[dropcap size=big]O[/dropcap]ne of the first steps in launching a crowdfunding campaign is getting some publicity. That’s a complex undertaking on its own, involving long hours of emails, press releases and social media posts.
Unfortunately, the end result from those efforts can easily go unseen.
How do you know if media outlets picked up your press release? Or how many blogs actually posted your project? What if someone listed incorrect information?
Keeping tabs on these things is a must. Luckily, you can track just about any mention on the internet for free using Google Alerts.
Tracking your campaign with Google Alerts
Creating an alert only takes minutes. First visit the Google Alert page and enter your project’s name. If your title is less abstract and uses common words (monument comic book, for example) don’t worry, we’ll show a workaround later.
The form’s default values are good for most cases. You might want to change them depending on the number of alerts you’re getting. The alert schedule has options between as-it-happens (brace yourself for a potential torrent of emails) to weekly digests.
Google will send you an email alert when their crawlers find your keyword. By default they’ll search anywhere on the internet, but you can set a source preference as well. If you’d like to only be notified about updates from news or blogs sites for example, you can set that in the “Sources” dropdown.
If your campaign is new and you’re not receiving many alerts, try updating the “How Many” selection. Changing from “Only the best results” to “All results” can show a lot of things Google missed.
Finding links to your project
If the title of your campaign isn’t unique enough you can easily be stuck receiving tons of alerts that aren’t relevant. A way around that is to also create an alert for your project’s URL. The process is the same as before, just paste in your campaign page URL and change the “How Many” option to “All Results”.
Not all mentions include a direct link to your campaign, so it’s important to see who is offering you the most exposure.
If you’d like to find out more about who is linking to you, the Moz open site explorer is a great tool. Copying in your campaign URL will display a list of the domains and page titles linking in. Entering a similar or competing project’s URL lets you find sites that could be interested in featuring your campaign as well.
Keeping track of your project’s mentions on the web should be a priority. It’s a great way to gauge how well your marketing efforts are working and therefor, your funding chances.