this a bit more, I am going to make use of an easy example. As I have recently moved into my new flat, I was shopping around looking for a couch. Something comfortable where I could de-stress after a hard day's work. I found a shop with the perfect couch, but with an over-inflated price that I was not keen on playing. Arriving home that evening, I wondered if it was worth buying the couch as it would set me back considerably. I decided to browse the Internet to see what people are saying about the shop where I wanted to buy the couch. If there were any complaints about the service and of course, any complaints about the quality of the products they sold in this shop. I opened my favorite search engine and simply typed in the name of the company As soon as I pressed enter, I found the company website at the top and beneath that numerous websites which had information or rather comments about their service, quality and more. The first website opened was a blog where people wrote comments and stories regarding all manner of things. For more detail go to: www.change-ur-mind.com. The first post I saw on this blog was about and it said: “There's no reason to GIVE good service. They've received your deposit, so it's unlikely you'll back out, and the furniture is not sitting in the showroom, so it's somebody else's problem”. After opening and reading more and more websites and blogs I realized that people were complaining about the same things. People posted information about things they liked about and things they did not like. But mostly, there were complaints about XYZ and its service regarding the quality of its products. Needless to say, I immediately decided that was not the right place for me to buy the couch. I did not want what happened to the other customers to happen to me! Like one person commented on the blog “I want to order some couches from but after reading all the above, I am scared stiff”. The above example shows how a company's reputation can be scarred online when customers complain about anything related to the company. Whether or not it's the truth, when people read negative commentary about a company, it will influence their perception of the company and will most probably cost the business money as they will loose a potential sale. Online Reputation Management is about managing the reputation of your company online. This means that if a company like managed their reputation correctly on the Internet, they might not loose as many potential customers, or have so many upset customers. So now the question is, how do you manage your online reputation? There are numerous techniques and applications you can use to manage your online reputation. Firstly, you need to know what exactly to look out for. To manage the reputation of your company you need to track all information related to your company. That means your company name and of course product names. You can even check out names of your employees. When people complain about your company and specifically your service levels, they will mention the names of your employees. It's best to know who is associated with your company name. You can make use of online tools that are offered free online to monitor if people are talking about your company.