Let’s take the public Google Alerts account I created for the food author Michael Pollan as an example. These alerts are sent to a Twitter account, and have generated a good list of followers. The auto-twitter page for this account on AlertRank shows you the different ways you can control which alerts are tweeted.

1. Add a hashtag to the end of each tweet to help people find it with a Twitter search tool. You can add as much text as you want here, and AlertRank will automatically trim the alert to make sure the total tweet is within 140 characters.
2. Use the AlertRank quality score to control the importance of the alerts you tweet. The AlertRank score is based on Google PageRank and a collection of other influence factors. The higher the AlertRank, the more influential the source of the alert is.
3. Select the search terms to include in your tweets. You can collect alerts from up to 1,000 search terms in a single AlertRank account, but you can limit the tweets to just the terms you want.
4. Restrict tweets to those alerts with the right page features. For example, if you want to only tweet alerts that allows comments or trackbacks, you can set these options on. That gives you a set of tweets that are suited for a blog outreach campaign.
5. Depending on the amount of alerts you get in your account, you can restrict the number of tweets to a maximum per hour and per day.

The best part is that all of this tweeting is automatic. Since the accounts on AlertRank are free, you can create multiple accounts, each with their own search terms and levels of auto-tweeting control.

When I created the account, I deliberately made it as clear as possible that this was an automatic process, and not a real human running the account. I used the default avatar, used an account name that explained the purpose, followed nobody from this account, and stated in the bio that the tweets were automatic. I’m sure that if I had adopted a persona by using the name and picture of a real person, the number of followers would have been much greater.

So what is the value of this experiment? It shows that by simply auto-tweeting about a specific subject you can attract followers interested in learning more. 1,570 followers may not seem like much compared to the millions promised by the various pyramid schemes being promoted, but these followers are all self-selected. They want to learn more about this topic. It is the ultimate opt-in lead list. The pyramid schemes are all based on the existence of auto-follow bots on many accounts. If you follow millions of people, a high percentage will auto-follow back, but what is the value of this completely non-qualified list? Bulk growth of Twitter accounts is so early 2009. The real key to Twitter marketing with be opt-in lists like this one.

If you use this technique, you can grow a list of engaged followers, and then add whatever messages you want to the account. It isn’t spam, because everyone on the list asked to be there. Let’s say you are a band that wants to build a list of followers interested in your type of music. Just auto-tweet the appropriate alerts, and then add offers for your CDs at regular intervals. The same idea can be applied to all types of ecommerce.

I told AlertRank to autotweet all the alerts that were about the restaurant, or Boston and Harvard Square. I excluded the alerts about competitors. I also asked for hashtags #harvardsquare and #boston to be added to all the tweets.

The tweets are now appearing, and they are an interesting mix of local news and mentions of the restaurant. It is still early, but I think this will be an effective example of how an automatic Twitter account can create a sense of location-specific buzz for a restaurant.

As an example, a real estate lead may be interested in home listings for a specific area. He could be sent an introductory message, then be placed on an automated e-mail drip campaign where updated home listings are sent to him on a weekly basis.

E-mail drip marketing can be an extremely effective way to brand a business to big ticket leads that may still be in “research mode” for weeks if not months.A lead may be more inclined to do business with a company whose email drip marketing campaign is effective, meaning that the company has sent him helpful information throughout the research period.

All you have to do is create Google Alerts that will generate stories your leads will find useful, select the best one every few days, and email it to your leads as an FYI email. It is a great way of staying in front of them without asking for the order right away. You are a great resource, and your information is always so useful. This will build the trust you need when you do try to close.

You can create a social media version of drip marketing with automatic Twitter delivery of Google Alerts using AlertRank. You can tell AlertRank to post a couple of Google Alerts a day to your Twitter account, and then send an email to your leads telling them you have a free information resource set up for them on Twitter. In between the automated tweets of Google Alerts you can tweet additional messages by hand about specials, discounts, etc. The best part is that Twitter searches for the keywords you are auto-tweeting about will bring in new leads as followers.

It’s so easy to set this up with Google Alerts, that every consultant and freelancer should do it for each client. Just create a Google Alert for the client’s name, company name, and a few industry keywords. Here’s an example for a well-known CEO: “steve jobs” OR “apple computer” OR iphone.

When an interesting alert comes along, you can copy out the link and paste it into a new email that you send as an FYI. You don’t have to read each alert email, just try to check them every month or so for something good on each client. I wouldn’t forward the Google Alert email itself. Revealing that you have a Google Alert on them is a little too aggressive, and defeats the idea that you came upon this naturally and immediately thought of them.

We even give you a set of cool badges you can add to your site to show people how to find your alerts. I’ve added my own to this blog’s sidebar.

A public account lets anyone view all your alerts, sources, and analytics pages, but they can’t change any data or delete any alerts. The public account URL is http://www.alertrank.com/public/[username]. Mine is at:
http://www.alertrank.com/public/adam

Public accounts also let your visitors create custom PDF reports from your alerts. I created this PDF report by selecting all the results for the search term Google Alerts over the last 2 days. I also ordered them by the AlertRank quality score to show the most influential results first.

We think that public accounts are a great tool for online PR, SEO and marketing companies to sell their services. You can show a potential client exactly what is being said about them and their competitors on the Web. This really explains the need for an active reputation management program for every organization. It’s the classic case of show rather than tell.

All you have to do is mine data from Twitter user profiles that you can craft into an easily repeated factoid. The secret to gathering data from Twitter profiles is this simple formula:
intext:”bio * [keyword]” site:twitter.com

Let’s say you work with hospitals to create social media campaigns. You can first determine the number of hospitals on Twitter with the Google search:
intext:”bio * hospital” site:twitter.com

This search currently returns 1,100 results, which can be the foundation of your release. Each of these search results will lead you to a Twitter account where you can gather additional data. You only need a reasonable sample to determine some useful statistic that can be turned into your factoid hook. This allows you to craft whatever message you need to present your case as a marketing firm that can help hospitals improve their social media presence.

If you find that the average follower count for hospitals is low, you can use the press release to announce your white paper on gaining more Twitter followers for hospitals. If you find a few hospitals with a high follower count, you can study their tweets and publish a white paper on the most effective uses of Twitter by hospitals.

Once you establish yourself as a Twitter expert for hospitals, you can create a Google Alert for this same search that will notify you whenever a new Twitter account is created with hospital in the bio. This will provide you with a steady source of leads for your marketing services.

This approach is open for every industry. If you want to attract real estate professionals, write about how they can search for real estate leads with Google. Tell legal marketers the best search terms for leads for a law firm. This formula can be repeated any number of ways.

The secret is getting your site listed in Google Alerts for the right keywords. This is a matter of applying proper search engine optimization techniques, and staying focused. The other day I showed how this site is listed in Google Alerts within hours of publishing a new post. Here is the evidence. I posted at 9:05.

At 11:43 Google delivered that post to me and everyone else looking for information on Google Alerts.

In future blog posts I’ll be spelling out my program for getting your site into Google Alerts and generating the most qualified leads. Subscribe to the free feed for this blog, so you won’t miss a single detail.

All you have to do to turn this into a stream of B2B sales leads is to tell Google Alerts exactly which kind of pages you want contacts from. To do this, just add a keyword that describes the industry you sell to:
restaurant inurl:contact

There you go, 500,000 pages of contacts for restaurants. A little too broad? Add a location and narrow it down to just local sales leads:
restaurant boston inurl:contact

Now all you have to do is create a Google Alert for this search, and you’ll be notified whenever a new page of contacts in your industry and local area is added to the Web.