GoogleI’m a great fan of anything I can find for free that makes running and marketing small businesses even easier.

One of the most over-looked tools, again from the lovely Google, are Google Alerts.

This great tool enables you to monitor the web for absolutely everything – for FREE! But how can I use it?

Well think of it as free research – you can use it to:

  • Monitor trends
  • Follow a specific topic
  • See how often your name or company gets mentioned
  • Keep up-to-date with news in your industry
  • Monitor your clients media exposure for them
  • Monitor your competitors
  • See how quickly your blog posts or website changes get indexed by Google
  • Even follow your favourite sports team (not strictly business, but hey it’s allowed!)

It picks up not just new web pages, but news, blogs and video too – anything on the web really.

And I’m sure you will share a whole load more! What do you use Google Alerts for?