Using Google Alerts To Monitor Your School Online
Do you know what people on the Internet are saying about you, your teachers, your school, your administrators, your staff members or your students?
You can! And it’s incredibly easy to do using a free service called “Google Alerts.”
Google Alerts is a simple service provided by Google.com that you can use to monitor what people are saying about you and your institution… and respond if necessary.
Once you set up a Google account and create alerts for you and your school you will then get daily or weekly email notices every time you or your school is mentioned online. That means that every time someone writes your name on a website, discusses you in a blog post, shares a comment about your school in a message board or suggests something about one of your teachers, administrators or students, you can know about it… almost instantaneously!
As you can imagine, this is a valuable tool for any school to have. But even more importantly, it is a tool that needs to be used on a regular basis in order to monitor your school’s online brand.
How to set up your first Google Alert:
- In order to set up an alert for your school, you need to visit the Google Alerts website and fill out the short form on the right-hand side of the page. The Google Alerts website is: http://www.google.com/alerts
- Once there, fill in the search terms you want to be alerted about (this would include the name of your school, abbreviations for your school name, administrator names, etc.).
- Under “Type,” select “Comprehensive.” This way you will be alerted about any kind of online content that is posted about you and your school – whether it be in a website, blog or video.
- Then select “How Often” you would like to be alerted when your school is mentioned online. I recommend choosing either “once a day” or “once a week.” If you select “as-it-happens” your email inbox may become flooded with messages in a very short time – only distracting you from more important work.
- Under “Email Length,” select “up to 50 results” and then finally type in the email address that you would like your Google Alerts to be sent to.
- After completing this form, Google will send a confirmation email to the address you used for the alert. Click on the link in that email to confirm your Google Alert subscription. After doing so, you will be sent an email each and every time the search terms you entered are mentioned online.
Additional Notes About Using Google Alerts:
- If you are getting alerted about an overwhelming number of things that do not pertain to you and/or your school, try changing the search terms you are using in your alerts.
- You can have alerts set for as many different keywords as you want. Simply repeat the process above to set up additional alerts.
- Finally, create a Google account to manage your alerts. This step is optional, but highly recommended. By creating a Google account you can see all of your alerts on one screen and can add more alerts, edit your alerts or delete them easily.
So, there it is! Your quick and easy introduction to Google Alerts – a free, easy, and automatic way of monitoring your school’s name on the Internet.
What are you waiting for? Visit the following address now in order to get started: http://www.google.com/alerts
Image by laverrue
