Managing your external reputation involves using the press to get your messages out and protecting your reputation.  Reputation management can become tricky when it involves the press, because you lose a little bit of control over the message you want to get out.  The reporters and editors who cover any press release or publicity story you put out may simply ignore your angle and get the story they want.  This is why it’s important when approaching reputation management to be proactive and aggressive in getting to know and building relationally with the media.

 One important tip in properly handling your reputation management is to be aggressive about addressing any issue that sheds light on your honesty and credibility.  Some of the worst media relations mistakes in history originated when people were afraid or slow to respond to some seemingly secretive or terrible news.  When Princess Diana was killed while being chased by the paparazzi, it took Queen Elizabeth days to respond via the media to speak to the nation of England.  Unfortunately, when the entire world saw the slow response by the Queen people began to assuming all sorts of terrible things about the Queen and her relationship with her daughter.  When you allow your reputation management to react slowly to negative or secretive news, people will always assume the worst, because that’s human nature.

When it comes to negative news on the Internet, you should respond even quicker, because the Internet has a long memory.  People still view Youtube videos from 1998, still read stories from the mid-90’s and so forth.  In the past, once the newspaper was thrown away, it was old news.  Since the Internet is all online, there is nothing to throw away.  Bad stories, bad information and negative opinions will stay on the Internet for years, even decades, so it’s important to be proactive to counteract any negative news or negative information being spread on the Internet.

Be honest about being ambiguous is also important.  In a time of extreme media saturation, it’s important to remember that people can tell when you’re not giving the whole truth.  Reputation management involves being upfront about your intentions, especially if you aren’t going to give straightforward answers.  People can understand if your lack of information is targeted at protecting investors, protecting investments or is simply a matter of not having enough information.  Politicians are usually the worst culprits of both being ambiguous and not being honest about their ambiguity.  When political scandals occur, it’s best to get out and be honest with what’s going on, because in this day and age very little can be hidden for that long.

Reputation management involves defining the issues that affect you and your company as much as possible.  Defining means taking as much control as possible, and putting yourself out in front of the news instead of simply reacting to it.  The worst that can happen is that you are uncomfortable for a period of time, which is better than having to deal with two week’s worth of bad news.