A brand is only as good as its reputation. The way people perceive your products, services, and values can have a lot to do with whether they decide to do business with you. And in an era where information travels as fast as a person can tweet, post, or share, it’s more important than ever for brands to stay in touch with what people are saying about them.
That’s why there are online reputation management tools to help you keep tabs on your brand. Reputation management services and tools do much of the heavy lifting for you so you can capitalize on opportunities and take quick action when an issue arises.
To help you gain an edge, we’ve rounded up some of the best-in-class online reputation management services and software to support your digital presence.
Table of Contents:
What is Online Reputation Management?
Reputation Management: Services or Software?
Best Online Reputation Management Tools for 2024
Help Me Find an Online Reputation Solution
Tip: Also take a look at the best brand management software, platforms, and tools on the market.
What is Online Reputation Management?
Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of software and services, let’s define what online reputation management means.
Our definition of online reputation management is the proactive, conscious practice of influencing your brand’s reputation online.
People are talking about your company online, whether you realize it or not. When you engage in reputation monitoring, you’re taking control of conversations and shaping consumer perceptions.
This process can take a number of forms:
- Creating content you want people to find (as opposed to content that might harm your brand)
- Responding to negative online reviews
- Hiding outdated, misleading, or brand-damaging content from search results
- Monitoring analytics to see positive improvement over time
The end goal is the same: to influence how people feel about your brand.
You might not be able to quiet all the negative commentary or win back all the eroded trust. Plus, the search engine algorithms favor what people are clicking on and talking about.
But with consistent effort and addressing issues sooner than later, you stand a much better chance of creating the impressions you want.
Reputation Management: Services or Software?
Reputation monitoring takes two forms: the do-it-yourself approach (with software) or outsourcing it to a professional (a service).
Companies can invest in reputation management tools to monitor conversations and reviews themselves. Online reputation management software can give you a single window into online reviews, social posts, and online mentions. From there, you can take action to correct any negativity or inaccuracies.
For example, if something negative is showing up in search engine results pages, you might create some search-engine-optimized (SEO) content (e.g., blog posts, product reviews, etc.) to compete. Hire a content marketing service to develop SEO content for even faster results.
Online reputation repair services also rely on software tools to monitor conversations on the internet. The difference is they act on your behalf in the background, almost like putting your brand reputation management on autopilot.
Outsourcing reputation monitoring can give you more value, depending on your needs. Reputation service providers use sophisticated reputation management tools that are often out of reach for smaller brands with smaller budgets. Plus, you have the benefit of a dedicated professional who knows how to use the platform and respond accordingly.
How you choose to proceed with reputation management software depends on your budget, time, and goals. But one thing is certain: every brand needs to manage its reputation. With more than 99% of customers reading and trusting reviews before shopping online, it’s important to always put your best digital foot forward.
Best Online Reputation Management Tools for 2024
Ready to explore your reputation management software and service options? We’ve researched and vetted the best in the industry and recommend starting with these top options:
1. Meltwater
As an end-to-end media monitoring and social listening platform, Meltwater helps you make sense of all the conversations around your brand so you can chart your best path forward. The platform reviews over 500 million pieces of content every day and continually brings in new sources in search of keywords and topics that are relevant to you.
If you’re looking to cast the widest net for a good reputation, your online reputation management strategy needs to extend beyond Google and the digital world. Meltwater’s easy-to-use media intelligence services include media monitoring across print, broadcast, and podcasts. What's more, to ensure scope, we partner with local media vendors. Take print as an example, we have various print partnerships across EMEA, Americas, and APAC. That way, we have the capabilities to capture mentions in niche local outlets if need be.
Learn more about broadcast monitoring and print monitoring.
You can also integrate multiple media feeds to ensure you never miss a brand mention. This includes Reddit, forums, consumer review sites, blogs, and social media.
Some of the data-driven elements Meltwater searches for on your behalf include:
- Volume of mentions
- Where your brand is mentioned the most
- The reach of your mentions
- Sentiment analysis
- Mention origins (e.g.s, blogs, social mentions, etc.)
- Top influencers mentioning your brand
- Trend analysis
- Top publications mentioning your brand the most
With these insights, you can expand on opportunities to get your brand in the media (the right way, of course).
2. Brand24
If you like lots of value with straightforward features, Brand24 checks all the boxes. Though mostly used by larger enterprises, it’s also affordable enough for smaller companies who want to get a leg up on their competitors.
