Want to jump straight to the answer? For the majority of companies, Brand24 will provide the most helpful features for improving customer experiences and for boosting the company’s online reputation.
A good reputation has always been a key component of success for a business or organization.
A couple of generations ago, word of mouth was extremely important in maintaining a positive reputation. Generating a positive reputation these days, however, involves monitoring what people are saying about the business online.
Companies can dedicate multiple employees to try to keep up with customer reviews and social media mentions. Or, they can rely on the best reputation management software to efficiently keep track of and respond to current and potential customers.
The Top 6 Best Reputation Management Software Tools
Brand24 — Best overall reputation management softwareBirdEye — Best for monitoring customer reviewsPodium — Best for improving customer review resultsReputation.com — Best for understanding reputation levelsYext — Best for generating success with local searchesMention — Best for improving social media presence
#1 – Brand24 — Best Overall Reputation Management Software
Try free for 14 days
Brand24 has an impressive level of versatility to serve the online reputation management needs of any sized company. It can help one keep an eye on their own reputation online and monitor the performance of competitors.
Users can specify keyword searches for social media, blogs, message boards, customer reviews, and other outlets. The keywords can involve a slogan or the company name.
Brand24 will then search for any instances of those keywords and send alerts pertaining to them. In some instances, it may be helpful to search for keywords related to competitors, allowing the company to track competitor performance alongside their own.
With its system, Brand24 keeps track of all customer interactions, whether they’re negative, positive, or neutral. If desired, Brand24 will send alerts when it encounters a negative-tinted review or social media post, giving the company the ability to respond immediately.
Additionally, Brand24 can generate reports about the frequency of mentions, likes, and trending hashtags related to the company. This is a useful way to manage the penetration of a particular marketing campaign.
In fact, Brand24 offers a feature where a company can measure the performance of two or more of its marketing campaigns to compare them, measuring which of its brand-related hashtags is performing better.
For those new to reputation management software, Brand24 offers a wide range of helpful features. It has multiple teaching tools and webinars to give customers the information they need to make the most of Brand24’s features.
Brand24 offers three pricing tiers ranging from $49 to $299 per month. Brand24’s pricing tiers allow for a different number of maximum keyword searches. Users can test the software for free during a trial period.
#2 – BirdEye — Best for Monitoring Customer Reviews
Request a demo
Online customer reviews are critically important to any business. Five-star reviews can boost the brand and increase sales. One-star reviews can sink the product quickly.
BirdEye has the ability to monitor customer reviews from more than 200 different sites, keeping an eye on what customers are saying. Companies can set up BirdEye to generate automatic responses to different types of reviews.
For the most positive reviews, BirdEye can link to them and highlight them on the company’s social media feed. It can also generate data from customer feedback, helping the company understand why its customers are responding the way they are.
As an added benefit, BirdEye allows a company to connect with customers who leave reviews on the company website. BirdEye supports messaging through text, live chat, social media contacts, or email. After connecting with the customers, BirdEye will encourage them to leave reviews on popular sites too.
BirdEye is an especially strong reputation management software package for large companies. Its features may work for some smaller organizations too, especially those that rely on online product sales. However, BirdEye’s cost is a little higher than some on our list.
BirdEye offers a free demo for potential customers. For those who want to receive price quotes, they’ll have to provide some information to BirdEye.
#3 – Podium — Best for Improving Customer Review Results
Request a demo
When companies receive five-star reviews, it rarely happens by accident. They have to work at it to make sure happy customers leave reviews. After all, satisfied customers don’t always take the time to leave reviews like unhappy customers tend to do.
Podium is a reputation management software package that focuses on encouraging customers to leave more reviews. Chances are high that this will generate a higher level of five-star reviews, boosting the overall reputation of the brand, product, and company.
As its primary focus, Podium helps the company respond quickly to customer requests and questions. These prompt responses will impress customers.
When customers let the company know that they have had a good experience, Podium sends messages that encourage them to leave positive reviews. Podium will even point the customers toward certain websites and social media channels where the company wants more positive reviews to appear.
Podium keeps the conversation lines open by offering things like a live chat button on the company website and a phone number for texting customer support. All of these communications from customers appear in the Podium dashboard, allowing for immediate responses.
Potential customers can request a demo from Podium. They will need to contact Podium for a custom price quote.
#4 – Reputation.com — Best for Understanding Reputation Levels
Request a demo
Companies that struggle to figure out exactly where they stand with customers can use the Reputation.com software to discover multiple insights.
Reputation.com uses its data monitoring about the company and its brand to assign a reputation score. This score provides insights on how customers are interacting with the company.
Those using Reputation.com will be able to use the score to determine areas where the company is having success with customers and areas where it could improve.
By using the Reputation.com dashboard, users can see all customer reviews in one place. This simplifies responding to both positive and negative reviews, making the company appear highly interested in its customers’ opinions and experiences.
Companies can use the dashboard to monitor any social media conversations regarding the company and brand as well.
When customers are mentioning the company, Reputation.com makes it easy to ask those customers for more feedback or to take a survey.
In helping the company generate improved responsiveness, Reputation.com aims to increase website traffic, social media hits, and customer conversion.
