21 Best Reputation Management Tools & Software Platforms Reviewed
Is your online reputation management strategy is headed in the wrong direction?
Today’s consumers can research anything about a company online, and most of them do.
Last year, a survey was conducted of 2,500 US consumers who were buying electronics. The study found that most consumers do not buy from the first website that they visit.
The study revealed that 52 percent are likely to make impulse purchases online after they are online.
What is reputation management?
Reputation management (sometimes called online reputation management or ORM) is the practice of attempting to shape public opinion of a person or organization by influencing readily available online information.
It includes the process of identifying what is being displayed online about you or your business. Think of it merely as what the Internet says about you or your company.
Here is an example of someone who could use an online reputation management expert:
How Does Your Reputation Online Measure Up?
If you do a quick search on your brand, company name, or popular products, what reviews do you see? Do you have a good reputation?
Some businesses believe that not seeing any reviews is a positive, but this is almost as problematic as having negative reviews. Customers are also looking for companies that they can trust.
When it comes to making financial decisions before a purchase, customers are even pickier.
Buyers want to know that your product is going to work, which is why they frequently look at reviews and ask opinions before a purchase.
Want to usher your customers along your sales funnel quickly?
Then you need to have some content in place that helps your reputation. This is the first line of defense for negative reputation problems.
Quality content helps push down old, poor reviews and gives customers a positive message about your brand.
ORM also depends on monitoring reviews.
How else are you going to find someone posting a bad link to your website on a forum from 2014? While some searches may turn up these poor reviews and negative mentions, there are online reputation management software tools out there that make it easier to spot issues and respond right away.
You should do a quick audit of your current status before managing your online reputation. Ask some critical questions to determine what your goals are.
Quick Online Reputation Assessment
These questions are important to ask. You can use a round-table discussion with different departments, including your customer service team, to see what ORM issues currently affect your company’s search engine ranking, social engagement, and customer satisfaction.
- Are you on the first page of results when you search your brand, products, or keywords related to your product?
It is important to do this quick search on multiple keywords, products, and brand names related to your company to see the state of your ORM at a high level.
You can probably pinpoint some of the leading issues from the first few reviews or if there are no reviews.
- Do you currently request feedback from customers? What do feedback surveys say about your business?
Another step for many businesses is to look at how they collect reviews from customers. Some offer a survey on the website after purchasing, while others send an email to gather reviews after customers use the product.
Reputation Management Strategy
How do you respond to customer complaints online?
Most companies have a set of rules that they call an “Online Response Handbook.”
You can use this handbook to designate specific replies to specific common complaints.
For example, if your hotel is accused of having bed bugs, you can have a specific response template that a manager can use to reply. You should not copy and paste but rather alter some of the text to be unique to the complaint.
Who handles review monitoring at your company?
Some companies place customer service teams in charge of this job, while others prefer using digital marketing firms to handle their ORM.
In an ideal situation, you should combine both the power of customer service knowledge with digital marketing strategies. Specifically, you want to negate poor content on the web about your brand while also publishing lots of positive material and educational pieces about your company and its products.
What’s your budget?
There are free ways to handle your internet reputation, but they will not always be the best option for spotting high-risk reviews or taking down comments on Facebook that can happen overnight.
Some cost $15 a month, while others cost over $500 a month. This all depends on what you want to monitor. Typical tools will track the following types of channels:
- Search engine results
- Social media networks
- Google reviews
- Yelp reviews
- Angie’s List
- Forum threads
- Better Business Bureau complaints
- Rip-Off Report complaints
- Consumer Board complaints
- TripAdvisor
More companies use reputation monitoring tools to help their business spot threats immediately.
With smart applications using AI and filters, you can address individual negative comments instantly.
Most of these applications will allow you to try before you buy, so it is important to do some research.
The following tools represent some of the most intelligent and historical ORM options available.
While some are just for monitoring and alerts, others have built-in functions that can flag, remove, and assign tasks to your team.
Not sure which is right for you?
Scroll down to “How to Choose the Best Reputation Management Tools” for more information.
1. Talkwalker
A top pick for online review monitoring tool
Talkwalker lets you monitor sentiments towards your brand over a 7-day period using their free social search tool. It calculates sentiment based on posts, tweets, and articles that are driving different social signals about your brand.
The search covers over 150 million websites and all social networks, so you get a unique view of your brand’s reputation from various parts of the web. There is no limit to the number of searches that you can conduct, so it is easy to monitor your ORM in real-time.
