jdMorgan - 5:01 am on Jul 4, 2007 (gmt 0)

Hey, I just put up a Web page about how *all* woodland critters are mean and dirty and nasty. This of course is utterly false, but it's going to negatively affect the traffic and income of all of those critters' sites -- especially those belonging to bears.

I'm on a vendetta, because I was once scared by a bear as a child, and I hate them. I'm irrational and cannot be reasoned with.

Now what are the woodland critters to do, spend hours per week dealing with the negative e-mail, phone calls, and blog posts, while at the same time suffering loss of converting traffic, trust, and revenue -- all because of my on-line lunatic rantings, or should they opt to do a bit of reputation management?

In many cases, reputation management is needed because of irrational customers or disgruntled (ex-)employees, not because the company has actually done anything wrong...

In other cases, they *have* done something wrong, in which case the buzz to be overcome will be "strong" and the cost of RM *very* high... :)

Jim