It’s tough to think about outsourcing something as intangible as a reputation. To help you out, we curated a list of the best online reputation management solutions along with some helpful info as you go through the selection process.
The Best Online Reputation Management Services in < 5 Minutes
Reputation Defense Network is the way to go if you’re already experiencing bad press or an online attack. They can help remove content and control the impact of negative search results in as little as two days. There are no up front costs, plus it’s one of the few service providers that guarantees its work.
Rhino Reviews can help you set up online business profiles, manage reviews, and stay on top of social media engagement.
NetReputation does a little bit of everything if you need a wide range of services. Got a personal brand? InternetReputation.com specializes in that. Birdeye is a great choice if you prefer to save a bit of money and DIY review management across multiple review sites on your own.
REQ and Matter Communications are both full-service digital marketing agencies–REQ stands out for its advanced real-time reputation tracking while Matter Communications specializes in long-term content and PR strategies.
Check out our favorite reputation management software and our guide on repairing your online reputation if you’re looking to manage your public perception in-house.
#1 – Reputation Defense Network — Best if You’re Currently Experiencing Negative Press or an Online Attack
Googled your business or name and found something you don’t like on page one? Anyone else performing the same search will probably see it too.
The good news is that you have options, whether the news is true is or not.
Reputation Defense Network has specialized in search result cleanup, content removal, and defamation attacks for over a decade.
They can also help you get lawyers involved if you have legal grounds to stand on. Which… is something most reputation management firms don’t bring to the table.
Rather than relying on the constraints of in-house staff, the company leverages an entire network of experts, specialists, attorneys, and more. “Network” isn’t just part of the name–it’s an accurate descriptor of what you get when you partner with them.
Unlike other service providers, most of RDN’s clients start seeing results in 2 – 14 days.
Not only that, but they don’t charge you until you see positive movement. They also offer performance guarantees on everything they do. And if that wasn’t enough, they deliver proactive strategies on top of fast-acting solutions to fend off negative press going forward. So, you’ll get a long-term plan to maintain positive sentiment long after RDN’s work is done.
If you need help right now, the choice is simple. Go with Reputation Defense Network.
#2 – Rhino Reviews — Best for Review, Business Profile, and Social Media Management
If you’re not experiencing an attack right now, taking a proactive approach can help protect you in the future. By creating a strong and steady reputation today, you can help minimize the impacts of negative search results tomorrow while improving the overall perception of your business at the same time.
Managing everything on your own is overwhelming to put it lightly. Learning how to do it is a full-time job in and of itself.
Thankfully, Rhino Reviews can handle it all on your behalf.
From setting up and optimizing business profiles on Google, Yelp, Bing, and 125 other directories to preventing negative reviews, encouraging positive reviews, and removing unfair reviews, you can sit back while Rhino does all the work.
On the social side of things, they can create a multi-channel strategy, generate content, monitor comments and mentions, reply to direct messages, and remove negative content.
Our favorite part is that you can decide what Rhino Reviews helps you with. Got a social media manager you already know and love? No problem. They can work together or you can enlist Rhino for review management by itself. Every strategy they build takes into account the expertise you already have so you can easily fill in the gaps.
If an emergency happens, they can help manage the crisis, too. Whether its a disgruntled employee, a viral social media post, or a targeted attack on your business, you won’t have to manage it alone.
Get a free reputation analysis to get started today.
#3 – NetReputation — Best for Larger Companies that Want to Defend Their Reputation from Every Angle
NetReputation is one of the few full-service reputation management firms we confidently recommend. If you need a bit of help with everything, it’s a great choice whether you’re already in a good spot or looking for a reputation boost.
Their holistic approach makes it possible to build your reputation from every angle all at once. Overall, NetReputation’s strategies are natural, organic, and authentic.
Everything starts from the ground up with an audit of where you stand right now. From there, they create a tailored plan to fill in all the missing pieces, be it social media profiles, directory listings, review sites, guest posts, your own blog, Wikipedia, press releases, or something else entirely.
But it doesn’t stop there. NetReputation will research, write, publish, and promote full long-term content campaigns to round out your public perception.
From writing blog and guest posts to running PPC or social media ads, SEO optimization crisis management, branding, and content removal, you’ll be able to get help with everything you could ever need under one roof.
So far, we’ve talked mostly about business reputation management. But the same is true for NetReputation’s individual services, too. The company’s holistic privacy, content, branding, and monitoring services can help keep your information private while building and maintaining a strong personal brand.
Schedule a free consultation to get started.
#4 – InternetReputation.com – Best for Personal Brand Management
InternetReputation.com blows the other options away for monitoring personal brands.
Whether you’re looking for a new job, gunning for an executive level promotion at work, establishing yourself as an influencer, or already making money with your personal brand, protecting yourself while putting yourself in the public eye is key.
