subject: Online Reputation Management - Is Your Online Reputation Fragile? [print this page] The biggest and gravest risk to any brands Online Reputation Management is negative media coverage. Remember the KFC rat fiasco? Just one tiny incident of a rat infestation had the internet swamped with swarming videos, pictures, articles, comments on the very same incident.
Another thing which may scare you but is indeed true is that, disappointed customers are bound to comment negatively, but can you really speak for your employees? What if vital sensitive information gets leaked? How will you possible safeguard that?
Human nature which is bounded with emotions and feeling, in such situations concern is bound to rise. But people, most of them, tend to get hyper in such situations. Over-exaggeration, flaring tempers worsens the situation. This is on account of the human egos fragility.
William Shakespeares famous Othello makes it even simple for us.
Cassio: Reputation, reputation, reputation! O! I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!
Iago: As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more offence in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving: you have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser.
-Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice Act II. Scene III, 225-226.
When history does not deny it, why do we go about pretending it does not exist? This is why online reputation management of any brand/ service is highly fragile and can be axed any moment. This is why we need to protect it.
