The onslaught of blogs, discussion forums and user-generated media has changed the flow of information about people, products and brands forever. Anyone with a computer, a video camera or even a cell phone can post information, reviews and comments about you and your brand on dozens of highly visited online destinations.

It's no longer enough to create a website and assume that prospects will learn about your company solely from there. In today's online social media world, businesses of all shapes and sizes must actively participate in online reputation management.

Of course, the best way to manage your online reputation from a business standpoint is to put out great products, provide excellent customer service and honor all your commitments. That's certainly a great start, but you may still need to monitor and respond to what's being said about your organization.Reputation management, however, is not simply about responding to the negative; it's equally important to amplify the positive. Here are some simple ways to get started creating a reputation management program:

• Sign up for news alerts. Google allows you to set up custom searches on Google News for any phrase, such as your name. When you subscribe to this search, either via RSS or e-mail, you'll receive an alert anytime your search phrase shows up in the news. BoardReader.com and ForumFind.com allow you to keep track of what's being said on bulletin boards and forums. If you need to closely monitor what's being said online in real time, use Twitter's search.twitter.com feature.
  
• Participate in social media. One of the best ways to combat negative comments is to make sure you have lots of positive content showing up for searches of your name or company. Best practices such as adding a blog with frequently updated content and information, creating well-written LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, and writing and submitting articles to article directories can help assure that you have a lot of positive content attributed to your name online.
  
• Host a blog. Starting a blog and inviting customers to leave comments is a great way to keep an eye out for potential issues. If customers have an issue, and you help them get the answer by way of your blog, you may turn that issue into something positive and stop them from posting negative comments elsewhere.
  
• Employ social search engines. Claim and enhance your business listings on search engines such as Yelp, InsiderPages, CitySearch and JudysBook. These sites enhance your business listing and allow users to rate your services and write testimonials. The best thing you can do on these sites is create a great profile and encourage your customers to post positive reviews. More of these reviews are being picked up by search engines like Google and shown in their local directories.
  
• Build your reputation. Recently, a number of sites such as Naymz.com and RepVine.com launched with the sole purpose of allowing you to build an online reputation by inviting people to write reviews about you and your work. LinkedIn, the professional networking community, also allows and encourages this practice.

John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, an award-winning blogger and the  author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide

A Site That Reflects Your Biz

Picture this: You're in downtown Los Angeles, about to visit a lounge called The Edison. To get there, you have to walk down a dark alley and through a set of wrought iron gates, leading you down a staircase into the underbelly of a century-old building that houses the remnants of a grungy power plant. But the venue is actually anything but grungy: Plush couches surround authentic generators and turbines, and beautiful chandeliers hang among original piping. Though Thomas Edison was responsible for much of the innovation during the building's era, the inventor behind the nearly 2-year-old lounge is Andrew Meieran.

"It's a melding of technology and aesthetics from that time with [those of today]," says Meieran, 41. "It's an echo of a historic epoch but made applicable to the world now."

Naturally, the grandiosity of the venue extended to the website. Designed by Meieran and Damjan Krajacic of ActiveColor, the Flash-intensive site uses various layers, elements, visuals and sounds to guide visitors through the different parts of The Edison's "universe." "The idea is to get involved and become part of what the site is trying to tell you," says Meieran. "And the key was getting the sense of what was happening down there [in the lounge] out to a mass audience." It's reasonable to say that the site has accomplished its goal: It sees 30,000 unique visitors a month, and the lounge will bring in $6 million in sales this year.