There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job was to process mail that had illegible addresses. One day, a letter came addressed in shaky handwriting to God, but with no actual address. He thought he should open it to see what it was about.

The letter read:

There’s a reason why the National Enquirer, The Sun, Daily Star, and US Weekly publish content that is all about scandalous behavior. We all love a good fall from grace story (unless it's happening to us), a red hot gossip drop, or a celebrity rumor. And when personal reputations start blowing up like Philadelphia on the 4th of July, we are tapping and swiping our devices to get the latest, juicy tell-all details.

You may not end up on the cover of US Weekly, but you nonetheless have a reputation. And that reputation needs to be managed.

Reputation matters, whether you’re an ordinary individual, an extraordinary individual, a crook, a saint, a political figure, or an entertainer. But reputation matters for more than just individuals. In the world of business, reputation has an ever broader impact.

It’s hard to change someone’s mind. However, it’s easy to confirm one’s biases. And nowhere is this more true than in the world of political reputation management.

Whether you’re running for the vice president of your neighborhood HOA or vying for election to the president of the United States, political reputation is an untamed beast. It’s complicated. It’s tenuous. It moves rapidly. It rises. It falls. And no one in the history of the world has mastered it.

Corporate reputation refers to people’s collective opinion regarding a corporation or enterprise. It’s based on such features such as search engine results, news coverage, and the publicized actions of the company. There are there some corporate reputation humdingers out there. The news media loves a sizzling story of a corporation’s fall from grace and with good reason. The public is receptive, clicks ensue, money is made. This is because the human brain seems wired to generate copious amounts of curiosity when the topic is salacious or negative.

Corporate sentiment, or business sentiment, is how people feel about your brand. In more technical terms, it’s the level of confidence that shareholders have in a corporation or business—the prevailing mood or attitude about that company’s success (or lack thereof).

What is Reputation? Reputation is the subjective qualitative belief a person has regarding a brand, person, company, product, or service. Reputation is the key to success.

The best way to define reputation: Reputation is a third-party perception of your, or your brands, character. It is a malleable thing. Malleable by others, or by you. This is because today, people depend on Google to make decisions for them. Whether you're selling water or running for President, your online reputation precedes you. So, by changing how Google portrays a brand you can change one of the main ways people perceive reputation.

In today’s digital environment, reputation is more important, more pervasive, more unforgettable, and more meaningful than ever before. It's really difficult to build, enhance, sustain, and protect a reputation that'll last (even for a reputation management agency). It’s also easy to neglect, abuse, reject, or shred a reputation in just a short amount of time. A disaster can happen in minutes, and circle the globe within hours. That's why it's so important to maintain an active reputation management strategy. Let's unpack what reputation really is.

A person or company’s reputation is based on information (of some kind or another). And every reputation is perceived by people (of some kind or another). Put information and perception together, and you have reputation. 

Left unchecked, your brand is portrayed on the internet by a machine. It may not have your best interests at heart. Reputation management enables a degree of message control specifically tailored to the online environment.

For all the effort and attention that we give to character, it’s reputation that really matters. This is especially true in the business world. But today reputation is focused and distorted through the lens of artificial intelligence systems. That's why online reputation management services exist - to provide balance and a degree of control.

Online marketing and SEO for the financial services industry is often heavily regulated by entities like FINRA. The rules financial firms must live by make SEO and content marketing more challenging for the industry. But there are still ways to craft effective campaigns.