Google Alerts: A Tool
to Spread the Mission
By
Noor
As I explained in
an article for a
much earlier Newsbrief, one of the advantages to
using the Internet to spread the Mission
is that the things you post and create have a very
long life, often remaining where you put them for
years for new seekers to find. Therefore, I
recommended to try to put a piece of the
Mission in as many spots as possible all
over the web, so more and more people can stumble
upon them and become interested.
However, it is also true that not all parts of
the Internet are equal - there are many pages,
blogs, etc. that few or no one will ever access
again. The world wide web is an enormous
place, and a lot can fall through the cracks.
Therefore, especially because we are still so small
at this time, it is important to focus our efforts
to create the largest and most widespread impact.
For online outreach, this means trying to figure out
what the best places would be to spend our time
posting and linking to the Mission
website.
To help me decide where the most effective places
to post would be, I have recently begun using a
service called
Google Alerts.
This service allows you to take advantage of the
fact that Google is constantly searching the web for
new websites and pages to add to its search engine.
By setting up a Google Alert for a certain word,
term, or phrase, you can have an email sent to you
whenever Google finds that term in a new place on
the Internet!
Therefore: I have set up a Google Alert for the
word "Maitreya." Once a day, I receive an
email with links to all the new places Google has
found the word "Maitreya" - from blogs, to news
sites, to Buddhist forums, to channeling and New Age
discussion groups (one thing that Google Alerts
seems to exclude is social networking sites like
Facebook, possibly because there are far too many
updates per day to track usefully). Then, I
can post a brief message on each of these places
proclaiming that the Maitreya is
here and giving a link to the website.
This way, rather than randomly posting all over
the web, I am posting specifically in areas where
the name Maitreya is already being discussed, so it
is more likely that viewers will be interested in
the Mission and what we have to
offer. Also, these areas have just been
created or updated (which is why Google has only now
found them), meaning they are fresh and likely being
viewed by people, not lost in a dead part of the
Internet never to be seen again.
With this method, I feel that the 15-20 minutes a
day I spend posting is much more directed, focused,
and effective than the much greater amount of time I
was spending before trying to find good places to
put something!
I am only tracking the word
"Maitreya" - however, there are many other words
that could be used to similar effect (Messiah, end
times, Mehdi, return of Christ, Kalki Avatar,
unification of religions, Seventh Angel, Seven
Seals, etc.). Therefore, if you also see the
potential in the Google Alerts tool, I would
encourage you to create alerts for one or a few of
these terms. If each of us takes on a few, we
can together get information about Maitreya
and the Mission to all the places
on the web where people are seeking - seeking for
the Messiah, seeking for the Truth, seeking for what
we have to offer.
Those are the people we are
trying to reach. They are most likely to be
the Elects. So let us direct our efforts to
find them first, and quickly!
Note: If you
have questions or would like more information on how
to use Google Alerts, you are welcome to
contact me.