Even with all the hard work you put into developing a brand people love and trust, you may still face negative reviews that affect how potential customers view your business. While you aim for loyal customers and high levels of satisfaction, a few negative reviews can sway potential customers. As one study determined, 22% of consumers look to reviews as their first source of recommendation when seeking out new brands and products.
That’s why a great online reputation management strategy is essential. With the right approach and online reputation management tools, you can stay on top of customer relationships and turn great testimonials into positive content. Let’s dive into how you can shape public perception of your brand for the better.
What is online reputation management?
Online reputation management focuses on proactively maintaining a positive reputation for a brand in the digital space, whether on search engines, forums, or social media platforms. It also hinges on reactively jumping on issues that negatively impact brand perception as they arise. Reputation management is also important for local businesses, as you get a sweeping perspective of how customers from all areas view your brand and respond to your products or services.
If you’re in the market for online reputation management tools to support your brand, there are plenty to choose from. These digital platforms offer a suite of tools and services for staying on top of your reputation, from tracking recent features from news sites to mentions of your brand on social media. But before you sign up for one, it’s good to know what tarnishes a brand’s reputation and how these tools work. A negative online reputation can develop for any of the following reasons:
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Negative reviews or customer feedback
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Scammy links
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Negative articles or blog posts
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Critical social media comments
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Poor customer service
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Negative viral videos
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Data breaches and leaks
How do online reputation management tools work?
Online reputation management tools use algorithms and artificial intelligence tools to log mentions and reviews of your brand. These tools then analyze the sentiment behind each mention. This tech can crawl websites, social media channels, online news outlets, review sites, and more to gather this information.
Many of these tools also have features that let you respond to comments, reviews, and posts—and do so more quickly than you’d be able to otherwise. Outside of digital tools, you can also hire an online reputation management company to do this work for you.
Top online reputation management tools
It’s tricky to fully control your brand’s impact throughout the real and online world, but these online reputation management tools can help you make the right impression. Browse through these options so you can choose the online reputation management tool that works best for your brand’s needs:
Brand24
Entrepreneurs and brands interested in tracking brand mentions and using social listening—a way of logging what’s being said about your brand on social media and online—may find Brand24 to be a particularly helpful tool. You can track your PR coverage, mentions on social channels (including hashtags), and analyze sentiment, which determines whether or not reviews or discussions are positive or negative. Each pricing tier has different features, and not every tier tracks every social platform.
For example, the individual plan can’t access LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, YouTube, or TikTok, but the next tier (Team) does. The Pro plan includes the ability to find influencers, track reviews, generate PDF reports, and more.
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Pricing: Monthly plans start at $199 per month for individuals and small brands
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Free trial: 14 days
GatherUp
GatherUp breaks its reputation management tools into three categories: listening, understanding, and engaging. For collecting online reviews, the platform allows you to send review requests to customers and seamlessly add them to your website. To understand the feedback you receive, GatherUp generates reports through AI and organizes those reviews by theme or topic. Lastly, you can respond to the reviews, create SMS messaging, and use the reviews for content creation with plan add-ons.
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Pricing: Small business plans start at $99 per month for one location
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Free trial: 14 days
Semrush
For a platform that offers search engine optimization (SEO) functionalities, consider Semrush. While it’s highly regarded as an SEO tool, it’s also great for handling a brand’s online reputation. You can respond to reviews through the platform and filter them by specific parameters (such as date or location). Another one of its reputation management services is the Brand Monitoring app, which allows you to find mentions, track competitors, and analyze the value of media coverage. Semrush also offers pared-down local plans with fewer SEO features but a focus on Google Business Profile optimization.
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Pricing: SEO plans begin at $140 per month; local business plans start at $30 per month
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Free trial: 7 days
Birdeye
Through various AI models, Birdeye allows you to respond to reviews, publish responses and social media posts, track analytics, compare competitor stats, and improve your Google ranking through business listing adjustments. As far as review management goes, you can track how many reviews exist on various platforms, the number of reviews your business has below three stars, and how many you’ve yet to respond to. AI tools include custom message generation, survey send-outs, and support in ranking higher for local listings.
