22 Social Media Alerts Your Business Should Be Using

by Adam Holden-Bache on Sep 09, 2011 Follow @adamholdenbache

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One of the easiest ways businesses can take advantage of social media is by establishing alerts that cover a wide range of topics. By doing so businesses can quickly monitor any social media activity about their company, industry or competition.

By using free alert tools like Social Mention and Google Alerts (or by using the alert capabilities of your social media monitoring software) you can set up alerts in minutes and have them delivered to your email inbox or RSS reader.

So what should you track? Here’s a list of 22 social media alerts your business should consider:

YOUR COMPANY

1. Company name
2. Company name common variations and misspellings
3. Company domain name(s)
4. Names of products and/or services
5. Names of key employees
6. Links and shortened URL’s
7. Twitter handle of company name(s)
8. Twitter handles of key employees
9. Web site and blog post copy to find if others are stealing your content

INDUSTRY

10. Industry terms/keywords
11. Conferences and events
12. Hash tags
13. News/breaking stories
14. Industry author/blogger/expert names
15. Industry author/blogger/expert Twitter handles

COMPETITION

16. Names of competitive businesses
17. Competitive domain names
19. Your competition’s shortened URL domain
19. Names of competition products and/or services
20. Names of competition key employees
21. Twitter handles of your competition, their products and key employees
22. Events managed by your competition (conferences, webinars, etc.)

BONUS IDEA:

23. Use alerts as idea generators for blog posts

If you end up creating a wide range of alerts, consider setting up ways to organize the notices. Within your email software, creating filters to organize the messages might be necessary to avoid inbox overflow. Using an RSS reader is more manageable, as you can group your alerts into various folders.

—-

For those of you using alerts, do you find them valuable? Do you have any other recommendations for a type of alert businesses should consider?

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Post Author

Adam Holden-Bache

Adam is the CEO/Managing Director at Mass Transmit. Mass Transmit provides the tools, services and guidance for enterprises and organizations
to create and manage digital communications across multiple marketing channels.

... View Full Profile

Brandon Pierce

Very good suggestions. I hadn’t thought to use the Twitter handles as alerts too.
http://www.indiemark.com/ Indiemark

First I’ve heard of Social Mention, good find!
http://www.bloggingprweb.com/links-love-sept-5-9 Links You May Have Missed This Week

[...] 22 Social Media Alerts Your Business Should be Using (socialfresh) One of the easiest ways businesses can take advantage of social media is by [...]
http://twitter.com/beccabernstein Becca Bernstein

I work for a very competitive industry and have all of my competitors tweets sent to my phone. And while there are evenings when I need to keep it on mute, it’s a great way to stay informed with what they’re talking about. Great tips, Adam.
http://www.philb.com/whichse.htm PhilBradley

Unfortunately it looks as though SocialMention may have died. Try Icerocket or surchur instead.
http://www.masstransmit.com/ Adam Q. Holden-Bache

Thanks Becca. I agree that alerts can be overwhelming at times, but am always glad to have access to the info. Personally I use Social Mention for my most important keywords and have those hit my inbox, then use Google Alerts via RSS for everything else. Then I can review those on my own schedule. I might try your approach with phone delivery for tweets/alerts I don’t want to miss- good idea there.
http://www.masstransmit.com/ Adam Q. Holden-Bache

Thanks Scott. Social Mention is a good tool. I’d suggest using it in combo with Google Alerts for your most important keywords- they don’t always deliver the same results, but between the two you’ll cover off on nearly all mentions.
http://www.masstransmit.com/ Adam Q. Holden-Bache

Figures that would happen with the publishing of the post- thanks for the heads up. Seems they are experience some server issues but hopefully will be operational again shortly.
http://sparkboutik.com/social-media-2/weekly-roundup-september-11th/ Social Media Weekly Roundup | Spark Boutik

[...] 22 Social Media Alerts Your Business Should Be Using [...]
http://www.deloprojet.com deloprojet

I will use the suggestions in paragraph ideas bonus otherwise be lost a lot of time to sort the good from the bad.
http://webwirksam.ch/social-media-days--1240/ Social Media Days | Web Wirk Sam

[...] Fehler: man rechnet nicht mit dem Social Web. Man hat noch nicht von Social Media Monitoring und Google Alerts [...]
http://3numb3rs.com/3b/social/business-22-social-media-alerts/ Your Business: 22 Social Media Alerts

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http://www.mynotetakingnerd.com/blog Lewis LaLanne aka Nerd #2

This list is awesome!

I’ve always been too lazy to sit and think about all these terms to enter into google alerts. Also been conscious of how overloaded your box could get with all this influx of awesomeness.

A easy way to generate another post here is Part 2 of this where you do a quick 2-5 minute screen cap video showing how to sort all everything in at least one email service *cough gmail*. :)

Thank you Adam for sharing this here!
http://www.reviewpro.com/online-reputation-and-social-media-management-for-hotels-recommended-readings-of-the-week%e2%80%93-september-16th-5376 Online Reputation and Social Media Management for Hotels: Recommended Readings of the week– September 16th | ReviewPro

[...] you set up the right alerts for your Hotel yet? 22 Social Media Alerts Your Business Should Be Using By Adam [...]
http://amandahaddaway.com/2011/09/20/social-media-monitoring/ Social media monitoring « Amanda Haddaway

[...] said about them. There are some simple and free ways to do this. For example, I use Google alerts. This list provides 22 examples of things that you might want to monitor. LD_AddCustomAttr("AdOpt", "1"); [...]
http://premiumshare.com/uncategorized/how-the-life-insurance-industry-can-use-social-media/ Life PremiumShare

[...] Google and other alerts for a wide range of topics on your company, industry and [...]
http://blog.websenat.de/2011/10/04/was-sollte-man-social-monitoren/ Was sollte man Social Monitoren? – Websenat

[...] man diesen Tools monitoren?” Eine schönee aber sicherlich nicht komplette Liste kann man bei Socialfresh finden:YOUR COMPANY1. Company name 2. Company name common variations and misspellings 3. Company [...]
http://twitter.com/Tyler_UT_SEO Tyler

These 2 free tools no longer work :(

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