Over the last year we have all noticed the rise of interests who can tell you about your “Online Reputation.” The thing is, what’s being described by that phrase is not really reputation – it is about something far more simple – online image. Understanding the image your brand presents online can be useful, but image is NOT reputation, it is only a component of reputation. And your online image is only a portion of the total mediated image of your brand, which is also represented through print news, broadcast, and academic and specialty publications.

Corporate Reputation is widely considered to be the function of the collective judgments resulting from multiple stakeholders’ image of the firm and its behavior, evolving over time.

In this function, the images of your firm held by various stakeholders clearly matter. But a key observation here is that there are multiple stakeholders, each forming opinions and making judgments based on unique collections of image derived by online and other sources. Thus, a complete understanding of reputation cannot be formed without 1) distinguishing the topics that reflect existing judgments from the topics that allow new judgments, and 2) engaging in detailed stakeholder classification and measurement, and a good mapping of the relationships between (online and offline) stakeholders – both individuals and groups, and their relative influence on the topics that draw the judgments that drive reputation.

Most of the “Online Reputation Management” solutions I’ve seen aren’t quite as sophisticated in their analysis as what I’ve described above, which is why evolve24 has long provided a better solution for firms that seek a comprehensive and methodological approach to let them understand and manage the full range of components of corporate reputation.