Reputation.com offers a demonstration version. To receive a price quote, potential customers will need to contact the company.
#5 – Yext — Best for Generating Success with Local Searches
Request a demo
When customers start finding your company through searches, Yext helps you manage the information they see. This enhances brand awareness by delivering a consistent message.
When using Yext, companies receive placement on more than 150 digital services and search engines. Yext then works to improve the brand’s reputation, helping the company appear higher on the page in all kinds of searches.
It uses special techniques to improve search results by trying to answer questions customers have. When a customer types a question as a search phrase, rather than generating a link, Yext tries to help the company answer the search question.
Additionally, Yext excels in generating results for the company in local and location-based searches. When a customer is looking for a specific item or a type of restaurant in the area, Yext works to place the company favorably in the search results for services like Google Maps, Amazon Alexa, Apple Maps, and Yelp.
Yext includes a service where companies can generate their own information pages. These landing pages provide all of the key information about the company, while also generating coupons or special offers. For companies with multiple locations, Yext can ensure the information remains consistent across locations.
Companies can make use of a variety of analytics from Yext to make sure they’re hitting the types of customers they want. It also encourages customers to reach out, creating more leads and conversions.
Potential customers can request a demo from Yext. They will need to contact Yext directly to receive a price quote.
#6 – Mention — Best for Improving Social Media Presence
Try for free
Having a strong social media presence can quickly build the success and popularity of a business. However, generating engaging social media posts over and over can be extremely challenging.
Mention works to enhance the social media presence that a company has, allowing it to connect with customers on a personal level. Mention can also help a company increase its marketing results.
With Mention, companies can generate a plan for posting on social media on a regular basis, including setting up a posting schedule. Having an editorial calendar in place to handle social media posts can keep the company focused on its messaging versus trying to generate ideas on the fly.
Additionally, Mention will monitor several social media outlets for mentions of the company. It uses this information to help a company understand what aspects of its brand are resonating with customers and which are not.
Mention applies filtering techniques to the social media information it monitors. These simplify the process of analyzing the data, giving companies more useful information about their performance levels.
Mention also can monitor a wide range of online information sources beyond social media, such as news articles, blogs, product review articles, customer reviews, and message board forums. It Mention can even generate automated responses to these posts or it can alert someone at the company to craft a personal response.
Mention offers a free trial period for several of its pricing tiers, which vary in cost from $29 to $199 per month. It has a free tier as well as a custom priced tier.
How to Find the Best Reputation Management Software for You
Reputation management software is not a one-size-fits-all prospect. Different brands of this software will provide specific features that may better serve the needs of a particular organization.
Think about areas where the business struggles to manage its customer engagements. These could be social media interactions, customer reviews, and general mentions online. Then, pick a software tool that fits those needs.
Customer Reviews
When customers are shopping for a particular product, they’re almost certainly going to consult online customer reviews for information. When a company’s product has a few one-star reviews, these can sink the product’s reputation very quickly.
The majority of reputation management software packages give companies the ability to keep an eye on customer reviews. The best tools will monitor reviews from dozens of websites. Less powerful tools will only monitor some of the most popular sites, like Amazon. This may be enough for some companies, though.
When the company receives a poor review, the software finds it and gives the company a chance to post a response or to ask the customer for more information.
Even if the customer who left the poor review doesn’t respond to queries for more information, showing a willingness to reach out has its own benefits. It shows potential customers that the company will attempt to make things right when customers are unhappy.
Some companies may set up the reputation software to respond to positive reviews as well, thanking the customer.
Social Media Interactions
Some of the best ways to respond to customers involve keeping an eye on social media. When a customer mentions the company or organization, many reputation management software packages will find that social media post and give the company a chance to respond.
With a powerful social media brand, an organization or company can generate new customers and promote desirable sentiments about the company.
Some reputation software packages will only monitor a few highly popular social media outlets, such as Facebook and Twitter. However, your company may want to seek out a younger customer base, which could be found on TikTok or Instagram. If so, seek out reputation software that focuses on these outlets too.
General Mentions
For larger companies and organizations, keeping an eye on everything customers are saying online is important. The most powerful reputation managing tools will scan the Internet as a whole, seeking mentions of the company or brand. These locations may include:
Video uploadsPodcastsMessage boardsBlogsNews articles“Best of” listiclesTrending topicsHashtags
Smaller companies probably don’t need to monitor their reputation across all of these venues. They can look toward a software package that has more of a focus on a particular area of online reputation, saving a bit of money.
Summary
Through our research, we found that Brand24 gives companies the widest range of options for managing reputation online. It combines accurate measuring of social media and other mentions for the company, while also generating helpful reports and analytics about the data it collects.
However, it may not provide the best results for every type of company. Mention’s particular strength lies in improving the social media presence of a company. BirdEye and Podium focus on helping companies generate more online reviews that paint the company in a positive light.
Improving online reputation is an area of running a business that can occupy a lot of time when owners try to handle it on their own. Using these software packages to increase the reputation of a business saves time while generating results.
Social media and other online sources provide a unique opportunity for businesses to reach potential customers. The software tools on our list can help businesses make the most of these opportunities in an efficient manner.
