Do you Giga?

I know Google does it, but I like Giga better. www.gigaalert.com.

You give Giga Alert your search term, then it tracks the Internet for it and sends you a daily (or weekly) update by email.

The beauty is it saves you a lot of time because you only receive new material. In other words it saves you from having to trpll through normal search engine results sifting through to find the new from the old that you've read already.

Please don't think "what's the big deal." Here are several ideas to get you started.

New business

Do you respond to RFP's? Do you look for business activity that you can fit into, such as what construction is occurring?

Have Giga Alert send the search to you, then decide if you want to investigate.

I use it to help look for speaking opportunities. One of my alerts is to search for words "conference 2010" that appear in websites ending in .com.au and do not contain the word scientific.

Help your clients

Would you like to improve your customer service?

Let Giga Alert help you to help your clients. If you know their interests, their industry problems, what their roles and responsibilities are, you can sift through the alerts for relevant material and then via email send the information to them.

One of my very clever clients, Leisa Donlan the CEO of the Rotational Moulders Association Australasia has been doing this for years.

In her words "Our customers (members) operate in a constantly changing market. Information is vital.  We use Giga Alerts for daily updates on new articles on the internet relative to our customers' interests.  That's great on its own, but often not all is pertinent. 

We personally sort out the stories that are specifically relevant to our members interest (Eg Water Tanks) and then send a weekly "Media Update" tailored to suit them, which includes just a few sentences on the story and the hyperlink to the rest.  If they want to continue reading, it's just a click. Our members love it!"

Check your competition

Use it to keep an eye on what your competition is doing? Set an alert with a persons name, the company name or a product as the search term.

You might want to hone it to exclude their website to ascertain what is happening outside of their company.

Can you think of - or are using it differently? Let's hear about it.

You can contact Debbie at http://www.debbiespeaks.co.nz/ and debbie@debbiespeaks.co.nz

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LK   #1   11:31 am Mar 15 2010

This is actually quite clever and in an easy to read style. Thanks!

Beattie   #2   09:32 pm Mar 15 2010

The Rotational Moulders Association Australasia; wow, I bet their AGM is a bundle of laughs!

Ben   #3   02:26 pm Mar 16 2010

What you do not mention is that you have to pay for this, other than for a limited free trial.

I would have thought that inclusion of this fact might have been relevant to the blog.

"One of my alerts is to search for words "conference 2010" that appear in websites ending in .com.au and do not contain the word scientific." I actually can do that perfectly well using Google Advanced Search for nothing. I also find no difficulty in keeping myself up to date in matters relating to my clients. I have the suspicion (and I am not paying to find out) that using this I would end up with an avalanche of irrelevant clutter in my inbox. Another triumph for productivity!

Debbie MayoSmith   #4   01:06 am Mar 17 2010

Ben thanks for your comments. As with all web free software, there's an upgraded pay version. I find the free search which allows 100 results split between three different searches is mire than enough. You can have daily or weekly results emailed.

I've been using it for 5 years at least ( the name recently changed from Google Alert to Giga Alert. The funny thing is I do have a Google search and it returns cr-p and virus filled links. I've only had great results from the one I wrote about

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