The Importance of Reputation / 04.14.08
On the web there are companies and there is you. Companies have brands and you have a reputation. The two terms can be used interchangeably, but for this article lets stick with reputation. Since you are your reputation there needs to be some level of reputation management that you consider whenever you do anything online.
Reputation management is the process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop.
A couple of years ago right after the creation of 9rules I had the idea of creating a sex blog network. This network would work in the same fashion as 9rules, but bring some legitimacy to sex blogs that go beyond the porn that us grown men look for after midnight. Some people were excited because they understood what I could do with that niche and they wouldn’t have thought that if I hadn’t developed a reputation of creating solid, trustworthy communities.
On the flip side, some people advised me not to move forward with the project for many reasons with one of them ruining the reputation that I had worked so hard to gain. Sadly for sex lovers everywhere the project never got off the ground and I can’t say how it would have worked out for the network or my reputation, but it would have been a good experiment in how someone handles their reputation with such a touchy subject.
Go back even further in time to when I first started writing on a blog and decided it would be cool to do a design critique of Zeldman.com. Now back then Zeldman was a god and deservedly so. He ushered in the era of Web Standards and we would have never gotten to where we are now with him blazing the trail. His reputation was without measure. Mine? Not so much because I was still a rookie in the game.
You can imagine what happened. Although some people loved the fact that I had no fear with critiquing a legend, many people lambasted me because who was I to critique someone of importance when I have yet to accomplish anything myself. I had no reputation to back up my claims, but that event alone helped to establish a reputation of not being afraid to talk about subjects that others might avoid and never backing down.
With how social the web is today, reputation takes on an importance role that we have never seen before. When the web first started you could create a screenname and your reputation would be based around what you did with that particular name. Now with Facebook, Flickr, last.fm and other social media outlets your reputation online almost matches your reputation offline. There is almost nothing that you can hide or get away with. The offline rules of reputation have now come online and many people still aren’t prepared to handle them.
You get to decide who you want to be both offline and online so choose wisely because as we know once people get a hold of a judgement, it is hard to make them surrender it.
One Response
SEO Bedrijven // April 16th, 2008
That is why most active interneters have more identities online. Especially the SEO guys ;-)