Ok, you’ll be asking me why would I be bothered to stalk someone (as if you aren’t already, but sure…)?
I stalk purely for business, and here’s why:
- So I can drop a note to someone to be the first to congratulate them
- So I can quote something they mentioned and give the impression that I really care (because I do)
- So I can write an article, EDM or blogpost about him ahead of anyone else
- So I can just be in the know (you got a problem with that?”
If you’d known me and my email marketing philosophy, which #1 is:
Find every excuse to email them.
Legit excuses of course.
So by using Google Alerts, I can do just that, and I’ll show you just how.
Step 1. Head over to http://www.google.com/alerts/, and you will see something like this:
Step 2. Type in the name of the person you want to stalk. In this case, let’s say the new CEO of MaGIC Ashran Ghazi is someone that I’ve been trying to cold-connect but he’s just to responsive to all my other social media advances. :)So I enter his name (you may want to put in different variations too). As a matter of fact, you can even select what sources would you prefer – videos, blogs, news etc.
Step 3. Enter the email address that you want to receive alerts from.
Step 4. Google will send you an email to confirm that you want to “stalk” Ashran. Click verify.
Step 5. And that’s it!
So let’s say I found that Ashran just hit the news, like this one for example:
I wonder if the CEO will have anything to say?
I can then drop him an email with something like:
Of course, that’s just one way to use the data from your stalking. Would love to hear what you do with yours.