You can track specific keywords on social media to discover content that will help you with brand management. You can also run multiple projects and campaigns if you’re trying to keep tabs on competing brands. Get real-time mentions and feedback so you can respond to mentions the moment they occur.
Brand24 is suited for the social media monitoring slice of reputation management. However, if you want to expand your reputation monitoring to include reviews or offline mentions, you may need to include other tools in your strategy.
Tip: Take a look at other Brand24 Alternatives and check out the best brand management software, platforms, and tools on the market.
3. Podium
Online reviews are digital gold for a company’s reputation. They provide direct insight into how other customers have experienced your brand. Plus, they also get to see how the business has addressed complaints or issues.
They're also one of the key reasons why you need online reputation monitoring in the first place.
Just a simple Google search by potential customers can put business owners in jeopardy of losing business if they have multiple bad reviews.
Research shows it takes roughly 40 good reviews to undo the damage of just one bad review. That’s because people who have a bad experience are more likely to share it with others. Plus, only 1 in 10 happy customers are likely to leave a good review, even if they were satisfied with their experience.
To monitor online reviews across multiple websites in real-time, there’s Podium. The platform unites reviews from multiple sites into a single dashboard. Customer service teams can see reviews at a glance and respond accordingly.
What’s more, Podium makes it easy to encourage customers to leave reviews online. This is important considering how damaging a bad review can be for a business. But the more good reviews you earn, the less the bad ones seem to matter.
Podium helps companies capitalize on more review opportunities by automatically asking for reviews and allowing you to respond quickly to issues. Your prompt service may be enough to smooth things over with unhappy customers and win back business.
4. Mentionlytics
If you’re a small brand name with a small audience, chances are that you can easily keep track of all your brand mentions via brand tracking without feeling overwhelmed. But what about larger enterprises that get hundreds or thousands of mentions every day?
If you like the idea of filtering only the most important information, Mentionlytics is one of the most streamlined ways to manage your reputation. It uses artificial intelligence to pick out only the most relevant content instead of flooding your inbox with every mention.
For example, instead of seeing every time someone leaves you a review, you can see only the negative reviews and respond accordingly. The platform can also show you any irregular spikes in engagement or potentially harmful content about your brand. You can spend less time wading through the content jungle and more time focused on the activities that matter.
Tip: Learn more about brand tracking, brand monitoring, brand tracking software, and about AI in marketing
5. Chatmeter
Companies and franchises that have multiple locations need an easy way to pinpoint reputation issues. Chatmeter makes it easy and nearly effortless.
When you have multiple stores, creating a consistent brand image becomes more critical. You want to create the same experiences for customers in all of your stores.
The platform connects reviews, social media feeds, and other online mentions from all of your locations into a single dashboard. Set alerts for negative content and customer reviews. Filter by national, regional, or local levels to gauge performance, collect feedback, and decide where and how to fill the gaps. You can also compare locations side by side to find your top performers.
6. Mention
For companies with a strong social media presence, Mention is a tool you may consider for online reputation management.
Mention takes a 3-step approach to social media reputation building:
First, it monitors more than 1 billion pieces of information every day, from Google SERPs to blogs to news sites to forums and more.
Next, it listens to your mentions and makes sense of them, then turns them into usable insights.
And last, you can use these insights to draft, schedule, and publish social media content to respond to what people are talking about.
You’ll gain a deeper understanding of how other people feel about your brand. Plus, you can tailor your content and marketing to what your audience is most likely to respond to.
7. Reputation Resolutions
Is your brand under attack? Maybe you upset a customer or an employee and they want revenge. Misquoted information, personal values, and content that’s been taken out of context can all become PR nightmares for a company.
Reputation Resolutions helps you regain control in times of crisis so you can mitigate brand damage quickly.
Unlike off-the-shelf reputation management software, Reputation Resolutions tailors its services to the company and its current scenario. This might mean removing harmful content from the internet, creating new content to drown out the negativity, or monitoring a business’s or individual’s reputation over time to ensure progress.
What’s more, they also guarantee their services and offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Help Me Find an Online Reputation Solution
When you begin searching for a platform or tool to help you manage and monitor your brand's reputation online, it's good to clearly outline the sources or channels that you want to monitor. As we noted above, not every solution offers monitoring across social media networks, traditional news sources (TV, radio, print, etc.), online review sites, blogs,
Are you ready to take control of your online reputation? Reach out to our team today to see how we can help you stand out for the right reasons!