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Pricing: Quote-based
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Free trial: 30 days
SOCi
If you appreciate AI automations and operate in more than one location, SOCi might serve your brand well. Its Genius AI tool can respond to reviews in a way that matches your brand tone, offer recommendations for optimizing your listings for local search visibility, create paid advertisements, and build out social calendars. The company is also useful for scaling reputation management, which comes in handy for brands going through extensive growth.
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Pricing: Quote-based
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Free trial: None, but you can schedule a demo
Google Alerts
Although Google Alerts has one purpose, it’s an important one to have in your online reputation management tool kit—especially for brand monitoring. It’s completely free and allows you to track selected keywords and phrases that show up in search engine results. These alerts come through your email inbox and notify you when companies, news sites, and media outlets mention your brand. You can determine how many alerts you get, the region you’d like to track, and the sources and results you’re interested in.
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Pricing: Free
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Free trial: N/A
Reputation
As its name suggests, Reputation serves as a platform for managing your online reputation by tracking reviews across a large range of websites. It collects the information and compiles it into a single dashboard, showing you everything from the number of mentions to a map of your customers’ sentiments. You can also respond to reviews and tweak business listings across all locations. The platform allows for social media management and interactions, sentiment and emotion maps, keyword/adjective tracking, and location-specific page optimization.
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Pricing: Quote-based
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Free trial: None, though you can book a demo
Meltwater
Meltwater tracks mentions and reviews by analyzing and summarizing why search volume or mentions are spiking, as well as when and why sentiment shifts occur. This can help with strategizing an online reputation management campaign or keeping your public relations team looped in when it comes to handling positive viral moments or crises, for instance. The higher the tier you choose, the more custom solutions you get access to.
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Pricing: Quote-based
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Free trial: None
Mention
Timeliness is vital for staying on top of your online footprint. Missing out on just a few negative comments or reviews can impact your online image. To keep track and reply quickly and effectively, Mention gathers up to two years of historical data and monitors real-time changes over a billion different sources. You can also react and respond to comments from the platform. It offers social listening metrics and the ability to seek out influencers who fit your brand’s tone, aesthetic, and audience. The higher the tier you select, the more accounts you can have and mentions you can track.
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Pricing: Solo plans start at $49 per month
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Free trial: 30 days
Trustpilot
Another way to secure trust is through positive reviews, and Trustpilot helps you turn testimonials into social proof advertisements. Trustpilot organizes both positive online reviews and negative search results and reviews in one dashboard that integrates with Shopify. The platform also gives you access to visitor information, so you can get a better understanding of the reviews they’re interested in and the other brands they shop from. Paid plans offer API add-ons for added functionality, social analytics tools, ad creation tools, and benchmarking data so you can compare yourself to competitors. There’s no free trial, but the basic free plan unlocks 50 monthly review invitations to source reviews from customers, suspicious review monitoring, and an overview dashboard.
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Pricing: Paid plans start at $339 monthly
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Free trial: None, but there is a free plan
Online reputation management FAQ
How should we manage our online reputation?
To manage your brand’s online reputation, it’s best to invest in online reputation management tools. They can scan the internet and alert you to new reviews or mentions of your company, while also helping you respond to comments, concerns, and content directed at your brand.
Which platform is best for reputation management?
The best reputation management platform for you will depend on the features you need. If you simply want to track brand mentions and do the rest manually, Google Alerts is a great, free tool. If social media analysis, tracking, and management are important, SOCi and Brand24 are some good choices.
How can I fix my reputation online?
To fix your brand reputation, pinpoint the root of the problem that is causing customers to perceive your company in a bad light. Use online reputation management tools to see where problems arise and quickly respond to comments and reviews with proactive solutions. In addition, you could hire reputation experts to support you in building a positive brand image and strong customer relationships.
