Your reputation is important, especially if you are established and have a job that depends on public perception.  At the same time, the internet can be a dangerous place for your reputation, as one false story or news item can spread like wildfire.  Two tools that can help you keep tabs on what people are saying about you on the web are Google Alerts and Backtype.  With Google Alerts and your Google account, you can enter search terms, and have emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for those terms.  I’ve set up alerts for various permutations of my name (my whole name in quotes, first name and last name in quotes, etc.), as well as for each one of my websites (to track when my sites are mentioned elsewhere).  I imagine this would be less handy if you have a common name.  You can schedule alerts to be sent once a day, once a week, or as they happen.  You can also configure an alert to be accessible via an RSS feed.

Backtype indexes and connects conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media, so people can find, follow and share comments.  Backtype has an Alerts feature, which, similar to Google Alerts, allows you to enter terms, and be notified of findings as they arrive, once a day, once a week, or via the dashboard only.  The difference is that Backtype focuses on blogs and social media. Both Google Alerts and Backtype are free.  While you might not be able to control what people say about you, these two tools give you a head start at putting out any fires. Google Alerts Backtype