Blogs for Reputation, History and Findability

+ Posted by Josh Hallett on 03.26.07 // 09:46 AM

The latest issue of Wired has a cover story by Clive Thompson about the See-Through CEO, or how blogs are transforming how CEOs and businesses work. The one pull-quote that speaks volumes is this one:

Google is not a search engine. It's a reputation management system. By enhancing transparency, companies can manage their images as never before.
Think about that for a minute. When you want to know just about anything you head to Google (or your favorite search tool) and search. Google yourself. What comes up? Like it or not that's your public face to millions (if not billions) of people.

While a newspaper story or crisis might make a slight blip on the radar, it's the long-term search results that will always stay.

Recently a friend had some bad news written about his company in the newspaper. I suggested that they blog about the situation, provide their version of the story. Why? Because a few months or years from now somebody will say, "Hey you remember when X did Y back in Z?"

A quick Google search will help refresh everyone's memory. What will turn up? The original newspaper article? With many newspapers putting content behind pay walls it will probably be a blog talking about the story. If the company blogs the story, what will most likely show up first a few months/years from now will be their post.

In many ways you're writing your own history. Yes this can be abused, but the blogosphere has a great system of checks and balances. They're called comments and links. If you try to BS or 'cover' a story you'll be outed. Stick with the truth.

In the end, who is telling your story? Is it the media or a blogger. Why not tell it yourself?

Visitor Comments

Stop giving away our trade secrets, Josh.

Loving this post.

It is a great cover story and you are right on. This was my one of my favorite quotes and concepts from the article:

"The new breed of naked executives also discover that once people are interested in you, they're interested in helping you out - by offering ideas, critiques, and extra brain cycles. Customers become working partners."

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