Chances are, someone is – and they’re probably using Google Alerts to do it.

Google Alerts allow anyone to create an automated keyword search on you, your company, your products – well, pretty much anything.  (Google Alerts only bring up content sourced in Google searches, but that’s an awful lot of content – web, news, blogs, social media, video, etc.)

For the user, there are several key benefits:

It’s free.

It leverages the enormous search power of Google.

And it never sleeps, working 24/7 to uncover information about you.

For the target, the implications are important:

Virtually nothing you do is secret anymore. If it’s out there, it pops up.

The user will often see the information before you do. This is true of press releases, news content, regulatory filings, etc.

The Google Alert may prompt the user – a customer, vendor, investor – to do something. The question is, what?

Based on our work with clients, here are six steps to take now to understand how to leverage the power of Google Alerts in your own communications strategy.

1.  Create Google Alerts on all of your relevant keywords and assign someone in your organization to monitor them as they occur.

2.  Create Google Alerts for a list of keywords about your segment and competitors to see what they’re doing.

3.  Study the competition’s Google Alerts to see what they’re doing.

4.  Create content that plays to the search power of Google Alerts and then monitor how well the keywords work in practice.

5.  Adjust your content distribution timeline to best accommodate Google Alerts to prime the pump, as appropriate.

6.  And use individual Google Alerts to create new content that addresses the information needs of your segmented target lists.

When you think about it, it’s simple. Google does the work. You reap the benefits!