The impact of the social conversations has dramatically increased. More than 133 million blogs have been indexed since 2002. Twitter has doubled in size this year alone to roughly 30 million users, who create 1,500 new "Tweets" every second. Facebook's 35-year-old-plus demographic grew to 12 million users in the first quarter of 2009. But that's only part of the story. The results from search engines are even more important. 2,300 searches are performed every second of every day.
What's in a name? Plenty.
The Crucial Value of Reputation Management in the Digital Age
In 2007, real estate magnate Sam Zell closed a deal to sell his Equity Office Properties Trust (EOP) holdings to private equity investor Blackstone Group for nearly $40 billion. It proved to be not only the largest real estate deal in history, but a watershed moment in social reputation analysis.
Students and faculty from Yale's School of Management studied the deal and found that in the months and weeks leading up to the announcement of the sale, Zell's EOP had been valued at roughly half that amount by industry and financial analysts. Why? Sam Zell's reputation.
Analysts felt Zell was unpredictable and mercurial. However, the Yale study found that the moment Blackstone and its founder, Stephen Schwarzman, entered the picture, the value of the EOP Trust doubled. Stephen Schwarzman's reputation was in direct contrast to Zell's-marking one of the first times a CEO's image had been found to have a direct effect on the value of his company.
The Value of Online ReputationThe impact of the social conversations has dramatically increased. More than 133 million blogs have been indexed since 2002. Twitter has doubled in size this year alone to roughly 30 million users, who create 1,500 new "Tweets" every second. Facebook's 35-year-old-plus demographic grew to 12 million users in the first quarter of 2009.
But that's only part of the story. The results from search engines are even more important. 2,300 searches are performed every second of every day.
The Yale Study suggested that the results the search engines return and how people perceive you or your company based upon these results, is crucial to your net worth. Why?
. 91% of online consumers use search engines as their primary source of research and information . 93% of people never go beyond the first page of search engine results . 58% of searchers will visit a competing website after seeing negative search results
As reflected by the Yale study, a CEO's reputation plays a crucial role in his or her company's reputation: A Burson-Marstellar study ("CEO Capital: A Guide to Building CEO Reputation and Company Success") found that a 10% positive . 92% of business decision makers who view a CEO favorably are change in a CEO's reputation increased the company's market also likely to maintain confidence in a company, even if its share capitalization by 24%.price lags.. Nearly all (95 %) of business leaders report that CEO reputation influences their decisions related to and support for corporations. . Business influentials estimate that 48% of a company's reputation is attributable to the reputation of the CEO. This figure has risen 20% since the first survey in 1997. How to Repair the Damage Reputation Results and RewardsAny reputation damage that occurs online today takes roughly three In his book "The Search," author John Battelle called search engines and a half years to repair-longer than the average CEO's tenure in a database of intentions. However, it's also a real-time ranking of office. Consider the cases of the pizza chain and the longtime CEO. reputation with the power to rapidly elevate or denigrate the value of an individual or company. In the world of search results, someone In the first case, two Domino's Pizza employees made a prank video you've never met can publish a blog entry that can be a harsh and in a kitchen of the chain's restaurant and then posted it online. The unfair opinion about you or your company and in an instant, their video shows the two employees violating health codes and behaving opinion is available-and possibly valued-around the globe.childishly. The online video spread virally: in a Google search for "Dominos," five out of the 12 results that appeared on the first The impact of such negative content can mean lost money: a study page referenced the video, and discussions about the Domino's by the Western Ontario School of Business demonstrated that video spread throughout Twitter. consumers will pay more for perceived ethical goods than unethical ones, or goods about which they had no information. People Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre commented, "Even people punished "unethical" goods with a negatively valued price discount who've been with us as loyal customers for 10, 15, 20 years, are (about $2 below the control group), while they rewarded ethical second-guessing their... [download for more]
