Blogging is not about writing, it is about conversation, it is about knowledge, and about listening. Problogger points out that many bloggers forget to take a step away from their wordpress dashboard to see what is going on around them. The solution? Set up alerts to monitor what is going on in your niche! My challenge for day 10 of the Problogger’s 31D2BBB is to set up those alerts and start monitoring what is going on.
The suggestion from problogger is to monitor 2 different types of things:
- Industry Words – these are words relevant to your blog’s niche. For example if you blog about the wedding industry you might like to monitor words like ‘wedding dress’. If you blog about Britney Spears – you’ll want to be watching for any use of her name. The key is to find keywords that highlight when stories are breaking about your industry but ones that don’t overwhelm you with results.
- Vanity Alerts – these are keywords that are specifically relevant to you. They include your personal name, your blog’s name, company name, brand names and even URLs.
He suggests using Google Alerts, Technorati Alerts and Twitter.
A couple weeks ago, I set up a google alert for my name first recommended by Ari Herzog’s post*. It has helped me to see when people are talking about me, linking to me and using my work. I have definitely learned a lot just from that alert. I am now going to go back into google and set up some alerts for creative writing, blogging and fashion (my newest project), and creative marketing ideas. Currently, I also use tweetdeck to monitor certain things in the twittersphere – I have permanent searches running for #tworco (twitter orange county group), blog design and freelance writer (for job opportunities). I think I will leave twitter alone as it is. Lastly I am going to head to technorati and check out its monitoring system and see what I can add there. I suggest that if you haven’t get started monitoring things that interest you and will feed your creative channels. It will help with blog topics, networking and the knowledge of the new.
What alerts are you setting up and why? If you aren’t, why not? (it’s okay to disagree!)
*I am really going to have to start charging Ari for all the times I mention him…either that or finally meet him in person! 
Related posts:
- Are you actually using your analytics?
- Monitoring statistics: How and why
- What do you monitor daily?
Kirsten
