Everyone has an online reputation. The question is, “Who is creating your reputation?” Failure to monitor what others are saying about you on the web can cost your business plenty.

To protect your online reputation, the first step is to make sure that you have a presence on the major social media networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter–even if you don’t use the account. The reason? Someone else who is angry with you could impersonate you online. If you do nothing else from reading this post, fill out a profile on these major sites and upload your photo. That way at least, it makes it much harder for people to pretend to be you.

The second step is to use a tool such as Google Alerts. This tool notifies you anytime there is a post the references you, your business, or any other phrase you ask the system to track.

An even better system has just been released by MyFrontSteps.com. Their system allows you to rank any postings that have been made about you. Their “Step-Rep” program has you rank various comments about you as “positive,” “neutral,” “my content,” “not relevant,” and “negative.” Their software optimizes the posts that are positive about you and pushes the negative ones towards the back of the search. Best of all it’s free!

If you’re not taking steps to protect your online reputation, there’s no better time than right now to get started!

Posted by Bernice Ross, CEO www.RealEstateCoach.com.(Bernice@RealEstateCoach.com)

With over 400 published articles and four books to her credit, Bernice has served as a speaker, consultant, trainer, and coach to the leading real estate firms in the country.