One challenging issue for businesses is the ability to monitor the ever-increasing reviews online. While at the outset this may seem to some as yet another online social media issue, the reality is that a business’s online reputation depends on how it is managed. Bad reviews are going to happen, but in oder to negate it’s impact, you have to know about it in the first place.

Reviews about a business can be anything from a one word deal, “The Oak Hotel – Sucks!” to a glowing or scathing three paragraph review that encompasses everything from dining to concierge service to room cleanliness. Believe me when I say that both reviews are going to matter to your business’s online reputation. It doesn’t matter if your business is being discussed on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Yelp, people will read it and your business will either soak in the glow of increased business or sit in the dark wondering where your customers went.

In order to manage your online reputation, you must monitor your business’s name and any derivations online. If you own The Oak Hotel in Boston, you would need to make sure you monitor phrases such as “Oak Hotel,” “The Oak Boston,” “Boston Oak Hotel,” “The Oak,” etc. You need to be completely up to date on mentions of your business whether it is in blogs, social forums, or travel sites.

By monitoring your business’s reputation, you’ll be getting a insider’s look on what customers think of your business, your products, and your employees.

Technorati Watchlist and Google alerts are two easy monitoring tools to help you look into what is being said about your business online.

Sara Hashash and Roger Waite wrote an interesting article about the quietly growing business of online identity management. More specifically, they wrote about how online identity management is changing the reputations of business moguls and movie stars.

We all understand that online identity management is a process. At its simplest, it is a set of methods used to build a reputation in good standing for a person on the Internet. The online identity management or reputation process can consist of any sort of news, blogs, forums, social websites, pictures, media articles, or even videos that affect the reputation or identity of a person. That’s right…anything that is written, blogged, or discussed about you will be popping up on any search done on your name, potentially decreasing the value of your online identity management.

Does that scare you? It should.

When your business is inextricably linked to your name, any bad reviews or references about you can have a hugely detrimental affect upon your businesses. Online Identity Management, OIM, is another tool in the Search Engine Optimization process, but the difference is that OIM has one keyword that will follow across every business that you own, on every site. That keyword is your name.

By utilizing skilled OIM practices that are infinitely familiar with SEO principles, you can take advantage of online identity management processes and make them work for you.

Matt Cutts recently gave a presentation to a techie crowd at a conference and included the PowerPoint presentation slideshow on his blog. To be honest, it’s rather boring, but he did give three really useful tips about how to keep spammers at bay. Here they are (in a nutshell):

• Build trust and reputation
• Don’t be a target
• Frustrate them so they spend time and money

I particularly like tips #1 and 3. If you build your local business as a trustworthy business and one will a solid reputation for good business practices then you’ll be a lot less touchable. Secondly, make it difficult for spammers to easily do injury to you and they will be less likely to do so. But how does Matt Cutts suggest doing that? One way is by using CAPTCHA.

A CAPTCHA is a simple test that a human can perform but a computer can’t. For instance, what is 5 + 4? Any human can add two single digit numbers, but computers can’t do that (yet). They also can’t type a single word that you tell them to type. If you say “Type the word Pickle” then all a human has to do is type exactly what they see. But computers can’t see so they’ll not be able to pass the test.

These simple tests will drive out most spammers so if you put them to use on your local business website then you’ll find yourself deleting a lot less useless comments.

BusinessWeek has recognized that reputation management is an industry worthy of recognition. But I’m not sure they’ve defined it accurately.

To be sure, local businesses are likely the businesses that need online reputation management the most. And most local businesses probably aren’t aware of what it is. That’s why Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim fame mostly gets queries from businesses who just want negative information about them to go away. The truth is, if you have reputation issues that need to be managed then the person who can best manage that is you. And you probably don’t need the negative information to go away; what you need is the prompt that led to that negative information being displayed to be fixed and addressed positively by members of your staff.

So what do you do?

What do you do when a customer or a disgruntled employee goes online to some place like Yelp or another blog and starts talking negatively about you? Should you retaliate? Get even? Talk back?

Actually, there are things you can do before you get blindsided with negative talk and information about you online. One thing you can do is start a blog. You can also get with the program and perform some social media marketing. Beyond that, there are a million other things that you can do to manage your online reputation before you really need to.

What it all boils down to is, you need to develop an online presence. Just because you are a local business doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from being online. And you also need to develop positive relationships with other local businesses with an online presence.

When it comes to online reputation management, the management begins before your enemies start talking about you. It begins before you need it and long before it becomes damaging.