Friday’s guest post is by Robert Stretch, author of VA Mortgage Center blog:

For business people, few things are more important than reputation. Thanks to the worldwide web — which sometimes feels as vast as a universe-wide web — monitoring your online reputation demands serious attention.

Only a few belittling remarks can spread like wildfire online, and damage your online image in no time.

By taking some simple precautionary steps, you can not only reduce invalid criticisms about you, but you can also promote yourself. In fact, having a good online reputation is essential to branding yourself or your business.

Just last week, BtoB Magazine Online reported that Dow Jones hired an online marketing company. The company, Marchex Inc., will work with Dow Jones Local Media Group to make an exclusive online reputation management plan.

By doing so, Dow Jones’ customers get the privilege of responding to blog posts, news and any mention of DJ in social networks.

Not everybody or every company has the resources to hire a third-party that monitors their online rep. Dow Jones is several steps ahead of where some small businesses are. For one thing, the company already owns dowjones.com, dowjones.net and dowjones.org.

Why? Well, it wouldn’t look great if one of those got bought by an angry customer whose goal is to take down the company.

Here are the 4 things you should be doing at a minimum to protect and improve your online reputation, no matter how big or how small your company is. Read More→