There’s a reason large companies have teams of people dedicated exclusively to monitoring their online reputations. It’s a vital task, but it’s a lot of work. Fortunately, small business owners can save time by using one or more of the reputation monitoring tools listed below.
Want to manage all your reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Facebook from one place? Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
Several reputation management software platforms collate all your online reviews in one place, which saves time and effort. Depending on the software, you can get features like CRM, business analytics, reporting, and marketing functionality as well.
Whatever reputation monitoring tools you choose, it’s important to start really owning your online reputation right now. Check out the options, make a plan, get started, and you’ll soon see the time-saving and revenue-increasing benefits of monitoring and managing your online reputation.
Go deeper: Read our detailed article to help you decide whether it’s time to consider reputation monitoring services.
9 reputation monitoring tools for small business
Google Alerts
We’ll start with sort of an “old-school,” DIY option for reputation monitoring. Many companies offer “hands off” reputation monitoring services, but small business owners can often get very good results by setting up Google Alerts and requesting to be notified when content relating to their business is posted online.
Google alerts is a bit more involved than some of the slick new types of reputation management software. However it can actually work pretty well, and best of all, it’s absolutely free.
Click here to set up Google alerts for your business.
BirdEye
Over 50,000 businesses use BirdEye to manage their reviews and gather customer feedback. BirdEye’s all-in-one software features review monitoring, review generation, review marketing, customer surveys, business insights, competitive benchmarking, social features, and more.
You may also like: How to fix your online business reputation
Podium
Podium is a biggie, with a very robust feature set (that doesn’t come cheap). The software offers a wide array of benefits, including in-depth reporting for a comprehensive view of your online reputation, connecting with your customers on their favorite channels (whether they started on Facebook, Google, Instagram, text messaging, or even your website), integration with hundreds of review hubs and industry-specific websites, and of course you can manage and (automatically or individually) respond to every message across multiple channels, all from one platform.
Podium also offers business management, team management, and lead tracking tools that may be helpful for larger local businesses or local chains (as well as enterprise-level companies).
ReviewTrackers
This software is great for businesses with multiple locations, and can “centralize all reviews from all your locations in one place.” The company tracks over 100 review sites across all industries, providing businesses with a simple, comprehensive solution for their review management, including scalable review response and social media monitoring.
Signpost
This platform is focused more specifically on getting more reviews, which is a common concern for small business owners. Signpost currently offers three software packages, the lowest-cost of which focuses on reviews, feedback, and testimonials. Higher-priced packages include features like text and phone contact capture, new and repeat customer offers, reporting, and marketing campaign creation assistance.
According to the company, “Over 20,000 local businesses have used Signpost to improve their online ratings by 34%.”
Yext
Yext is known for its robust online “Knowledge Network” where businesses can create and connect all the facts about themselves in an answers-ready knowledge graph, which directly integrates with over 150 services globally, including all the biggies in the world of search engines, maps, apps, voice assistants, chatbots, and more.
Yext lets you monitor and manage your online reputation in one location, and promises “the power of Sentiment Analysis” in their Intelligent Review Response feature, which they say “helps determine the important keywords in each review, then uses those keywords, and underlying sentiment, as the dynamic building blocks for a personalized, on-brand response — every time.” Pretty fancy!
Womply
Womply serves over 150,000 businesses across the U.S. in dozens of verticals, and was built from the ground up specifically for small, local businesses.
With Womply’s reputation management solutions, you can read and respond to all your reviews for dozens of popular sites in one place with one login. You’ll also be able to encourage more reviews from your happiest customers, post automatic replies if you so choose, and receive alerts when someone posts something about your business, so you’re never caught off guard.
Womply also offers impressive AI and data-driven business analytics and CRM that give you complete visibility into your business, your revenue trends, your customers, and even your competition so that you always know where you stand.
Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
Mention
We’ve, ahem, mentioned Mention as an example of the need to not only monitor your online reviews on sites like Yelp and Google, but on social media as well. Similar to the way Google Alerts works, Mention searches the web for any mention of your brand on social media and collates them for easy management.
The basic $29/month plan is great for learning when people have mentioned you online, as well as analysis of the sentiment expressed in these mentions, and allows 2 basic alerts.
The next level is a $99/month “Starter Plan” which allows you to monitor not only your brand, but your competitors. You also get a dashboard, sentiment analysis, and an influencer’s dashboard.
BizShield
Much less expensive (and lighter-featured) than some offerings, BizShield is an online reputation monitoring and alerting service that works 24/7 to uncover negative online reviews, incorrect business information, market changes, and cyber-security lapses, and sends instant email alerts with guidance for addressing the problem. Any small business can use BizShield, including restaurants, salons, retailers, auto shops, medical/dental offices, and more.
To learn more, visit www.bizshield.co.
Take action
Womply is the #1 reputation management solution for local businesses, with 500,000 customers and counting! Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!