There seemingly are as many outlets for consumer generated media as there are consumers. The ability for anyone to post an opinion, comment, or grievance and get it seen by hundreds or thousands of people gives every day consumers a power and a voice not seen before the advent of the internet.

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.

Reputation management can be a difficult task to execute well. Most people either ignore reputation management altogether, or aren’t exactly sure how to repair or create their reputation.  Tens of thousands of press releases fly around Internet on a regular basis, filling cyber space with poor attempts to build a company’s reputation.

When it comes to media relations or public relations, most business executives want to be on the cover of the New York Times.  However, as many politicians and CEOs will attest to, being on the cover of a newspaper or magazine may be as negative as it can be positive.  Building a relationship with the media is important, both for the major stories that can possibly happen and the minor everyday stories that happen on a regular basis. While the media can be tricky, and even on attack mode lately, like all industries they operate on trust and relationships and establishing credibility with them is an important task.  Establishing credibility can have a profound impact upon the success of any political campaign, press initiative or marketing campaign.

There is a good chance that, at some point, reputation management for your company will become a necessity. The following are a few of the aspects to consider and implement.  

Managing your reputation involves using tools and language to improve and/or control how the public views you, your company and those who work for your company.

In both PR and reputation management the objective is all about influencing the kind of information users see; one using traditional media while the other uses the web. While the objectives of each practice are similar, the methodologies used are quite different, the biggest being the characteristics of the medium employed by each one.