Mediator Marketing Tips: Using Google Alerts for Content Curation

Creating regular content is one of the best ways for mediators to build visibility, demonstrate expertise and stay connected with potential clients and referrers.

The difficulty is often knowing what to talk about.

Google Alerts offers a simple way to monitor topics relevant to your mediation practice and identify articles, news stories and emerging discussions that could provide inspiration for LinkedIn posts, articles, newsletters and professional conversations.

Google Alerts monitors the web for new content matching search terms you specify and can send the results directly to you. You can control how frequently alerts arrive, the sources included, language, region and the number of results.

Step 1: Decide What You Want to Be Known For

Start with the audiences and disputes you want to work with.

Rather than setting an alert simply for “mediation”, monitor the issues that your prospective clients are already experiencing.

For example:

Workplace mediators

• "workplace conflict"

• "employee grievances"

• "workplace relationships"

• "difficult conversations" workplace

Commercial mediators

• "commercial disputes"

• "contract disputes"

• "business partnership disputes"

• "shareholder disputes"

Property mediators

• "property disputes"

• "service charge disputes"

• "landlord tenant disputes"

• "boundary disputes"

The objective is to understand the conversations surrounding your market, rather than only monitoring news specifically about mediation.

Step 2: Create Your Google Alerts

Visit Google Alerts and enter your chosen search phrase.

Google will show you a preview of the type of results that search may generate.

If the results are too broad, make the search more specific.

Using quotation marks can also help you monitor a particular phrase, for example:

"workplace conflict"

rather than:

workplace conflict

Step 3: Choose Your Alert Settings

Select Show options before creating the alert.

Google currently allows you to choose:

• How often alerts are delivered

• The types of sources monitored

• Language

• Region

• How many results you receive

• Where the alerts are delivered

Frequency options currently include as-it-happens, at most once a day and at most once a week. Sources can include automatic selection, news, blogs, web pages, video, books, discussions and finance.

For most mediators, we recommend starting with:

• Frequency: Once a week

• Sources: Automatic

• Language: English

• Region: Your principal target market

• Results: Only the best results

You can adjust these later.

Step 4: Create Several Focused Alerts

Avoid trying to capture everything within one broad search.

Five or six focused alerts around your principal areas of work will usually be more useful.

Think about three categories:

1. Your services - Commercial disputes, workplace mediation, property disputes.

2. Your clients' problems - Grievances, complaints, communication breakdown, partnership problems.

3. Your target sectors - Construction, HR, professional services, charities, property management or another sector you want to develop.

Step 5: Review the Results Once a Week

You do not need to read every alert.

Spend around 10–15 minutes scanning for something that:

• raises a useful question;

• affects your target clients;

• highlights a common cause of conflict;

• provides an interesting statistic or development;

• could prompt a LinkedIn discussion;

• could become the basis of a longer article.

Step 6: Turn What You Find Into Content

Content curation does not mean simply reposting someone else's article.

Add your professional perspective.

An article about rising workplace grievances, for example, could become:

“Three warning signs that a workplace disagreement is becoming a formal dispute.”

A story about a partnership dispute could prompt:

“Why business disputes become harder to resolve once positions become entrenched.”

The original article provides the trigger. Your knowledge and experience provide the value.

Create a Simple Content Bank

Keep a basic record of useful material:

Topic | Source | Why it matters | Content idea

Within a few months, you can build a valuable bank of subjects for LinkedIn posts, articles, newsletters and client conversations.

The Key Principle

Do not only monitor mediation.

Monitor the problems, industries and conversations that create a need for mediation.

That is where Google Alerts becomes more than a news tool. Used consistently, it can become a simple content-curation system that helps you understand your market, identify timely subjects and maintain a more relevant professional presence. Need help with getting set up? Talk to our team.