Google Alerts will help you stay up-to-date

Have you ever seen another Maker in your field share an article via email or any one of a number of social media sites and thought to yourself “how in the world did he find that article?” How do you find articles and stay on top of all of the relevant news in your industry?

Truth be told, without some of the more recent online tools, it would be nearly impossible to sift through unthinkable amounts of information and articles published to the web every day.  I’m going to walk you through using another Google tool which alert you about any content published to the web that you deem to be relevant.

If you don’t yet have a Gmail account, you’ll need to create one here. Once you’re logged in, visit the Google alerts page here. Next enter the terms you wish to be alerted about: the trick is to keep it simple. Rather than selecting  a term like “woodworkers and furniture makers,”  keep it to something like “woodwork”. If you need more coverage, you can create a separate alert and they will both be sent to your email.

Avoid unneeded suffixes and plural words.  Next, select where you want Google Alerts to scour for information using the drop down labeled “Type”.  After selecting how often and how relevant the alerts need to be, select your Gmail account and click “Create Alert”.

When you have created an alert, you will be taken to this edit screen.

Google Alerts: Mange Your Alerts Screen

This means your alert is set up correctly. When you receive your alerts in your inbox, they will look something like this:

Google Alerts will send any relevant content to your Gmail inbox

All that’s left now is to find the articles you like, and share them with your friends! Make sure if you are using text from these articles in your website or blog that you contact the author for permission before hand and refer back to the original article. Of course, it never hurts to have a network of friends who share these things…so on that note, have you come across anything interesting lately?? Tell us about it!