Over the past year or so, I've written quite a few articles and blog posts about the importance of online reputation management. Small Businesses are especially vulnerable to bad press online because they rarely have the time or the money to hire public relations firms that can help them properly respond when criticism does pop up. Even more importantly, small businesses rarely have the resources or the know-how to track what people are saying about them anyway, rendering a response moot.

That's why I was impressed with Andy Beal's Beginner's Guide to Online Reputation Monitoring. Andy does a great job of laying out not just the need to do online reputation monitoring, but also of sharing some suggestions on how to do it. He lists some excellent tools for helping to automate the process and offers up some insight on guiding the creation of position consumer generated media (CGM).