I know that Google are not always everyone’s cup of tea, especially when they start doing things like closing AdWords accounts seemingly at random.

On the other hand, they do provide an awful lot of excellent resources completely free, one of which you should definitely start taking advantage of if you are not already doing so.

This is Google Alerts, a service where Google will monitor any keyword term you want to keep an eye on and deliver information about when it is used to your e-mail inbox.

For example, if you wanted to track ‘linkbuilding’ and every time it is searched, you would enter the word on the Alerts homepage, click the link, confirm the request in the e-mail that Google send and that’s it. Now, every time someone uses ‘linkbuilding’ to search for information, Google will tell you all about it.

This is a superb resource (completely free as well) which you can obviously use in many different ways. However, I would recommend using it to keep an eye on when people are searching for information about you by name.

This is very convenient because it not only lets you see when people are saying nice things about you, but also when they are being less pleasant.

Knowing when people are ‘having a go’ is crucially important for your online business activities, because if someone is criticizing you or your business, it could cause irreparable damage to the reputation of one, the other or both.

Consequently, being able to pick derogatory comments and criticisms as quickly as possible allows you to get to the root of the problem before any real damage has been caused.

As an example, if a customer is complaining about your customer service, it could very quickly get out of hand but if you step in to prevent this happening, you avoid a small problem becoming a much larger crisis.

It takes about 30 seconds to set Google Alerts up, which for the amount of protection it provides for your good name in business is time extremely well spent.  If you’re not already tracking what people are saying about you on the net, you should start doing so right now.

As a ghostwriter, I’ve created hundreds of top quality online marketing products for some of the biggest names in the business. This is not a boast, merely a fact – if they weren’t top quality, they would have been slung back at me.

Hasn’t happened yet, hence my confidence…

And one of the things that I’ve learned during this time is that consistency is massively important no matter what it is you’re doing on the net.

A couple of examples will explain why.

If you use Facebook or Twitter to market a product or service, the site users that you are promoting to must trust you. If you are not consistent, how can they?

Even if you are not promoting or marketing, your ‘followers’ need to trust and respect you. Again, if they do not, how can you expect them to believe a word you say?

So it’s been quite unnerving recently that so many marketers seem to be forgetting this.

For my sins, I am on almost every mailing list you can think of. This is not because I’m a masochist, or at least I don’t think so. But I do need to keep up with what is going on to make sure that today’s new product is not based on yesterday’s ideas and concepts.

And what I am seeing is information that is becoming less and less consistent (and therefore believable) by the day.

As an example, a few days ago, I received a video where a marketer I have actually worked for was pushing this great new ‘technique’ for making money using AdWords (a product that costs $49). Not a week later, I get another video for the same guy’s latest product which absolutely pans AdWords as the worst thing ever!

Total (almost moronic) inconsistency = complete lack of credibility from this point on…

It’s an object lesson in how not to ‘sell’ anything (a product, service or even yourself) on the net. What you post online is the only point of contact your readers have with you, hence, this is the ‘you’ that they know.

If you want to lose your credibility, changing your stance from ‘white’ to ‘black’ and back again is just about one of the quickest ways I know of doing so.

When credibility is important, you must be consistent, it’s as simple as that.

+++++++++++++++

What do you think?

Agree? Disagree? Think that I must be a masochist?

Let me know – I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Here’s an odd thing I’ve noticed over the past week or two.

I’ve had one of my periodical Twitter blasts where I follow a bunch of new people and many of them of course reciprocate.

So, here’s my question/query/beef.

I’ve got loads of people following me now who have lots of followers, they follow lots of people and yet they have posted a miniscule number of ‘Tweets’.

Can anyone tell me what the point of this is?

Twitter is a social networking site after all, so what is going on here?

What is the point of accumulating nearly 2k followers if you don’t want to communicate with them, pweeple (made up word…)?

Okay, I understand that everyone uses social sites in their own way.

But is it only me that thinks that folks like this are wasting their time and (more importantly), the time of others as well as site resources?

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