne Web Design, Fort Wayne E-Commerce, etc.

   Here’s what the RSS feed looks like in my browsers (I’m running Apple Safari – so Internet Explorer would look a little different):
   

3. My final step is to Monitor my RSS Feeds in a convenient RSS Feed Reader. Since I use an Apple, I monitor my RSS Feeds in my E-Mail program (called, Mail). So, just as I would go to Mail to view any no e-mail message, so I go to mail to check if there is a new e-mail message, I also see if there are any new Google Alerts. Here’s what it looks like in my Mail program:

Google Alerts – a great way to keep up to date with your own brand, product, search terms.

Want to know more? Have other ideas about? Leave a comment and share your thought. Or, contact EH Design & Consulting today, and we can talk about all the ways Social Media can help your business!

• This is a monthly forum for discussing: product innovation, development, and commercialization topics in an informal atmosphere
• Product development focus: idea generation strategies, requirement gathering, requirement processing, product development process, prototyping, launch challenges, quality, design verification and validation, portfolio management, supply chain, etc…
• Industry focus: What are the trends in some industries such as automotive, energy, orthopedics, medical equipment, how do these trends affect us locally?

Date: Repeats the second Monday of each month

Time: 7:30 – 9:00 AM

Agenda:

• 7:30-8:00a.m. Breakfast
• 8:00-9:00a.m. Discussion and Networking

Location: IHOP #5465 — 1535 W Washington Center Rd (intersection of Lima Rd and Washington Center Rd), FORT WAYNE, IN 46825-4144 (260-490 4467)

Cost: Free. Just pay for your own meal/drinks.

Registration: Limited to the first 12 people — Please register early to ensure a spot.

Format: Informal atmosphere, but a moderator will be assigned to guide the discussion

Past topics:

• Measuring performance of product development
• Supplier development – techniques and challenges
• Software Development challenges (including embedded software)
• Voice of the Customer: Its importance within NPD, techniques, and best practices

Sam leads a Product Development Breakfast Club on the second Monday of the month. Click here for more information.

It’s been said the “business plan” should fit on the back of a T-Shirt… to force succinct thought requires great discipline…

For all the V.C.’s, Angels and other investors out there — ride the wave and see what ideas might fit your portfolio…

Who said twitter couldn’t be useful?

To learn how to speed up change come to this event on September 3. Click here for more information or to register now.

Wow — what an amazing event, with a fantastic line up of speakers!! It’s the morning of Day two at the Summit with the promise of more fantastic speakers. I was going to post some highlights, but Eric Hall and I found great notes from people on Twitter (search #tls09).

(sample of speaker line up)

Here are a few blog’s all seem to have GREAT notes on them:

http://entermission.typepad.com/my_weblog

http://daveferguson.typepad.com/daveferguson/2009/08/

http://www.timschraeder.com/2009/08/

If you see this post today, all three of these blog’s are taking notes and posting them right away — you can catch a glimpse of some of the great nuggets being tossed into the crowd.

Frequent guest blogger and speaker Clifford Clarke was a contributor to Alan Shark’s new book — CIO Leadership for Cities & Counties: Emerging Trends & Practices .

Congratulations Clifford, we appreciate the forward progress and further ground work you laid with the City of Fort Wayne.  Having worked closely with government organizations at both the state and local levels, I can appreciate some of the complexities you inherited during your time in government service!

To hear a brief interview with Clifford, check out our first installment of  ”Tech Talk” — where I press him for pros and cons of cloud computing.

http://www.sharetogain.com/2009/07/cloud-computing-tech-talk-with-clifford-clarke/

–craig d. crook

A quick overview of Chasing the Rabbit:
• Outracing the Competition
• Dealing with Complexity
• Learning from High Velocity Organizations
• Creating Better Outcomes with Greater Certainty

The following is a short interview Steven did on BusinessWeek.com – let us know what you think, we’d love to host Steven if you want to hear more from him!

The Short Bio:
• Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System (Harvard Business Review)*
• Learning to Lead at Toyota (Harvard Business Review)*
• The Essence of Just in Time” (Productivity, Planning, and Control, 2000)*
• Fixing Health Care from the Inside, Today (Harvard Business Review)*
• Numerous other pieces in the: Boston Globe, New York Times, Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine…
• Senior Lecturer: MIT
• Senior Fellow: Institute for Healthcare Improvement

*Won Shingo Research Prize