Small businesses have a unique place in today’s market. In many ways they are safe from many of the things that bring other businesses down. Many small businesses are unable to offer employee benefits such as 401k’s and insurance and although it is difficult at times, it saves the company a lot of money. Small businesses don’t have a lot of the costs that larger businesses do and, if they do, they are much smaller scale. On the other hand small businesses need all the business they can get, especially during these uncertain economic times. There are few things you can do to protect and build your online reputation. Management of your reputation is key, especially for small businesses.

The first thing that you want to do is to build and maintain a website. It does not have to be anything especially fancy, but clear and precise. The easy it is for a potential customer to see and understand what it is that you do and what you can do for them, the better off you will be.

It is also a good idea to get established on some of the social networking sites. The three main ones are Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin. Thousands of users worldwide log on to these sites every day. There is no better way to get massive amounts of free exposure.

The second thing to do for your Reputation Management is to watch what others are saying about you online. Check your name or your companies name on Google and other search engines frequently and see what others are writing about you. A good way to do this is setup a Google Alert on your brand name with and without spaces and including any misspellings. If it is all positive, then you are in the clear. If it is negative then you are going to have some work to do. It is important to stay on top of this. Small businesses in particular are greater risk for losing business over negative comments, especially if you are not well established.

There are many companies out there, like Elixir Interactive, that can help you keep your online reputation clean.