Maintaining a good online reputation in this world where social media buzz is the norm and more and more people going online for almost every aspect of their lives is vital to the success of any brand, product or profession. Companies spend thousands of dollars building their credibility but this can easily be damaged by a negative review or incident that goes viral in the Internet.

Two classic examples of internet reputation crisis are Toyota and Tiger Woods. Both are multi-billion dollar brands and both faced the greatest crisis in their internet reputation. The difference however is on how they handled and responded to the situation. Tiger Woods chose to go for the silent treatment hoping everything would die down – but it did not. With a ruined reputation, sponsors dropped him and a big scar on his integrity is shooing away fans.

 Toyota on the other hand, accepted the fact that they have to deal with the technical accelerator problem and the only way they can save their sales is to mitigate the scores of negative press that was about to go viral. Wasting no time, Toyota flooded the social web with positive information the day after it announced the recall – which eventually went viral on every posts, tweets and online chatter and successfully managed the crisis.

The key thing here is the time element in making your move for internet reputation management and respond to the crisis at hand. Maintaining your online reputation is considered an important part of marketing that will most likely ensure continued sales and retain customer loyalty in the face of attacks or imminent damage to your online reputation.