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
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Using google alerts to find media sources which are more open to PR in the guise of a news story.
Yes, a done-for-you service that’s pay for performance is definitely interesting.
I\’d love a performance-based, done-for-me system. My small tour boat business, like a lot of businesses, requires a lot of my time for tasks other than marketing. It would be nice to turn someone loose with what I\’ve done so far, but also know that I would be paying only for conversions.
One of my namesakes from Florida has been arrested 4 times in the last few years, I get the Google Alerts too! http://florida.arrests.org/search.php?fname=stephen&lname=dean&minage=&maxage=&sex=&startdate=&enddate=&county=&chargecode=&Search=Search
He’s finally lost the smile in the last mugshot.
Too funny!
You’re a nut! Thought maybe you got busted for one to many Frappe Mochaccino’s or something.
Pretty much using Google Alerts the same way as you. My wife uses Alerts & Reader for the international homeschooling group she put together.
A “performance-pay-based-conversion boosting-done-for-you” service would certainly be of interest.
I just tried this with a web designer, and ran into a basic problem.
While I like the idea of performance based, a small level of increase (or decrease) takes forever to test unless you have a lot of conversions. Our test was showing 10 – 20% increase — which is significant to us — but according to the online conversion testing even with around 50 conversions, it still was only 40% reliable and would take another 7 weeks or so to get to a 90% level of reliability.
So unless you had a huge differential in conversion, one way or the other, it just takes a huge amount of time to test.
I decided to call it and use the new design, and pay the fee, because if it did help, it would be much better to use the new design for 7 weeks than to wait for 90% reliability.
I can\’t say if this worked out or not, but I thought it was worth the risk.
Since most tests I\’ve done, that have ended up positive, have these sorts of small increases, it is hard to see how a pay for performance model would work. I know that I may not do this again, just because of these issues with either paying before I have any reliability, or having to wait forever for the test to be reliable and missing out on the additional sales during this time.
Yup, some people just can’t seem to keep their drinking confined to home or a bar. I know a few people like that.
As far as the idea of a “performance-pay-based-conversion boosting-done-for-you” service goes; I would be all over that. I believe that in my case, outside perspective and expertise from someone with the necessary resources would easily help me achieve $400,000/year relatively quickly.
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