You never get a second chance to make a first impression – but it’s amazing how many so-called professionals play fast and loose with their reputations. It’s no longer down to word-of-mouth – the worldwide web spreads information round the world in seconds. If you’re in business you need take the steps that will protect your reputation – as well as taking advantage of the means to enhance it. If you have staff, clients and suppliers, you’ll also want to be aware of what they are saying about you – and educate them to be effective marketers for your business. This book will give you lots of practical things you can do to plan, promote and protect your reputation. What the reviewers said: “Reputation! “What a fragile intangible this is. “And yet, so important for our success, our clients and our peace of mind. “I once interviewed Julian Richer, the boss of Richer Sounds, and his thoughts on this amused me and made the point so well. “Reputation is like toothpaste. Every easy to squeeze out - extremely difficult to put back. “In The Reputation Gap, Lesley and Peter in their usual engaging style, get to the heart of the matter, providing clear insights and step-by-step guidance on what to do to create, build and maintain the reputation you want (and need). “Dive in! “You’ll be so pleased you did.” Peter Thomson “The UK’s Most Prolific Information Product Creator” www.peterthomson.com “How often do you really think about your reputation? “In business there are so many other things to consider, but in The Reputation Gap Peter and Lesley guide you through the importance of reputation. They give you practical and actionable ways to enhance your reputation in any size of business. An essential read if you are looking to tap into the power of your reputation.” David James Life and Personal Coach Mentor International Speaker “In business your reputation will have a great impact on whether you’ll have a profitable business… or not. “I found the book fascinating, insightful and thought provoking. “There’s plenty of practical tips and tools to not only help you plan, promote and protect your reputation but also how to enhance it.” John Hotowka Personal resilience speaker “A must-read book for anyone interested in developing their brand and reputation. Full of practical exercises and on point examples it’ll be a book you refer back to time and time again.” Neil Lloyd MD FBCMB, CEO FBC Manby Bowdler “This book is ideal if you're quite new to business, or if you've not been in marketing for many years. It's packed full of pragmatic advice and ideas that you can put into practice, right away. If you've never thought about the importance of your reputation when it comes to promoting your business, this book is for you. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about building a strong reputation, in this book, Peter and Lesley ask a number of questions that you might not have been asked before.” Chantal Cornelius Author of Magnetic Marketing www.Appletreeuk.com "Never has there been a better time for Peter and Lesley to rewrite, update and re-release this key book. “So many people think that the world is just transactional, our relationships and running a business. “It just isn't true. Reputation matters in this ever-changing world." Lee Jackson International speaker, past President of the Professional Speaking Association and author of Get Good at Life. “Reputation is the invisible aura that envelops your business. This is a book of straight-forward, easy-to-implement actions to create, manage, enhance and protect what people say about you. Essential reading for anyone in business.” Kevin Wright Ninja Investor creator and author of Buy, Refurb, Refinance.

Author of The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, one of the most acclaimed fantasy series of all time, master storyteller Stephen R. Donaldson retums with this exciting and long-awaited new series that takes us into a stunningly imagined future to tell a timeless story of adventure and the implacable conflict of good and evil within each of us. Angus Thermopyle was an ore pirate and a murderer; even the most disreputable asteroid pilots of Delta Sector stayed locked out of his way. Those who didn't ended up in the lockup--or dead. But when Thermopyle arrived at Mallory's Bar & Sleep with a gorgeous woman by his side the regulars had to take notice. Her name was Morn Hyland, and she had been a police officer--until she met up with Thermopyle. But one person in Mallorys Bar wasn't intimidated. Nick Succorso had his own reputation as a bold pirate and he had a sleek frigate fitted for deep space. Everyone knew that Thermopyle and Succorso were on a collision course. What nobody expected was how quickly it would be over--or how devastating victory would be. It was common enough example of rivalry and revenge--or so everyone thought. The REAL story was something entirely different. In The Real Story, Stephen R. Donaldson takes us to a remarkably detailed world of faster-than-light travel, politics, betrayal, and a shadowy presence just outside our view to tell the fiercest, most profound story he has ever written.

