What is a "Google Alert" and how can it help you?

Google Alerts can be set for any person with a gmail email account.

Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service, offered by the search engine company Google. The service sends emails to the user when it finds new results—such as web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, or scientific research—that match the user's search term. Wikipedia

You can set up Google Alerts for any topic, person, or entity that interests you (including your elected officials). Google Alerts can help you stay on top of web content that is published about you, your elected officials, causes, interests... Anything that might appear in media on the web can become a Google Alert, which will be emailed directly to your gmail inbox.