Imagine having a supposedly fruitful meeting with a prospective client, who is more than convinced about the benefits that your company, product or services can do for him, and is ready to sign an exclusive contract with you during your next meeting. Suddenly, the client decides to make a random search through Google about his new business partner -- then is suddenly faced with returned pages of complaining customers and other people all stating their bad experiences with your company.

Nothing can turn a prospective client off more than reading something like this from the internet. The results would be lost business opportunities - and a badly soiled online reputation that could spread like wildfire.

So, what are you doing to protect your online reputation? That’s a question most businesses and professionals should ask themselves, particularly in a world that is shifting towards online resources for their research and other business processes. This is much different than the usual gossip in clubs or the cafeteria, as negative entries online can damage your reputation and haunt you for years to come -- unless you do something about it now.

There are two things you should remember when trying to protect your online reputation. First is to know what people in the online world are talking about your company, business or profession. There are several tools and methods for you to do this, some of which were discussed earlier in this blog. Second is if you do find out something negative posted against you in a blog or a forum somewhere -- what are the next steps that you can do.

What most people do is to treat such negative entries the way you would handle negative PR -- by trying to douse the fire and explain your side of the story. Although this would work in some cases, in other cases this would only add fuel to the fire. What you can do is to drown out these negative publicity completely using positively reinforced entries that would appear in search engine return pages more readily than the negative ones.

This is one method that is considered one of the most effective elements in any reputation management project. You can learn more tools and methods on how you can protect your online reputation by following the ten steps outlined in the “Ten Easy Ways to a Positive Online Reputation Management” as discussed in earlier entries in this blog. So, come back here for more!