...Well, maybe not exactly. But many members of the PR team here at Matter were not-so-pleasantly surprised to open their email this morning and find upwards of 125 to 150 messages in Google Alerts, alone.
What gives? you might ask. Isn't that overdoing it?
Well, yes. The mark of a savvy PR professional is not just thinking proactively and implementing creative strategy on behalf of a client, but also includes the regular consumption of industry-relevant news and monitoring competitors, too. Of course, there are a variety of tools and resources which make this task more manageable, the simplest of which is the Google Alert. Yesterday, however, Google revealed that they've added blog monitoring (among other options) to their alert service, which means that every active Google Alert picked up the usual news mentions this morning by aggregating these links to all of us...and every other possible mention of the companies, terms, and products we're monitoring on every blog, group, or website.
Some of our junior staff members feel pretty strongly that Google overwhelmed a lot of unsuspecting users by simply making the switch for everyone previously monitoring news and web results, without regard to the fact that many of them use other services for blog purposes. Then again, maybe it's a blessing in disguise, as many people still do not "get" just how important new media is to the news industry, and this is just one type of wake-up call that will happen in the coming months.
What do you think?