Autotweet

I know that some people find Google Alerts to be slow, but let me share an example of how well it can work. I posted on Google Alerts for Swine flu this morning at 9:05 ET.

Google Alerts was in the title and text, so Google picked it up and sent it out as an alert at 11:43. My AlertRank account picked it up right away, since I monitor all mentions of Google Alerts with, um, Google Alerts. Wait, it get’s more self-referential later.

I have auto-tweeting set on this account, which tweets 5 of my alerts each hour to a Twitter account called @Marketing_Alert. This showed up on Twitter within a minute of arriving at AlertRank.

I also monitor mentions of Google Alerts on Twitter in real-time with TweetDeck. I have a search for google (alert OR alerts). This search immediately picked up the alert about my blog post, which had been sent to AlertRank, which then sent it to Twitter. So I ended up seeing this alert in Tweetdeck.

What can we make of all this frantic, automatic activity? For one thing, Google Alerts is able to pick up a blog post and deliver it in a few hours. Is that real-time? Of course not, but if you complement Google Alerts with Twitter, you can build a highly efficient monitoring system. And if you retweet your alerts, you can reach those who want real-time response.

There is just one problem. Google Alerts is going to pick up this new post, and send it to AlertRank, which will send it to Twitter, which will send it to TweetDeck. I think I need to take a break and go out and do some gardening.