One of my greatest pet peeves is an absolute hatred for the forwarded email. Of course, not all forwards are created equally. The obvious jokes are an inconvenience, the warm and fuzzy moments of zen are trite, but the unsubstantiated political reports are downright infuriating.

Certain members of my family love to forward these things on. The other day I got one reporting on the fact that Barrack Obama was raised a (God forbid) Muslim and educated in a Madrasa. Turns out that this was a story that only Fox News and internet journalists would touch- and hence 100 percent innacurate. John Stewart had a great explanation of the story.

These kinds of stories have become much more than a mere annoyance. The fact that any schmuck with an axe to grind and an internet connection can publish and disseminate this type of junk is scary. These posts are typically unsigned (an obvious mark of journalistic integrity) and get passed around by otherwise good meaning people (or not).

Luckily for Obama, he understands the absolute necessity of quickly addressing this new virtual rumor mill. He immediately launched a full frontal assault and stemmed the momentum that this type of attack had on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

The danger of this type of bad PR is not isolated to political campaigns. Business interests worldwide are equally susceptible to this type of attack; even golf courses. There are an increasingly large number of online golf course ratings sites and blogs. It is imperative to know where your customers are getting their information and what type of information is being disseminated. This can be a difficult proposition. The sheer volume of content on the web makes this increasingly difficult.

The ideal solution to this problem is to hire professional help. Modern public relations is more than just sending out press releases on the latest happenings at your course. Today, PR will have a new media component, and a good PR person will have the knowledge and resources to address any attacks on your course- online or off.

Short of that solution, here are a couple of tricks that can help you monitor and contribute to your online presence-

1) Create search term alerts- services like Google Alerts will automatically email you notifications when your course name shows up within standard searchable web news services and dynamic content sites. Set up an alert.

2) Learn the hotspots for this type of information and monitor. Sites like the 40 or so sites created by GolfPublisher Syndications (e.g. Travelgolf.com) host dozens of blogs and online columnists. Search these sites for mentions of your course. For many blogs and articles, they provide a venue to respond to criticisms and attacks.

3) Create your own content. The best defense is a good offense, so start publishing positive content about your site. Create a blog on any number of the free blog sites out there (Google has a great one), and link back to your site (this improves your search engine optimization). You will need to register your blog with as many blog directories as possible. Here are some good places to start.

This is a start. At a later point we will talk in more detail.