By Zachary E. Cook, Demandware Interactive Marketing

With the new year upon us, it's a great time to not only make resolutions to better your life but also to better your business. But rather than setting lofty goals you'll likely give up on by Valentine's Day, I propose a few realistic steps to help you begin 2009 better than you ended 2008. This series will help you steadily grow your brand's online presence, one step at a time by focusing on incremental, actionable steps. Please share any questions, comments and suggestions and we'll be sure to answer.

Listen to what others are saying about you-and your brand, and your market, and your customers, and your competitors...

Maybe you resolved to mind your own personal life this year, but your brand's online reputation is a different story altogether. While turning a deaf ear to detractors in your personal life may be a sign of confidence, professionally it is simply naïve, foolish and downright dangerous.

Before you can truly jump into the online conversations happening all around you, you need to know who is talking about you and what they are saying. If you keep getting caught off-guard by posts on forums, blogs, Twitter and other online media outlets, it's time to gain control. This doesn't mean scouring every social networking site under the sun, but simply finding the best tools to do the dirty work for you. Here are a few good places to start:

Step 1: Get Up and Running with Google Reader This RSS aggregator should be the first stop on your quest towards monitoring your online reputation. Basically, Google Reader allows you to discover, subscribe and organize all of your RSS feeds-from blogs and forums to search results and Twitter. Start by searching for relevant blogs via the "Add a subscription" link or simply by subscribing to your favorite blog's RSS feed and you're off and running.

Step 2: Hear Everything (well, almost everything) via Niche Search Engines
One of the best ways to stay up to date on what is being said about you and your brand (with minimal effort involved) is to subscribe to RSS feeds on niche search engines. This allows you to receive automatic updates to your Google Reader account anytime your search terms are published. Start with Google News and Google Blog Search (search for relevant terms, people, URLs, etc.) and then move on to Twitter Search (Twitter), BoardReader (forums & discussion boards), BackType (comments) and any other relevant engines you can find. Just search, subscribe and follow.

Step 3: Listen!
Simply listening (to customers, prospects, competitors, etc.) allows you to tap into real buyer personas, identify successful promotions and address negative sentiments towards your brand. Such negative sentiments, (retailer sensored below) can really harm a brand image and bottom line, but before leaving a trail of comments and linkbacks, listen to what others in your market are saying and how they are saying it.

One of the worst things you can do at this stage of the game is to leave a quick comment with a link back to your site-if your online reputation is hurting this will only make it worse. Watch, listen and-when the time is right-engage.