Talkwalker Alerts is another online review management software to watch your brand online. This allows you to track and notify when your brand is mentioned through different keywords. However, if you do not want to set this up and pay for it, you can always set up alerts manually through Google Alerts.
Price: Forever Free
2. Smart Moderation AI Tool
Smart Moderation is an enhanced comment moderation tool that allows you to automatically hide or delete comments that you do not want on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
It is mostly used by advertising agencies and brands to support their social media teams.
While it can be costly, it is beneficial if you run any paid advertising on Facebook as you may receive 1,000 comments per day and may not be able to monitor all of those comments for negative mentions, curse words, inadequate responses, and credibility ticks.
Price: Free to start, then $199/month.
3. IFTTT
Manage online reputation with IFTTT
IFTTT was created to help you automate simple online tasks like sending a text when it’s raining or turning on the lights in your smart home. However, you can also use it to track and support your goals.
For example, if your brand is mentioned on Yelp, you can send a direct message to your customer service team’s Slack channel.
You can get a text message every time your Talkwalker Alert sends a new mention to your RSS feed.
Price: Free, available for iOS and Android Apps
4. AgoraPulse
Like Smart Moderation, AgoraPulse is another comment moderation tool that tracks down negative comments and instantly hides or deletes them according to your filters. You can add hundreds of words to these filters.
The only issue here is that you manually have to add the filters. Also, this is best for companies who run multiple social pages and manage paid social campaigns.
Price: Free to start, then $99/month and up depending on the number of pages you manage.
5. Social Mention
This is a free search tool that you can use to monitor specific brand keywords and see where you are popping up on the Internet.
Social Mention will return results that let you see top keywords, top users, sentiments, hashtags, and networks that are popular with your brand.
You can search blogs, microblogs, social networks, images, and videos.
Your social management team can also benefit by looking at top users who are talking about your brand and seeing different hashtags related to those keywords.
Price: Forever Free
6. SocialReport.com
Self-professed “the World’s Most Complete Social Media Management Platform,” this tool is exceptional for managing any brand mention on any part of the web.
You also get analytics, social scheduling, a smart inbox with task management, keyword monitoring, automated responses, custom reports, and API integrations.
If you are a very social brand or just want to be able to automate some of your moderation and responses, then this is a great platform to use.
Price: Free to start, then $49+ per month
7. GoFish Digital Complaint Search
Google reviews are essential to every business. These are often the first thing that people see when searching your products and brand name. Go Fish Digital complaint search lets you search keywords and then shows you negative reviews found on over 40 websites.
You can check out what reviews are most popular, see your brand ratings, and respond to those reviews on certain websites.
In other cases, you may be able to flag or remove reviews manually.
Price: Free to Search, GoFish has paid services as well.
8. ReviewTrackers
ReviewTrackers offers a paid tool that tracks customer reviews across 80 different sites and sources.
Then, it collects all reviews to manage your online reputation better from one dashboard. You also receive email reports that keep you up to date and let you quickly respond to reviews that may bring down your brand.
Also, ReviewTracker also has a feature that measures your customer feedback and notes patterns so that you can easily see what topics concern your customers the most.
Price: Starts at $45/month
9. KnowEm Internet Reputation Management
Monitor your brand with this reputation software
Do you know how visible you are online?
KnowEm is an easy research tool that should help you in the beginning phase of an online reputation audit. You can see where your brand or products pop up on the web on over 330 social media and news sites.
You can instantly see an overview of how visible you are online, and what those profiles say about your brand.
You may not even have known that you have a Facebook page or that customers are leaving negative Facebook reviews you will want to remove until using KnowEM.
Price: Starts at $84.95/month
10. ImageRaider online reputation manager
The images online about your brand can say a lot. Is your logo being used appropriately by affiliates?
What types of images are customers sharing about your brand? Doing a simple image search on Google related to your brand is not enough. Image Raider tracks the misuse of your image across the web.
You can upload any image into and let Image Raider look up any websites that are using your image across Google, Bing, and Yandex.
People who use this tool the most are likely in SEO or digital marketing, but photographers and rightsholders also use it to see who is misusing images without copyright.
Price: Free
11. Yotpo
An essential aspect of a stellar online reputation is creating positive content. The best form of content for businesses is organically generating a great review. How do you encourage these from customers? You can use a service like Yotpo.
While many tools focus on brand monitoring, Yotpo is a proactive service that helps you improve your reputation by encouraging customers to write positive reviews about your company.
