I’ve just been reading a really interesting post by Alex Asigno about the ethics of reputation management. I think it is a particularly tricky area right now as more conversations about brands take place online and more people purport to offer reputation management.

It is tricky for a few reasons, firstly because traditionally reputation management has been primarily about ‘managing’ what journalists / key opinion formers / lobby groups etc are saying about an organistion and ensuring they have factual, current, relevant information. This has pretty much been looked after by PR or comms people, usually guided by their own ethics or bound by a code of conduct from professional organisations such as the PRIA (Public Relations Institute of Australia). We now have a whole range of people who are managing reputations online, not just the PR faculty, but really clever people who know loads about the web, programming and developing but don’t have a lot of experience in corporate communication issues.

So, it may not be the PR people who have the technical skills needed to physically monitor, respond to or act on much of what is being said…I’m pretty sure they don’t cover SEO and PPC in many communication or PR degrees, BUT, online reputation management is still about communication and about managing relationships which is what PR is about…there is just a bit of a skills gap that PR people have a duty to bridge.

In addition to this, the rise in ‘citizen journalism’ via social media tools such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter takes reputation management into a completely different area, with new opinion leaders and influencers and a whole new set of rules that apply here. David Meerman’s Scott’s book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR is great reading for anyone wanting to know what these new rules are and how to apply them.

And just as I was writing this post I got a tweet from econsultancy about a survey of PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) members that showed mastering social media skills is one of the top 3 issues for PR professionals in 2009/10. The other two were authentic, strategic council and demonstrating ROI - all which fit pretty nicely together.