Case Studies - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 244

search for communities containing topics relevant to her blog, but she
can't do searches for messages containing topics relevant to her blog.)
She inds a couple of active groups for consumer advocacy and decides to
subscribe to them, both to monitor for mentions of her blog and to ind bits
of news that might make worthy blog items.
Google Groups is much easier for her. She sets up monitors for her name
and the name of her blog, but decides against monitoring for the phrase
“consumer advocacy” ater she inds neither groups nor good search results
that represent conversations in which she wants to get involved.
Ethel spends some time looking for online forums as well (using the tech-
niques used by Fred earlier in the chapter) and does ind some boards that
catch her interest. Since Ethel is monitoring issues that are more consumer-
level, it makes sense that she might get more use from online discussion
boards. Her problem is making sure that she doesn't get overwhelmed with
the number of results that she gets.
Step 5: Monitoring search engines
Ethel has to use search engines to set up some traps, but not for searching for
consumer advocacy. Instead, she'll need to use the search engines to monitor
for links to her site. She goes to Yahoo, Google, and MSN and searches for
links to her site as well as the name of her site. She then sets these searches up
as RSS feeds when that's an option, and alerts when it isn't.
Consumer advocacy is too broad a topic to include in a search engine. But Ethel
could monitor for her name, as well as her blog's name. his may have to be
adjusted over time if another famous Ethel Mae Potter appears on the scene.
Ethel could, if she wanted, access Yahoo and the Open Directory and ind
consumer advocacy sites that she could cull for news and posts. However,
she wants to concentrate on blog content to build that community irst, so
she skips those resources. Her last big decision is whether or not she should
monitor news search engines.
Step 6: Deciding whether to monitor news
In Fred's case, monitoring news was the cornerstone of his strategy. He
needed fresh data and statistics about outsourcing. Since Ethel's research is
more personal and site-focused, monitoring news is less of an issue for her.