Keeping up with your online reputation is crucial to being a successful business, but with all of the online channels that exist today, there’s a lot to keep track of. The good news is, there are plenty of online reputation management tools that can simplify the process for you and reduce the amount of time it takes. In this post we’ll go over three free and two paid online reputation management tools to help you more efficiently build and maintain a positive image for your business.
What Are Online Reputation Monitoring Tools?
The goal of online reputation tools is to keep track of what is being said about your business online. In today’s digital world, there are a number of ways that your business can show up on the web. There’s Facebook reviews, social media comments, online customer reviews, digital directory ratings, and even local bloggers who may mention you in their posts—just to name a few.
Online reputation monitoring tools are designed to alert you when your brand name is being searched, when someone mentions your business in a post or review, and even to analyze what the collected data means for your business.
Free Online Reputation Management Tools
There are many ways to monitor and maintain your reputation. Here are three free online reputation management tools that can help you stay on top of things and save time.
Rankur
Rankur offers a free plan as well as three other paid plans, depending on how many users you need, social profiles you want to monitor, and number of alerts about risks to your reputation. It helps with monitoring your social media presence, keeps track of where people are using your business’s name, and helps with team workflow.
Key Features:
• Monitor: Rankur gives you the ability to monitor mentions on social media, reviews, blog postings and press releases
• Reviews: The review feature of Rankur shows you any reviews posted online about your business, and also about your upper management.
• Analytics: Data collected will give you a detailed description of your demographic so you know exactly who to target.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is another free online tool for managing your online reputation. This site allows you to type in a specific word, phrase, or topic about which you would like to be alerted. Whenever new search results are published that contain that word, phrase, or topic, Google Alerts will send you an email. For online reputation management, you could set an alert for any time your business name is mentioned online, or even for whenever your specific product names are mentioned.
Key Features:
• Simple: Google Alerts is very easy to set up. You just type the keywords you want to be alerted on into a box and click “Alert”.
• Competitor Monitoring: Google Alerts also allows you to type into your competitor’s name, so you will be alerted when their name is mentioned as well.
Keep in mind that Google Alerts only catches your keywords in its search results, which means it can only search web pages, not social media platforms.
Perch
Monitoring your reputation doesn’t mean watching your business only. You have to keep tabs on your competitors to see where you stand, comparatively.
Plus, potential customers are comparing you to competitors every day to make decisions. Perch helps you to monitor your social presence as well as that of your competitors, and offers guidance around what (and what not) to do to improve your profiles and presence on social media and review sites.
Paid Online Reputation Management Tools
These last two online reputation management tools are paid platforms, but they do offer free demos before committing.
Brandwatch
Brandwatch collects and analyzes data that is relevant to your business. They offer 3 different plans, and the Pro plan is catered to small businesses.
Key Features:
• Trending: Brandwatch provides trending topics and keywords related to your business, to use in your social media and blog posts. It will also let you know about any new ideas or topics that might negatively affect your business.
• Customer: Gives you access to see what customers are saying about your business, whether it’s good or bad.
Brandseye
Brandseye focuses on analyzing data so your business can make more informed decisions. Once you set up your dashboard, you have visibility into what people are saying about your business.
Key Features:
• Crowdsourcing: Brandseye has an algorithm that is able to look at data such as posts online, determine whether the post is about your business, and then determine whether that post is positive or negative. They will then provide your business with a visual representation of the data collected.
• Public Opinion: This site focuses on the public opinion of both your business and of the political environment around the world to help your business.
These online reputation monitoring tools are either free or allow a free trial before you pay. Try them out to see which ones best fit your business. Which one did you end up using? Do you have any other sites you like for online reputation monitoring? Let us know in the comments below!
For more help with your online reputation, download our free eBook below:
