sonnet media LLC

The word google has been used as a verb for a decade now and since it became an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006 it has been part of our daily lexicon. Anyone who lives their life online has googled (the company insists on the lowercase and that one when referring to the company that we use the uppercase) themselves and for good reason: it’s part of the conversation.

Don’t imagine that it’s just the ultimate in narcissism, if you’re online – that is, you blog or take part in blog conversations – you want to know if someone is talking to you directly, that is, if someone is mentioning you or linking to you. Your referral stats are helpful, but they only work on a link to your site and specifically if someone clicks on the link.∗

A lot of people ask me how they can improve traffic to their site; well this is the most important thing you can do (besides hiring a great publicist). If you’re going to blog you are walking into a very busy café and you’ll never be a part of the conversation if you’re a wallflower. Pay attention to what others are blogging about in your field or subject of interest, comment on their sites and know if they mention you.

Here’s how. There’s only one catch: Google expects you to have a gmail address (if you don’t want to use gmail, that’s fine, think of this as a log-in instead of an email for daily use). They make it pretty easy to get a gmail address (a frankly, I think they’re great and use one for my personal email) and not too hard to set up forwarding to your regular address. Then just go to http://google.com/alerts. Put in your search term, such as “Bud Parr” or “Sonnet Media.” You can leave the “Type” box at comprehensive (this searches news, blogs, etc.). I’d recommend setting the “How Often” option to “As it Happens”.

That’s it, you’ll start getting emails whenever someone mentions you on the whole World Wide Web. If you need help with any of this, just “drop a line”: http://sonnetmedia.net/contact

∗I tell all my clients that if you link to someone, click on the link. You’ll know that you made the link right and you’ll essentially be letting the other person know that you’ve linked to them because you can probably count on them to be checking their referral stats.