The internet presents interesting challenges and opportunities for your brand.

Millions of bloggers with the power to break stories before traditional media, forums and sites ready to champion brands that they love (and take issue with the ones they’re not so fond of)… The potential for good or bad information to spread at the speed of light is huge – but what can you do to influence it?

Quite a lot, as it happens, and monitoring is a good first step for most brands. There’s a wealth of commentary about your brand already out there – if you don’t know what’s being said, you’re not in a great position to manage your reputation, on or offline.

As a founder member of Noize, the online PR division of the Digital Marketing Group, our online monitoring tool is a powerful way of getting to grips with your online reputation.

It’s hard to go anywhere these days without hearing about blogging. Our blog for boiler manufacturer Glow-worm www.needanewboiler.com is one example of the work we’re doing in this area, helping a brand to connect directly with consumers.