If you’re one of our regular readers, you’ll know that we advise real estate agents to make use of online monitoring services - such as the free Google Alerts - to track their online reputation and any mentions of their brand. Today, we’ll take a look at some other ways agents can use Google Alerts to keep their online marketing on track.
1. Track who’s linking to your website. While this isn’t a completely watertight way to track inbound links, setting up an alert for “link:yourwebsitename.com” could pick up on some that you might otherwise miss. A quick “thank you” comment or email as a follow-up is always a good idea.
2. Monitor mentions of/links to your competitors. You could also set up a “link:websitename.com” alert for any competitor websites, thereby keeping track of what kind of content is working for them. Similarly, you could set up an alert for your competitors’ names to track what they’re doing right (or wrong), and adjust your own strategy accordingly.
3. Find a steady stream of blog post ideas. For real estate agents who love to blog but often run low on ideas, this is possibly the most practical way to use Google Alerts. Even an alert for “real estate” in your area can bring in plenty of good jumping-off points. Keep a document with any interesting links on hand and you’ll never have writer’s block again.
Five Google Alerts should be more than enough to keep up with, but there are plenty of other ways you could use the service - tracking a listing address, a client’s name, or the name of a particular location you’re interested in, to name just a few.
One final tip: If you’re not keen to see five daily emails from Google crowding your inbox, you can opt to view your alerts via RSS, as long as you have your own Google account set up.
We’d love to hear how you make use of Google Alerts, so let us know your tips and ideas in our comments.
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Great post, I never thought of these ideas though I use google alerts now. Thanks.