Following up on my "Controlling the online conversation" post from last Monday, I read a good article by Tamar Weinberg on Lifehacker today. She discusses tools to monitor what's being said about you online and strategies to counter negative impacts on your reputation through personal blogging and participation in social networking sites such as Facebook, Flickr and Digg.

She also has some good - and honest - advice for anyone who has found themselves the subject of unfavorable comments or publicity online: "Sometimes you'll just have to deal with Internet meanies and grow that thick skin. When direct methods fail, take the opportunity to be proactive and to create web pages and social media profiles search engines will find and use to push negative inaccuracies further down in the results."

Worth reading and taking to heart.