Managing your online reputation can be challenging enough without putting up your own posts that anger half of your existing and potential customers. Such is the case when starting or participating in controversial threads on social media sites like Facebook and other social media sites.

Reputation management is often perceived purely as a defense strategy to be put in place once a company comes under attack from negative publicity on the web. In reality, reputation management strategies can provide many benefits beyond the very important aspect of protecting a business’ reputation.

Reputation management problems can originate from an almost unlimited variety of sources including those that are started by the people inside a company. A recent example of a company starting its own reputation management firestorm comes from a small company in Livingston, Montana named Wilcoxon’s Ice Cream. Started in 1912, the company has intentionally kept a virtually invisible profile with the media for entirety of its existence.

The initial reaction to a complaint or a negative review targeting your business can make the difference between a situation that gets handled quickly and one that necessitates the reputation management cavalry to ride to the rescue. While negative content pointed at a business can easily be taken as a personal affront, responding in a defensive manner is a sure way to put yourself in a position that requires a lot more time and energy than would otherwise be spent to get to a point of resolution.

The First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, is one of the foundations on which this country was built. It is also the reason you should start and online reputation management initiative for your business as soon as possible. As more online businesses realize every day, sometimes to their dismay, nowhere is the First Amendment on display more than on the internet.

Wall Street has a reputation management issue that isn’t going to go away any time soon. Wracked by financial failures, scandals, and the Occupy Wall Street movement decrying exorbitant executive pay among other things, Wall Street’s reputation issues are affecting three primary areas that can be summed up as the three “R’s”.