For every action, there is an equal and opposite.. reputation.

It was Abraham Lincoln who said Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Aside from our parents, it is in school wherein we are aided in developing a good character. Nevertheless, ways on how to monitor our reputation (and online) as well as manage stakeholder perceptions of our characters are typically not included in our education packages.
Fortunately, thanks to our datamin class with Mr. Ramon Duremdes Jr., my fellow data miners (whose blog links are found left of this page) and I now at least have ideas on ways how to build, monitor and repair our online reputations.

Reputation, according to Merriam-Webster, is 1) an overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general, and 2) a place in public esteem or regard: a good name.

In wittier words and as Isaac Newton would have said, for every action, there is an equal and opposite.. reputation.

It's funny how it is in the nature of man to tend to underestimate the things he knows he possesses and nobody could take away. But it's even funnier when one believes that it's better to have a bad reputation than not to have a reputation at all.

Just like New York, the Internet is a place that doesn't sleep. Not only that, according to Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online by Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss, the reality is, we live in a transparent, always-on, wired world where anyone can and will post pictures or write about you, your company or just about anybody else, 24/7.. online.

Reality check: ExecuNet found that 78% of executive recruiters consistently make use of search engines in order to know more about job candidates, and 35% have discarded candidates based on the information they came across with.

Joseph Hall once said, A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the whole world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.

Worried yet? Well, it's good to be scared. It means you still have something to lose.

People are talking about personal and corporal reputations as you read, thanks to social media, which are online tools and platforms (blogs, wikis, photo and video sharing, forums, networks) that let Internet users to collaborate on content, share insights and experiences and connect, for business or pleasure.

The power to create or destroy reputation is now well-established in the average consumer due to the technologies that allow just about everyone to publish online, eventually leading consumer opinions to drive reputations.

Edelman's 2008 Trust Barometer found that some 58% of survey respondents find a person like yourself to make available the most credible information. Consumers strongly take into account the opinions of like minded people and have a vital influence on their purchasing behavior.

As a Chinese proverb says, No amount of money can make others speak well of you behind your back.

The Internet has steered in an epoch of corporate transparency. What was already available publicly became accessible anytime, anywhere, from any device with access to the Web.

With the best endeavors to create a positive online repute, we are still vulnerable to the criticism of our stakeholders. And so arises the need to continuously monitor conversations concerning us, that would provides us an opportunity to tell our side of the story and repair damages incurred to our name, should they be necessary.

Why monitor?
The Internet is a growing source of information and it is advantageous to be one step ahead of any possible reputation crisis. It is but obvious to to think that the earlier we know of stakeholder complaints, the quicker we can respond.

Reality check: research from John Tschohl found that a recipient of good customer service will tell only five of their acquaintances. On the other hand, a recipient of bad service will tell ten people, a hundred or even more, given a fact that he is a blogger or part of a social network.

What to monitor?

• Your own brands: there are different touch points (company, products and services, executives and spokespeople) for stakeholders to interact with your brands
  
• Your marketing campaigns: intended to share positive news about your brand and light passion in your stockholders
  
• Industry trends: can reveal areas of opportunity, or potential diseases, long before your brand is specifically mentioned
  
• Your competitors: understanding each competitor's strength, weaknesses, and reputation
  
• Your known-weaknesses: admit your mistakes before someone else exaggerates the story
  

Where to monitor?

• Cast the net wide by monitoring a broad range of activity
• Finding the centers of influence my monitoring where stakeholders hangout together online in special-interest group, social networks, and blogs (industry blogs, vertical communities, employee hangouts, business locations).
• A combination of the latter two techniques.
  

When to monitor?
NOW. As said previously, the earlier we start building our online reputation, we should also start monitoring it; because it also the sooner we are able to discover our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.


Need not panic, as tedious as all this may sound, again, thanks to the ever so revered technology, there exist tools (from low-cost to not so low-cost) that automate reputation monitoring. Tools such as these include:

• Real Simple Syndication readers: manages all of our subscribed RSS feeds and enables us to sort and sift the information delivered, based on certain and specific needs. Among the most popular readers are Google Reader, Bloglines, and NewsGator.
• E-mail updates: not all websites provide an RSS feed. These help keep track of important e-mails perhaps only accessible by subscribing to newsletters.
  
• Tracking software: not all websites want to be found and make it hard to be tracked. Software such as Copernic (with a onetime fee of around $50) allows users to keep track of just about any web content.

With first hand experiences, after being introduced and having experimented on Google Alerts and Google Analytics, and not utilizing these latter for either building, monitoring or repairing online reputations, would certainly be opportunity-wasting. Not to mention, the ease and simplicity of how these tools function, the automation of web content monitoring brings us relevant information knocking on each of our doors.

The relevance of all this to the banking industry is pretty much just like in any other industry. It's not only about opening a Facebook fan page or a Twitter account, but clinching in all facets of social media. Knowing that it would not be without its challenges, companies must understand that if they are not part of this yet, they simply are ignoring and passing over opportunities to connect with an entire generation.