Experts discuss the benefits and risks of online reputation systems. In making decisions, we often seek advice. Online, we check Amazon recommendations, eBay vendors' histories, TripAdvisor ratings, and even our elected representatives' voting records. These online reputation systems serve as filters for information overload. In this book, experts discuss the benefits and risks of such online tools. The contributors offer expert perspectives that range from philanthropy and open access to science and law, addressing reputation systems in theory and practice. Properly designed reputation systems, they argue, have the potential to create a “reputation society,” reshaping society for the better by promoting accountability through the mediated judgments of billions of people. Effective design can also steer systems away from the pitfalls of online opinion sharing by motivating truth-telling, protecting personal privacy, and discouraging digital vigilantism. Contributors Madeline Ashby, Jamais Cascio, John Henry Clippinger, Chrysanthos Dellarocas, Cory Doctorow, Randy Farmer, Eric Goldman, Victor Henning, Anthony Hoffmann, Jason Hoyt, Luca Iandoli, Josh Introne, Mark Klein, Mari Kuraishi, Cliff Lampe, Paolo Massa, Hassan Masum, Marc Maxson, Craig Newmark, Michael Nielsen, Lucio Picci, Jan Reichelt, Alex Steffen, Lior Strahilevitz, Mark Tovey, John Whitfield, John Willinsky, Yi-Cheng Zhang, Michael Zimmer

This unique book written by four world leaders in reputation research, presents the latest cutting-edge thinking on organizational improvement. It covers media management, crisis management, the use of logos and other aspects of corporate identity, and argues the case for reputation management as a way of overseeing long-term organizational strategy. It presents a new approach to managing reputation, one that relies on surveying customers and employees on their view of the corporate character and in harmonizing the values of both. This approach has been trialled in a number of organizations and here the authors demonstrate how improving reputation, merely by learning more about what a company is already doing, is worth some five per cent sales growth. The book is a vital, up to date resource for specialists in corporate communication, public relations, marketing, HRM, and business strategy as well as for all senior management. Highly illustrated with over eighty diagrams and tables, it includes up to the minute illustrative case studies and interviews with leading authorities in the field.

Gossip and reputation are core processes in societies and have substantial consequences for individuals, groups, communities, organizations, and markets.. Academic studies have found that gossip and reputation have the power to enforce social norms, facilitate cooperation, and act as a means of social control. The key mechanism for the creation, maintenance, and destruction of reputations in everyday life is gossip - evaluative talk about absent third parties. Reputation and gossip are inseparably intertwined, but up until now have been mostly studied in isolation. The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation fills this intellectual gap, providing an integrated understanding of the foundations of gossip and reputation, as well as outlining a potential framework for future research. Volume editors Francesca Giardini and Rafael Wittek bring together a diverse group of researchers to analyze gossip and reputation from different disciplines, social domains, and levels of analysis. Being the first integrated and comprehensive collection of studies on both phenomena, each of the 25 chapters explores the current research on the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of the gossip-reputation link in contexts as diverse as online markets, non-industrial societies, organizations, social networks, or schools. International in scope, the volume is organized into seven sections devoted to the exploration of a different facet of gossip and reputation. Contributions from eminent experts on gossip and reputation not only help us better understand the complex interplay between two delicate social mechanisms, but also sketch the contours of a long term research agenda by pointing to new problems and newly emerging cross-disciplinary solutions.

What creates corporate reputations and how should organizations respond? Corporate reputation is a growing research field in disciplines as diverse as communication, management, marketing, industrial and organizational psychology, and sociology. As a formal area of academic study, it is relatively young with roots in the 1980s and the emergence of specialized reputation rankings for industries, products/services, and performance dimensions and for regions. Such rankings resulted in competition between organizations and the alignment of organizational activities to qualify and improve standings in the rankings. In addition, today’s changing stakeholder expectations, the growth of advocacy, demand for more disclosures and greater transparency, and globalized, mediatized environments create new challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities for organizations. Successfully engaging, dealing with, and working through reputational challenges requires an understanding of options and tools for organizational decision-making and stakeholder engagement. For the first time, the vast and important field of corporate reputation is explored in the format of an encyclopedic reference. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Corporate Reputation comprehensively overviews concepts and techniques for identifying, building, measuring, monitoring, evaluating, maintaining, valuing, living up to and/or changing corporate reputations. Key features include: 300 signed entries are organized in A-to-Z fashion in 2 volumes available in a choice of electronic or print formats Entries conclude with Cross-References and Further Readings to guide students to in-depth resources. Although organized A-to-Z, a thematic "Reader’s Guide" in the front matter groups related entries by broad areas A Chronology provides historical perspective on the development of corporate reputation as a discrete field of study. A Resource Guide in the back matter lists classic books, key journals, associations, websites, and selected degree programs of relevance to corporate reputation. A General Bibliography will be accompanied by visual maps noting the relationships between the various disciplines touching upon corporate reputation studies. The work concludes with a comprehensive Index, which—in the electronic version—combines with the Reader’s Guide and Cross-References to provide thorough search-and-browse capabilities