Yotpo lite is the free version. This allows you to send review request emails and automatically send out review requests after a purchase.
However, the paid version is quite better as you can customize your reviews and get more feedback from customers.
Price: Free plus advanced paid options
12. Grade.us
Looking to produce positive reviews from happy customers? Since coming onto the digital scene in 2013, Grade.us made its way up the ladder to become a leader in reputation management services for SEO’s, marketers, and agencies.
Every business wants and needs positive reviews. However, how are you supposed to get reviews from customers when they make their purchase and leaves it at that? You do this through a company such as Grade.us.
Grade.us takes the best reviews on your business and applies them to search engine friendly web content and social media.
This strategy amplifies your company’s positive reputation.
However, it gets even better. With Grade. Us, the program allows you to retrieve unhappy customers reviews before posting less than stellar reviews on your business. The platform also aids in monitoring all reviews your business gets online to help you track how customers rate your brand.
Features Include feedback collection, social media metrics, customer platform, complaint monitoring and more.
Pricing is available in two plans. Marketer plan is $90.00 per month, and an Agency place runs $200.00 per month.
13. Podium
Podium is a platform that places its focus on the relationship between the customer and your business. It carries out this by merging customer experience, marketing, and operations into one single platform.
Your business gains an increase in online visibility that will influence purchase decisions. You will have the power to influence what consumers say about your company and the location. They do this by applying focus on the thematics and sites crucial to your business.
Your business gains online visibility that allows the influence on purchase decisions established by the technology of the everyday consumer.
Features include: Generating Reviews on Social Networking Sites, Improving local SEO on search engines, tracking online reviews and more.
14. BirdEye
The BirdEye tool is unique on its own. You will receive negative comment alerts, so you can handle it before it spirals, turning frustration into success. The program is an all-in-one platform that turns your customers into your marketing engine. With Birdeye, it is a breeze to collect new Reviews.
Your organization’s positive reviews displayed on your business’ Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and company website highlight your success. BirdEye indexes by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing for higher search ranking.
Features include Competitor Analysis, Social Ticketing, Customer Surveys, and much more.
15. Broadly
Broadly gives your business the boost it needs to look fantastic online through verified customer reviews. The programs review strategy makes it simple for customers to refer friends and relatives on the most vital search engines.
Also, their platforms SEO technology aid your business to stand out online.
Features include: Customer Referral and Tracking, Website Design and development, SEO service through the distribution of positive feedback online, and much more
The tool sends a weekly report card to reveal how you are doing. The report features the following:
- The total of new customers you have seen in that week
- The count of new reviews you have and where
- Any private feedback from consumers you may have received
- The number of customers that will recommend your brand to others.
16. Trustpilot
Trustpilot is an online review platform that through its global clientele builds trust and transparency between businesses and consumers. The platform currently has 160,000 reviewed organizations and close to 30 million reviews.
The tool provides a stage where consumers can review any business if they have had a service or buying experience with that business. That includes an email interaction, phone call, or customer service request.
Due to this, Trustpilot has become the go-to resource for consumers shopping looking to make smarter, better-informed purchasing decisions. The program offers a free trial and paid service to organizations which thrives on harnessing the power of channeling customer reviews. All organizations can utilize and invite customers to give them a review.
Price: $0-$549.00 per month
Features are: Search Engine Ratings, Monitor Internet reputation reviews, Google Partner, Widgets, and so much more.
17. Rocket Referrals
Rocket Referrals analyzes existing clientele of an organization and establishing individual profiles for every contact. Each profile stems from a customers loyalty to the organization that it measures over time.
Purpose-driven and personalized communication extends to the company’s clientele to encourage positive behavior. That communication stretches across online review sites, social media, handwritten cards, and email.
What makes this platform different is that it is not a universal technique. It is an optimized answer to research, the leading practices preconfigured, and psychology.
Price: A free version is available. There are package prices of $80.00-$150.00, paid monthly.
18. Customer Lobby
Customer Lobby assists organizations gain more reviews on Facebook, Yelp, Google, and across the web. The process works by automatically collecting reviews via syncing to the organization’s invoice system.
Once customers make a transaction, they automatically receive a request to leave a review. The tool directs the customer to leave their feedback on Facebook, Yelp, and that business’ social media outlets.
The program also provides local organizations with their own Customer Lobby review page. They provide this so that customers can leave a review if they chose.
