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Andy Beal recently appeared on ABC News to promote his new book about reputation management. One of the things that he suggests for reputation management is a blog. We couldn’t agree more.

In fact, a blog is one of the most important reputation management tools you can have. The daily posts will keep your name in front of search engines and humans for a long time. Every blog post is counted as a separate web page in the search engines and since search engines index web pages, not websites, every time you post a new blog post you are essentially adding one more page to the search engines’ indexes. That’s one more hurdle for those trying to destroy your reputation.

The best reputation management is a pre-emptive strike. If you spend a little bit of time every day doing something online that will get your name and/or company name in the search engines then that will go a long way to combating negative information submitted by someone else. There is no guarantee, of course, that negative information won’t rise to the top, but you can reduce the chances of that happening by having your very own blog. In fact, we recommend a personal blog as well as a company blog. Both can go a long way to combating negative, reputation-damaging information online.

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about online reputation management and why that is important. Today I want to share with you one of the most important tools you can use to manage your reputation online - and it’s totally free.

Google Alerts is indispensable for anyone wanting to business online. Just Google “Google alerts” and you’ll find it. The tool allows you to type in any keyword or phrase and be notified, literally within minutes, of any new information that has been published about you or your company. I recommend that you monitor all content that consists of your real name, any business aliases that you use, your online nickname, your company names, and the names of your partners. You should also include any company brands, product lines, individual product names, and various labels associated with your business.

You can choose to be notified immediately, once daily, or weekly for any key terms that you want to track. This is an important measure for online reputation management because it allows you to stay on top of all the ways that people are talking about you. Until you can do that effectively, you cannot really do any serious reputation management.

One of the newest buzzwords online is Reputation Management. The idea is to monitor what people are saying about you online and address any potentially negative or public relations issues that develop from what people are saying. Virtually anyone - multinational corporation or small business - can receive some fallout from negative content about their business. This fallout could come from any of various sources:

• Competitors
• Former employees
• Disgruntled customers
• Journalistic sources
• Anonymous sources
• Third parties repeating an untested rumor

Not every negative comment about your company needs to be addressed. But there are times when you do want to address something that is said about you. Even then, how you go about it will determine whether you receive any further fallout from your efforts. A blog can help in many situations. By inviting the conversation to take place on property that you own and control, you can have much more influence in the way that your reputation is managed online.

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim recently was interviewed for an MP3 podcast on the subject of online reputation management. I highly recommend the podcast. It covers some very important points for reputation management and every point he makes is an essential part of keeping track of what people are saying about you and how to address it if inaccurate comments are made online that you feel need to be corrected. You can hear the podcast right here.