When Tiger Woods faced the worst nightmare in his life, he remained quiet for a long time as the media ran havoc on his reputation as more and more horrifying details of the scandal he was in surfaced from various sources worldwide. He might be following the advice of his PR people or did that on his own accord. However, in this ultra-fast, viral environment that people face in the online world, keeping quiet was the worst thing he could do.

Companies or individuals facing negative publicity may not be in the same level of severity as what Tiger Woods encountered, but keeping mum and taking no action can eventually ruin your online reputation - permanently. Bad reputation and negative publicity could spread like wildfire and would eventually push you deeper and deeper into the quagmire - until there is no way out.

At the very onset of negative publicity, individuals or corporations need to alleviate the situation and perform reputation management. To get better and faster results, it would be wise to seek the services of reputable organizations to help you in spreading good publicity - and drown out the bad. The key thing here is to do it fast - faster than the negative publicity virus can spread.