By Ryan Skinner (email)
It was called ego surfing, googling yourself, that is. Depending on your name and your habits, you were struck by the amount of data you found about yourself online and the odd interests of people with your name (that's not me, I swear). In today's information economy, both of these revelations apply to your company. You'd be shocked how much talking goes on, and how much touches your company directly, and your products.
With that said, I would advise anyone in marketing to establish a battery of Google Alerts today. Make an alert for your company name, for your key products and your product areas, with daily updates. Then, when any publisher, blogger, competitor, customer or netizen mentions you or your business, you'll know about it. (Just try to avoid being too broad, like getting an alert for every mention of "cables").
It's a few more emails a day, but it's worth it.