Branding, Intellectual Property and Google Alerts

This Tuesday’s Tip is about Google Alerts.  Get one, use it, pay attention to it.

What is a Google Alert?

It’s a way to let Google do some of the work of keeping you updated and informed.

You can set up a query for anything, and Google will email you a summary of links of instances where your search terms appear on the web.  On an ongoing basis.

Say you are fascinated by–I don’t know–koala bears.   You can set up a Google Alert for the term “koala bear” and get a daily, weekly, or real-time email of websites where that term appears.  You can choose to be informed about every website or only news stories, blog mentions, videos, or books.  You can choose to let Google determine the best matches and email you only those, or you can opt for all results.

As an artist, this can work for you in three ways.

The first, perhaps, is obvious.  Research!

Writing about koala bears?  Let Google do some of the grunt work, and have new info delivered to your inbox daily.  Of course, you will still need the library and reference books, but a Google Alert can save you time by letting you know there’s a new book being published next week.  You can be the first to request it on Inter-Library Loan.  It’s like your own personal research assistant for content.

It can help with market research also.  If you’re trying to put together a book proposal for a non-fiction work–the definitive treatise on koala bears–you’re going to need to include research on the competition.  How many books about koala bears are there anyway?  Maybe you should write about apple cider instead.

The second reason has to do with branding.  Whether you are doing business under a company name or your own, it’s probably a good idea to know how else that name is being used.  In my case, it turns out there are quite a few other Elaine Smiths out there.  (I’d have bet on the Smiths, but the Elaines were more surprising.  I don’t meet too many Elaines–Seinfeld and The Graduate notwithstanding.)

Quite a few of the links in the Google Alert I have on my name are one-offs.

Obituaries head that list, of course.  Surprisingly, they are often encouraging.  In fact, I hope I do as well as the Elaine Robb Smith who passed away in 2009 and was described thusly:  “”Even into her 90s, Elaine Smith could do a smooth time step, tapping her way down the hall of her adult-care facility using her walker.”

There are, however, a small circle of us who make recurring web appearances.  There is the Elaine Smith who is a member of the Scottish Parliament.  There is the Elaine Smith who designs outdoor pillows.  There is the Elaine Smith, who, sadly, recently also passed away, who founded Therapy Dogs International.  There is Elaine Smith, House Member of the Idaho State Legislature.

I don’t know if I have anything in common with these ladies other than our name, but it’s kind of fun to see them surface time after time in news stories and to follow their careers at this anonymous distance.  (I did once write to Representative Smith of Idaho, because she was courageously standing up for women’s rights, and I thought I would just say thanks.)   Fortunately, they all seem to be eminently respectable, hard-working, contributing members of society.  I’m not sure what I would have done if a porn queen popped up.  Fortunately, I’ve never had to decide–but it would have been a branding issue, for sure.

Almost certainly, these women know nothing about me (unless they have their own Google Alerts), but most days, I see them mentioned in my inbox.

And that brings me to the third, and possibly most important, reason to have a Google Alert on your name.

The concept of  intellectual property is going through massive mutations in the hearts and minds of internet users.  The laws, however, remain the same.  You write it, you own it.  It should not be copied, distributed, posted, etc. without your permission.  No independent artist, however, can safeguard their work completely.  We don’t have the time or the resources.  But a Google Alert can help.

Cautionary tale:

I said earlier that I see the other Elaine Smiths appearing in my inbox with fair regularity.  Usually, when I get my daily Google Alert, I scan it, checking them off in my mind.

There’s the pillow lady.  There’s the dog lady.  There’s the member of  Scottish Parliament.

I check it out, check them off, and move on with my day.  One day, however, a couple of years ago, I got my Alert email, and the internal dialogue went like this:

There’s the pillow lady.  There’s the dog lady.  There’s the member of  Scottish Parliament.  Huh.  That sounds like my play.  That is my play!  That’s me!

A small theatre was advertising a reading of my play.

Now, I had submitted the play to them.  They, however, had never approached me for my permission to do a public reading or even informed me it was happening.  In the theatre world, this is a BIG no-no.

I would never have known without the Google Alert.

I give the theatre the benefit of the doubt.  It may have been something that slipped through the cracks.  Possibly, several people each thought somebody else had been in touch with me.  I got in touch with them, and they were apologetic.  They offered to cancel the reading.  Since there are not usually any really good reasons not to have a reading, however, I told them they could proceed.  No real harm done, except that I might have been able to be there if I’d known about it.

On the other hand, it could have been a production, and that would have been a big problem.

So, set up a Google Alert on your name and on your titles.  Pay attention to it.  Make sure that when your own work pops up in the middle of the snippets about therapy dogs and pillows and the Scottish Parliament that there’s a chance you’ll know it.