The company you keep

Your online reputation involves subtle but powerful chemistry. Here’s a real life example of how it works.

5 minutes ago. I was reading a post by Andy Lopata (founder of Word of Mouse network and author of ‘And Death Came Third’) in the ‘Make Your Mark’ Connectors’ Google group. I liked his book (about networking and public speaking) and we’ve spoken a couple of times recently. His post announced that he’d been appointed a regional contributor to US-based ‘The National Networker’ and was writing a monthly column.

So I clicked across to read Andy’s first column - a piece about Ecademy’s recent 10th birthday. When I finished, I had a look round the site, a sort of digital ‘let’s-see-the-company-you’re-keeping’. Moments later, I was reading a column offering ‘Network Marketers’ a word-for-word script they could use to recruit other companies’ staff into their business ‘opportunities’.

Now, as those who know me know, I take a very strong and very critical position on network (or ‘multi-level’) marketing. Given that the vast majority (some sources say over 95%) of people don’t make any money at all from MLM / NM ‘opportunities’, and of the remainder only a tiny fraction make enough to live on, this ‘industry’ is slowly being exposed for what it really is; an exploitative system that preys on vulnerable people, takes their investments at the same time as brainwashing them to take full responsibility for their failure to make money. For the record, that view is not based on my own experience. Its based on a huge and growing body of direct, personal testimony of people who have been damaged by its practices - and, more recently, backed up by statistical evidence emerging from high-profile law suits against Quixtar (formerly Amway).

Would I write for an online journal that elevated Network Marketing to respectability? No. I wouldn’t - but that’s a personal choice. But this experience does remind me that online reputation isn’t just about knowing what other people say about you; it’s also about thinking about the company you keep and what they’re saying. Have I considered what people might think of the associations I make or the places I write? Probably not. Its worth thinking about it, though.

April 24, 2008 | Filed Under business insight, marketing 

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