Who Are You? Who Do You Trust?

More and more, the online space is a vital component of professional reputation for companies, governments, organizations, non-profits and individuals. In fact, recent research suggests that online reputation is becoming an obsession for many of us.

Harris Interactive’s study last year found 80% of U. S. adults believe their online identity is now as important as their “offline” personal or professional reputation. Further insight shows this importance extends from the privacy side (security) to the public side (respectability). More telling, seven out of ten respondents claimed thay would be likely to refuse to interact with a company or person for whom they found negative information online.

This is why new reputation/information hygiene sites (also called online reputation management or ORM) are coming online almost every month. Here are just a few I have run across in recent days:

• trackur.com
• reputationdefender.com
• reputation.com
• onlinereputationmanager.com
• truerep.com
• reputationmanagementconsultants.com
• reputationhawk.com
• impeccablereputation.com
• reputationmanagementexperts.com

Duct Tape Marketing has another useful list here. In the professional services industry, it may fall to marketing staff to scrub the online space. And the complexity of managing multiple individual reputations extends far beyond just a collection of Google alerts, as helpful as these may be.

Just as evaluation has its proper and crucial place in every marketing plan, reputation analysis must be a part of the criteria for measuring the effects of your online social media and other public relations both for your firm and individuals participating in the plan.

What are you doing to measure the reputation of your company, your professionals or yourself? What are you doing if what you find isn’t meeting your goals?