Online reputation management (ORM) is important for business owners since it is extremely important to have a good reputation people can trust about. People have now grown to search reviews of a product or service before buying, and this makes it critically imporant that your brand has a good reputation online. A Positive Online reputation can significantly boost sales. Ever heard of Zappos? Even if you've not been their client, you may have heard how awesome their customer service is. This is how reputation markets a brand itself, the 'online' is just a medium for it! Inevitably most companies start investigating their online reputation only after sales drop. Prevention is always better than cure, and since no brand can survive without a great reputation, it makes a lot of financial sense in being proactive and promoting your brand, rather than trying to firefight the bad reviews!It is vital to have a presence online for ALL stakeholders of a company - these days potential employees, investors, banks, corporations and the public are all researching before they want to do any business with a prospective company. It thus becomes extremely important to provide as much information as possible so that people get to know about you as they make decisions on the information that is available. Negative reputation can really harm your business.Gossip and rumours have resulted in the downfall of many brands. During such a crisis, it is important to have positive information available which can be provided to external sources for damage control.