If you look on your profile when you first open up your blog it's that number right next to your name in your profile. Reputation score is how people get to know where you are in regards to how trustworthy you are. High reputation scores are perceived to have quality content and that's because they have been uploaded a lot.
To raise your score you have to get more uploads on both your posts and your comments. By posting comments on other post is probably the fastest and the easiest way to get more upvotes and raise your reputation score. When you do that add good quality comments that are going to add value to that post. That way you'll get increasingly more upvotes and you'll make more as well. This is one of those pieces to the puzzle of steamit that you need to know before you make your first post which is get to know you other people and comment on their blogs and reply to their comments you're going to start building that relationship but also this is going to help build your reputation score because the more votes you get the higher your reputation score goes.
Eeverybody when they first join steamit starts out with a reputation score of 25. So as you go out and you comment and reply on people's post and get familiar with steamit, your reputation score is going to rise as you get more upvotes. This way when you do make your first post your reputation score is going to be higher than somebody brand new just joining in going in and making their first post. So the reputation score translates into people looking at your first post and you have a higher reputation score than somebody brand new they can see now that you've spent some time and that more than likely the content that you're producing is quality content.
I can tell you this, you can actually get a negative reputation score. The highest one I've seen is a negative 13, although his has been upgraded to a negative 8 now and the reason is he is put out junk content, your content gets flagged meaning downgraded and so you're not only do you make a less but your reputation score goes down. So if you see somebody that has a reputation score with a negative sign beside it or that they have a reputation score below 25, you know that they've been flagged and downgraded for what they've posted, what they've come in it or what they replied on. That's the importance to the reputation score you can see by their score what kind of content that they've been producing. So I hope this has helped you out.