It’s 100% true…
Glenn Livingston was arrested for drinking on January 4th, 2012, and you can see his mugshot here.
It’s pretty scary what you can learn using Google Alerts!
Like most marketers, I have routine alerts out on my name, and for just a moment when I saw this come through I wondered if perhaps I’d been out on a bender I’d forgotten last week (even though I haven’t had a drink in 20+ years… not ’cause I’m an alcoholic–I detest that term–just because I find life more interesting and satisfactory without screwing with my mental state)
I also learned, of course, about the myriad of people stealing my products (we pursue them legally now), and a few things about yet ANOTHER Glenn Livingston who’s a pastor in Illinois up to some interesting things from time to time.
But none of these rather mundane results from Google Alerts come anywhere close to the REAL power of this FREE utility…
(Even though tracking your namesakes’ activities can from time to time generate an attention getting headline)
Because most marketers have absolutely NO idea how to use it…
The REAL way to leverage Google Alerts is to first know with crystal clarity EXACTLY what keyword defines your ideal prospect, plus a very small set of related keywords which surround it. Taken together these become your “archery target”… the small space which defines EXACTLY WHO YOU WANT TO BE on the internet, and allows you to more or less ignore everything else.
Once you’ve done that, you can combine Google Alerts with Google Reader Feeds (and some anti-RSS-spam code) to automatically collect pretty much EVERYTHING that happens on the internet that’s relevant to you…
And stop getting distracted by everything else…
Which is the ONLY way to build a hyper-responsive marketing system in my humble opinion.
Have any of you found effective-yet-novel uses for Google Alerts we should know about?
Tell me, I’d like to know!
Dr. G 
PS – I’m considering organizing my network and resources to build a “performance-pay-based-conversion boosting-done-for-you” service. Curious if that’s of interest to any of my readers today
I just got an urgent email from a major keyword service which said something to the effect of:
“Your subscription expired on _____ (date) and we just don’t know how your website can continue to grow without doing constant keyword research”
Assuming you’ve developed a strong center of gravity on a bulls eye keyword, here are 7 ways you can continue to grow your website, business, and profits WITHOUT doing constant keyword research:
- Just process your damn search query report in Adwords already. Seriously, I called your Mom yesterday and told her to lay on the guilt extra thick, because I STILL find 80% of my list is just not doing this, and that’s like flying blind. Adwords is getting more competitive by the day, and you NEED VISIBILITY into which keywords convert and which ones don’t so you can peel and stick, adjust your bids, and empower Google’s fuzzy logic to do ITS thing, which is to EXPAND YOUR PROFITABLE TRAFFIC WITHOUT REQUIRING CONSTANT MANUAL KEYWORD RESEARCH. Of course, this all assumes you’ve installed the conversion pixel on your website (look in the tools section of Adwords). And if you don’t want to do this, maybe you could donate to my favorite charity instead of feeding Google unnecessarily? Enough said.
- Ditto on the placement report.
- Taguchi test in Adwords to improve your click through and strengthen your center of gravity in Google’s eyes. So they can automatically expand to more keywords on your broad match bids. (The stronger your keywords perform, the more Google will try to expand to related words, and who knows better than they?)
- Split Test using Profit Per Impression (www.SuperSplitTester.com) so you can afford to bid higher and command a larger share of voice, which, uh, like encourages Google to try and expand your broad match keywords
- Do an 80/20 Survey on your Opt In List or E-Commerce site, then use the results to improve your Adwords copy, landing pages, follow up sequences, back end products, and sales processes.
- Get on the phone and call your customers and prospects, just to ask how you’re doing and what you could improve. (Forget all our fancy emotional interviewing techniques, just pick up the darn phone)
- Consider updating your site and your landing pages to a more substantial, web 2.0, modern Adwords compliant format.
Most if not all of the above, especially #s 1 and 2, should be done way before you start spending time and money in keyword services outside of Google. And you should make sure you’ve leveraged Google’s FREE tools before you move to the paid services. Only makes sense, right?
When you’ve done all above, the keyword services can be a source of incremental volume, bid efficiencies, and profit. But it’s nothing like it used to be, thanks to all the wonderful free tools Google’s providing, and thanks to their ever improving fuzzy logic auto-expansion algorithms.
Sorry, this kind of pissed my off today, I should probably have held back my tone a little bit, I know it was out of character for me. What do you think?
Dr. G
www.HyperResponsiveMarketingSecrets.com
