Professional branding.

Online reputations.

For some, livelihood depends on what’s being said and passed around on the Internet.

Given the power of sites like Twitter and Facebook, online reputation tracking has never been more important.

After all, you want the power to react after someone has hung you (or your small business) out to dry, right?

Months ago, I touched on an application - Salesforce CRM for Twitter - that allows small businesses to track their complaints through basic searches.

Sure, that is all well and good – but now there’s a new, bigger breed of tools that can help you monitor your rep.

Enter Traackr’s Authority List.

Squidoo’s Brands in Public – which is a total (and expensive) waste of time.

And, perhaps the biggest and most controversial one of them all, Microsoft’s LookingGlass.

LookingGlass monitors conversations on social media sites, including Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube, so that companies can track consumer sentiment about their products in real-time. The product can also connect social media feeds with elements like customer databases, CRM centers and sales data within an organization. Most importantly, it will keep a log of what’s been said. Where, when and by whom.

LookingGlass is still in its testing phase but, in good Microsoft fashion, the company is singing its praises.

An excerpt from Clickz:

“While testing the system during the past nine months, Marty Taylor Collins, a group marketing manager for Microsoft, said the information acquired on at least two occasions saved her department from a serious misstep. First, the tool halted her team’s plan to discontinue an ad campaign when it helped them discover that a lead character had quietly become popular. In another instance, a PR disaster was averted during the beta-test release of Windows 7, after a system crashed just after launch.”

LookingGlass appears to be the total package, right?

Wrong.

There’s a hitch.

Microsoft is limiting its LookingGlass services to companies that purchase its suite of Microsoft products.

Way to share to the love Microsoft!

Given the bitter disgust surrounding the Windows 7 release, Microsoft better rethink its strategy.

Or, better yet, Microsoft should take a good hard look at itself through LookingGlass.

According to a new DemandGen Report of business-to-business marketers, business professionals claim social networks are a powerful source for driving leads.

So which are the top social media channels?

Leading the pack was, of course, LinkedIn (58%), followed by company blogs (36%). Surprisingly, Twitter came in third at 31%.

Sites like Facebook (17%) were found to be basically useless – and MySpace wasn’t even on the radar.

More nitty-gritty:

- Small business users say they’ve generated 10 to 15% new leads using social media
- Other small business departments joining the social network fray include: Sales – 41%; Product Management – 21%; Engineering – 13%.
- Top 3 most useful social media tactics: Joining industry groups – 25%; Starting conversation threads – 25%; Answer questions, participating in forums – 23%.

If you have the time, and a little know-how, social media can help ramp up a small business.

Look into lead generation on LinkedIn.

Send out some tweets.

Post to a blog.

It’s all about sharing your brand and spreading the word – just make sure to leave out the sales pitch.

No one wants to read that.  No one.