It’s difficult to manually keep track of who is saying what about your business and its products online, but Google Alerts goes a long way to help you automatically monitor your online buzz. It’s a free service that anyone can configure to receive email notifications whenever you or your business is mentioned in websites and blogs. You can also use it to keep track of how your competitors are faring in your niche, and what marketing strategies they are using.

A Google Alerts Example

Here’s an alert I set up for my business:

Putting double quotation marks in between the business name ensures that only results with the full business name will be returned. I also added “toowoomba” as there are other businesses overseas with similar names, and I don’t want the results to include them. You can also use the minus operator to exclude certain results, just like in Google search (for example: “- brisbane”). Visit Google’s help page for a more complete guide.

Using Google Alerts for your business is a really invaluable way to keep a pulse of your online presence. If you own a business and have not already set this up you are truly missing out!

I recently had the pleasure of developing a new website for Toowoomba photographer Amanda Newman. She does truly excellent work, and since she started her photography business she has been booked out for months in advance.

She provided the following testimonial:

Being a brand new business, having a website of my own was at the very top of my list of ways to get my name out there and show my work to possible clients. I researched for a few months on different Website Developers and just wasn’t happy with the ones I was finding until I came across Andrew. Not many other developers give you the option of having a lot more control of your website, and this is very important to me. Andrew was really wonderful and easy to work with in building my website. He was able to explain things to me so I could easily understand it all and I get many compliments from clients, and other professionals about the simplicity and fun, fresh look of my website. I highly recommend Andrew to anyone thinking of using him, it will honestly be one of the best business decisions you will make. ~ Amanda Newman

Read more about her website