I know I'm stating the obvious, but you -- as a person and as a marketer -- need to be very careful about what you say on the social Web. Words are like tattoos: they may make you look and sound cool now, but you have to consider their long-term impressions.

Your individual brand reputation is at stake. Your company's brand reputation is at stake. And the brand reputation of any future company you work at -- probably for the rest of your life -- is at stake.

What you say for yourself and for your company is one part of the reputation equation. What others say is the second part. So how can you monitor your reputation and the brands you support? It's impossible to do it manually -- there are too many channels and postings. There are two free services I use: Google Alerts and StepRep. I've been using Google Alerts for several years. I just signed up yesterday to start using StepRep. So far, it has found a decent number of mentions/references over a span of years. Time will tell whether it can dig deeper.

If you know of a free or reasonably priced reputation monitoring tool for marketers, please let me know.