It is always good to see informational articles like this popping up concerning the online reputation management services industry. Monitoring what is said about you online, which pictures carry your name, and how people talk about you on social networks is a key part of maintaining an online reputation. If you don’t maintain it, someone else likely will–often with disastrous results.

In fact, over three-quarters of the folk surveyed said they believe it is very important to search out information on a person or business before deciding whether or not to interact with them.

That statistic comes from a survey with Harris Interactive, a well-respected polling firm, so you can take it to the bank. More importantly, it just confirms what we already knew years ago–that people look to the Internet for information, even about other people. So be careful and take control of your online reputation as soon as possible.

This article is a particularly good explanation of how and why people and companies should get out ahead of their reputation management problems. British Petroleum, Tiger Woods, and Sharon Angle all could have benefitted from this knowledge in the past year. People will need this advice in the future too, so I’ll post it here for all the world to see–because as the golden rules teach us, nothing on the Internet ever disappears.

“Ignoring people makes them mad,” Downhill said. “And now they have tools to fight back and make their voices heard.”

PC manufacturer Dell learned this lesson in summer 2005, when blogger Jeff Jarvis began documenting his customer service ordeal with the company. By the time Dell responded and fixed the problem, stock prices had fallen.

Amongst the golden rules of online reputation management listed by Downhill are, “It never goes away”, “the boss knows”, “domains matter”, “be safe”, and others–all of which are good advice for someone who is looking to have an Internet presence.