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.

When a company selects a reputation management firm to initiate a campaign the assumption is that the end result is going to consist of burying negative articles and improving that company’s reputation through positive articles and posts distributed and optimized around the web.

As review sites become a larger factor in reputation management strategies as well as the decision-making process for consumers, business owners increasingly face the temptation of gaming the review process for ratings and recommendations. To be sure, there are right and wrong ways to generate reviews.