A company’s reputation is its most important asset.  A person’s individual reputation is his or her most important possession.   Yet, most people and companies are entirely unaware of their online reputation.  While ignorance may be bliss in some things, it is incredibly risky to be ignorant of one’s online reputation.  Attention all business owners, managers and professionals:  what you don’t know about what others think of you can hurt you!  That is why there are now professionals – reputation management experts — who make a living helping people and companies monitor, protect, and (if necessary) redeem their online reputation. Continue reading →

Some 2,300 years ago, Publilius Syrus (a writer of Latin) penned that “A good reputation is more valuable than money.”  About 2,000 years later, Ben Franklin said “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”  Recently, billionaire and investment guru Warren Buffet said essentially the same thing… “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”  For thousands of years, wise people have understood the importance of reputation.  Reputation is a fundamental instrument of social order, based upon distributed, spontaneous social control. A person’s reputation reflects the overriding opinion held by others about him, and a company’s reputation reflects the opinion held by most about the business or its products and services.  Once tarnished by bad behavior, a damaged reputation can have a profound impact on success and career. Continue reading →