Here’s the deal. The media thinks your CEO screwed up. According to rumors, she siphoned the company’s quarterly earnings into a private yacht spending spree.

The truth? Your CEO is innocent.

But what does the media care about truth? They’re hanging onto the rumors like a toddler clutching a Snickers bar. The Internet’s news minions are intent on vilifying a corporate leader, weaving tales of oversized yachts funded with ill-gotten gain.

Can you imagine how it felt to be the Chief Marketing Officer at Oxfam after their deputy CEO, Penny Lawrence, resigned because of a sex crimes scandal? If the first word that enters your mind is “stressed,” that’d be an understatement. A serious CEO scandal can mean the ruin of the reputation of an entire company, not just those at the top.

It’s been a year of ups and downs in the world of reputation management, with a President who uses Twitter to communicate directly with the country, sexual harassment in Hollywood powerhouses and the fallout that followed, and professional athletes protesting during the National Anthem, this year has been a busy year for PR folks. Here is our list of the top 10 shared articles on the web that focused on reputation management. Have any additional ones to share? Let us know in the comments and we’ll update our list!

When prospects research your brand they compare you to your competitors. More specifically, they compare your search results to those of your competition. What they see online can mean the difference between contacting you and not. So step one is to improve what prospective buyers see long before they decide to contact you or not.

Imagine a prospect is making the tough decision between using your company or your competitor. At the last minute they discover something a bit "off" about your company's online profile. Which company will get the sale? 

It could be a review, a lack of publicity, a problem with your Wikipedia page, or many other things. How does reputation play into the buyers journey?

Why do you believe the things that you believe? We like to think that our beliefs are our own, formed from our unique, individual experiences, informed by our own logic, devoid of outside bias. But "confirmation bias" is one factor that quietly pushes us to one side of the fence or the other. In short, people agree with things they already agree with.

There was a time when you couldn't get a chicken soup recipe while sitting on the toilet. Strange but true! It used to be that you asked your mom, or your friends, a book, or your local librarian for information. Today, instead of picking up the phone, everyone from bearded urban millennials to grandmas and dairy farmers turn to one place above all others: the Internet. How do people search? The three search types "do", "go", and "know" and how people use them are explained in this article. 

Has any phrase been more divisive and frustrating during the election cycle and current federal administration than “fake news”? Seemingly innocuous in its phrasing, the term has come to stand for entirely more than just a story with false facts. Fake news—who makes it, who reads it, who believes it, and who profits from it—are all increasingly important topics in modern society, so much so that it now seems Americans live in two separate, competing realities.

Humans have what is called a “negativity bias” because we’ve evolved to react to threats. Like Google, we’re pattern discovery machines; when something stands out, like a threat, our minds highlight it. The negativity bias is leveraged by the media to increase profits. The fact is, bad news gets more attention, more clicks, and leads more revenue for the publication. Google also reacts to this pattern by giving people what they seemingly want - that often means more bad news.

Most business owners would agree that it would be beneficial to be able to turn their customers into sales people who go out and help bring in new business. The idea sounds complicated, and even expensive, but it may not  be that difficult to use your marketing programs to turn your customers into your own sales force.