Using Google Reader And Google Alerts

One of the key activities to building Market Leadership is to keep up to date with what is happening in your market. Two of the main methods used to do this, and what we'll be teaching you about today, are Google Reader and Google Alerts.

Starting off with Google Reader, Google's RSS reader, Ed provides an overview of what Google Reader does, how to set it up and how to subscribe to some feeds. Ed demonstrates how to search for feeds in Reader that may relate to your micro-niche and how to look through the search results for appropriate feeds in terms of frequency of posts and the number of current subscribers. This is a very useful feature of Google Reader that is often overlooked.

Ed also walks you through the functions of Reader and what settings to use to get the most out of the service, including how to manage your subscriptions (organizing them into folders is highly recommended), using 'List' view and the ability to send information directly to Posterous, Facebook, Twitter and others.

Following on from Google Reader, Brent from Market Samurai introduces Google Alerts. In Brent's lesson he explains what Google Alerts are and why they are so valuable, how to setup your Google Alerts and link them to your Google Reader account, and how to use the information that Google Alerts delivers to stay on top of your micro-niche.

Think of Google Alerts as a monitoring or news clipping service. Once you have it setup, Google Alerts does the hard work for you and collects information based on the search terms you set. It's your personal research tool that delivers its results via email, via Google Reader or via you logging in to your Google Alerts account.

Brent also provides some excellent best practice tips to use with Google Alerts, like using quotations around your search terms to keep the results relevant and focussed, how to refine your search terms, the type of alerts to look for, how often the alerts should take place and what delivery methods to use. One of the best features of Google Alerts is the ability to add your alerts to your Google Reader account, which Brent shows you how to do.

Actions For The Day - 1. Create your Google Reader and Google Alerts accounts. 2. Subscribe to some key RSS feeds that will provide you with relevant content and news for your micro-niche. 3. Setup some relevant search terms for Google Alerts following the recommended settings. 4. Link your Google Alerts account to your Google Reader account to make the whole process more streamlined moving forward.