Price: There is no free trial, and the monthly cost is $129.00-$999.00
19. Future Solutions
Future Solutions is a powerful and useful program that concentrates on negative reviews customers leave. Do you have negative comments you want to be removed? If you are in need of assistance getting your customers to leave positive reviews, this is the solution for you.
Future solutions assist with reputation monitoring for both small and medium organizations. The tool helps you gain the control of need of your online presence. That includes social media and reviews.
Features Include Testimonial Display, Social Content Generation, Keyword Alerts. Review Generation, and Review Notifications.
20. ReviewBuzz
ReviewBuzz aids business’ in gathering a significant amount of 5-star online reviews. Positive reviews bring new customers. It is the most straightforward avenue to gain online reviews. ReviewBuzz software gets your business the reviews it needs on sites where it will matter such as Facebook, Yelp, Google, and more.
Price: The software does come with a 30-day free trial. After that, it is $147.00 per month
21. Reputation 911
Reputation911’s specialty is removing (when possible) and suppressing unwanted or inaccurate negative search results. That provides the client with the freedom and control to portray themselves accurately online.
Choose the Best Online Reputation Management For Your Needs
So which application is best for a particular situation?
If you find bad reviews and complaints popping up after a Google search, you most likely will see them on websites like TripAdvisor, Google, Facebook, Yelp, BBB, and Rip-Off Report.
Some of these are easier to remove than others. In most cases, you will need to manually flag and report Google reviews that are fraudulent.
Recommended
- TalkWalker
- IFTTT
- SmartModeration AI
- Agorapulse
- SocialMention.com
Negative Facebook Reviews
Dealing with trolls and negative comments on your Facebook page? Need to delete that Facebook review?
If you advertise on Facebook with any budget, then you definitely need a social mention and monitoring solution.
These can instantly flag and remove comments based on filters that you set up. However, there are also some new smart AI tools that can flag content that it knows you will not like including all of the curse words known to man.
Recommended
- SmartModeration AI
- SocialReport.com
- SocialMention.com
BBB Or Rip-Off Report Complaints
These are a little bit more difficult to handle. While a monitoring tool can spot these threats and provide some suggestions on how to fix, you typically have to resolve the complaint through BBB or Rip-Off Report’s process.
BBB is better about trying to resolve complaints, but Rip-Off Report typically requires you to pay a fee to remove the criticism from the website. This is their entire business model, and many companies have tried to sue Rip-Off Report because of it.
In this instance, you should let your legal team handle complaints and work with customer service to resolve issues that customers have with your company. The goal is to keep an A+ rating with BBB at all times.
Recommended
- GoFish
Poor or Negative Images About Your Brand
This one is tough for most companies to spot without a tool unless you are continually looking at image searches about different keywords related to your brand.
In some cases, customers may post negative images about your quality, or you may even have a review that creates a graphic that shows your company in a bad light.
If you want consumers to see the best representation of your brand, you should track the use of your logos and images in other articles using some different ORM and web reputation management tools.
Recommended
- Image Raider
Generate Positive Content
Reputation management companies mostly do one thing: create positive content and flood search engines with it, creating good content can boost your SEO. This is not always the best approach as you also want high-quality content that gives authority to your brand.
However, you can use some tactics and tools to create more positive content and push down some of the harmful content, especially if you have older reviews or want to do a relaunch strategy.
One strategy for positive content is to create an SEO mini-site. These are sites designed to pick up keywords about your brand and show them a website that is full of positive material.
Typically, these websites are set up to look separate from your brand. For example, if you ever see a “MacysReview.com” website, you can probably guess that this is a Macy’s SEO mini-site that hosts positive content and testimonials about the brand.
However, if you had a site called “GoodRetailerReviews.com” that had content about all types of retailers including positive content about Macy’s–now you offer quality content that customers might use to inform a decision about a purchase.
There are also reputation management tools that help you collect positive reviews so that you can publish them on your website as testimonials or create a review site about your brand.
Recommended
- Yotpo
- ReviewPush
Successful reputation management combines multiple resources and tactics.
There is no “one tool or software that fits all” to solve the problem of negative reviews, comments, poor brand mentions, and so forth. It is best to decide from your assessment what are your most critical goals before making your selection.
In Closing: Internet Reputation Management Software
Successful online reputation management combines resources from multiple tools.
There is no “one tool or software that fits all” to solve the problem of negative reviews, comments, poor brand mentions, and so forth. It is best to decide from your assessment what are your most critical goals before making your selection.
