“Your reputation is all you have in life – your personal reputation and the reputation of your brand. And if you do anything that damages that reputation, you can destroy your company,” Richard Branson said.

“…and it’s going to be very difficult for that brand to ever recover.”

 There are various packages ranging from $500 per month and upwards. For $500/month, you get site evaluation, keyword research, five promotional pages and content that are optimized by the online company, full site optimization, inclusion in reciprocal linking systems and search engine submissions. You can move up from this minimum service fee (with an 8 month committment) to $750 per month service. The additional fee provides you with a shared techie “live” and at your service who is devoted to your reputation until the negative information no longer appears on page one of Google. And onward and upward.

 I have no doubt that there are people who want negative information about themselves or their company deeply buried or removed from the Internet.  I am not sure however that this takes care of the hard work of reputation building which almost always involves creating high quality products and services, engaging in corporate citizenship, ethical behavior, financial soundness, innovation and leadership development.

Oops. If you are also worried about your CEO’s reputation, they can help you too.  Any CEO missteps can be wiped off the face of the earth. As Reputation Repair reminds us, “A CEO’s reputation is directly linked to the reputation of the company. The CEO is the face of the company and a leader who provides direction and inspiration.” These words sound familiar since I have written about this topic for years.

I often wonder if these online reputation repair and protection sites can help you build reputation faster by damaging your competitor’s reputation instead. If I wanted to do some harm, maybe I should just spread rumors about my toughest competitor and get that on page one of Google. Could I find someone to do that? I doubt that it is easy to find companies willing to compromise themselves but this has crossed my mind. Might be less expensive.

All this is to say that online reputation management is important but if this is all that is done to build enduring reputations, this is a short-lived proposition. True reputation management deserves more consideration, planning, depth and years of hard work.

BILL MOYERS: What intrigues me about the Greek gods, Romans too, is that they do great deeds. But also they get drunk, and as you say, they womanize, they lie, they negotiate with the Gods of the underworld. It’s true, isn’t it, that if you find the hero in mythology, you also discover the monster?

JEANETTE WINTERSON: Always, yes. The thing is double faced. It’s as though these people are hinged in the center, and that the good and the bad have folded back, touching each other in each person. But you know, that’s what so strikingly true, isn’t it, about the human condition? That we’re not one or the other, or very rarely. Often, the people who do achieve great things, are also people who have fatal flaws. All heroes have fatal flaws as well as reprehensible conduct. … when you read the hero myths, the things that brings them down are always very trivial. It’s always the thing in themselves that they can’t control. And there is also a truth about the hero, that they can never be killed, or destroyed by anything simply from the outside. They have somewhere to collude in their own death or destruction.

Then I got an email mid-week from Del Jones at USA Today on second generation CEOs. He was writing about the Comcast acquisition of GE’s NBC Universal and the prospects for CEO Brian Roberts. I’ve always had a special interest in family businesses because it seems that my entire extended family was involved in one for ever and a day. It’s what got me so interested in business in the first place. So when asked about my thoughts on Roberts, I remembered the saying that I heard from my dad which was that the first generation starts a business, the second generation runs it, and the third generation ruins it. That’s the quote he used in the article .  In retrospect, it was the right thing for me to say although at the time I was not so sure.

In both articles this week, I was the closer. I wonder what that means.

First stop London. Started the day at our London office talking about online reputation management at a breakfast meeting with clients and colleagues. The question came up about whether CEOs should be blogging.  Someone mentioned that one company does not let its top execs blog while another welcomes the practice. My sense is that it is fine to let senior executives blog as long as guidelines exist and policies are clearly outlined and articulated. I bet  that less than 25% of employees even know that their company has employee guidelines for social media.  As for CEOs blogging, I think it depends on the company’s culture, whether the CEO has anything to say and whether employees think his or her time would be better spent with customers and employees face-to-face. It is a 50-50 proposition since it works for some companies and can be an irritant to others. 

One of our findings in Risky Business: Reputations Online was that the vast majority of executives (87%) have sent or received at least one email that they should not have. My colleague mentioned an incident that happened in London last week. Apparently one company sent its board meeting minutes to the entire workforce. Not a good thing.  Will find out more.

While on the train now to my next market, Paris, I read Lucy Kellaway’s article about recent reader emails that are drifting back to more formal punctuation and grammar. No longer is she opening a message with “Hey there” or “Rgds.”  Today her unsolicited emails begin with “Dear Ms. Kellaway”  and close with “Sincerely.”  I agree with Ms. Kellaway that the recession has sobered up a lot of people: “When people are losing their jobs, correct dress and usage of words seem like a good insurance policy.” People are clearly more conscious of their personal reputation and understand that every impression counts, online and offline.

Will continue to write about my impressions as I travel the continent.