The internet can be a cold place. People behind a keyboard have nothing lose by sharing how they feel about you, whether there’s weight to their opinions or not.
First and foremost, InternetReputation.com can help you establish all the critical profiles you should be on, including optimizing them for the algorithms and humans alike. They round this out with the creation of all the digital assets you need. From there, they can set up a social listening system that monitors Google search results, social media channels, major review sites, online communities, and anywhere else folks might mention your name.
If you’d like, they can reply to everything on your behalf so you don’t have to worry about it.
Taking it one step further, the company can build proactive content campaigns to improve your visibility in right places. Rather than spinning your wheels, you can focus on other things while the pros build your brand.
The last step is protecting your identity, which… you guessed it. InternetReputation.com can help with too.
Snag a free consultation or give them a call to get started.
#5 – Birdeye – DIY Multi-Channel Review Management
Birdeye is an all-in-one platform for generating, monitoring, and managing customer reviews from a single source of truth. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that’s simple enough for small businesses to use, which is why it’s trusted by more than 100,000 local brands.
This easy-to-use software tracks customer reviews from over 200 review sites. You’ll get alerts for new reviews for fast responses. Plus, you can reply to everything from a single dashboard.
Getting customers to write positive reviews about your products or services can seem like an uphill battle.
Thankfully, Birdeye simplifies this by providing you with the tools you need to generate more positive reviews across the most important sites while keeping negative reviews internal.
With Birdeye’s software, you’ll be able to:
- Automate review generation campaigns
- Create QR codes to request reviews in person
- Turn post-purchase surveys into reviews
- Share reviews on your website and social media
- Add a review widget to your website
- Create a review microsite so they show up in search results
Birdeye also provides you with valuable insights and analytics to help you understand what’s working and what’s not. You don’t need to export data or be an expert to understand what’s going on.
If you prefer DIYing review management, Birdeye’s the gold standard.
Sign up for a free demo to see how it works in action.
#6 – REQ — Best for Real-Time Reputation Tracking
If you are a business owner who leans on cold, hard data, then REQ is the service provider for you.
Aside from top-tier reputation management services, they use a proprietary dashboard that analyzes search results, review sites, social media, and reputations in real-time. Using qualitative and quantitative metrics, you’ll be able to view your reputation score and the fruits of your labor at any time.
REQ gives you unparalleled visibility into not only how customers see you, but why they feel the way they do. This can lead to immeasurable growth in more ways than one.
You’ll get fantastic, tangible metrics resulting from REQ’s reputation scoring algorithm. It’s entirely proprietary and based on several factors, including:
- Social media
- Sentiment analysis
- User behaviors
These results are shown at local, regional, and global levels. Whether you have one location, a handful in Oregon, or hundreds around the world, you’ll get the right level of detail when you need it.
You’ll also benefit from live tracking alerts so you never miss a mention, negative review, or glowing testimonial.
As a full-service digital marketing agency, REQ also provides services for public relations, advertising, SEO, branding, content, design, and more. Aside from its standout analytics, it’s a great way to level up your business at every touch point.
Get in touch to see if it’s right for you, today.
#7 – Matter Communications — Best for Complex, Long-Term Content and PR Strategies
Matter Communications is a full-service public relations provider that uses storytelling to relate with the right people. They get to know you and what makes your business unique–this isn’t some surface level questionnaire. Their experts at getting to the heart of what you do.
In a nutshell, they ensure your business is personable rather than a lifeless, faceless entity.
While this sounds great, it’s extremely hard to do, especially when your business is large, across multiple countries, or a household name.
But Matter simplifies this by building your reputation on the back of your brand story. Not only do they evaluate your situation and offer recommended relationship strategies, they can also help with media relations, long-term content creation, influencer programs, event support, and even executive visibility.
They also have a wide range of services for things like podcasts, copywriting, UX/UI development, brand planning, campaign development, and business opportunity planning.
As a full digital marketing agency, they can support you in whatever ways you may need.
We want to be clear, this firm won’t necessarily help you remove poor reviews from the web or set up review generation automations. But they can assist you with big-picture branding, which is great for bolstering your company for the long haul.
Get in touch with them to get started.
Methodology For Choosing The Best Online Reputation Management Solution
To ease the buying process, we’ve identified the factors that should be reviewed during your search. This will make it much easier for you to narrow down your options. Plus help you understand why reputation automation is a good idea, but why some companies are not to be trusted.
Ensuring Authentic Reviews
Selecting a provider that will represent your business when building or improving your reputation, usually starts with you reading about them. So you want to find a provider that has consistently helped other businesses achieve this goal by doing it the right way.
Look out for horror stories of companies paying for reviews and having employees leave reviews to boost favoritism. Don’t allow yourself to fall victim to such tactics.
Use a review management provider that offers the proper technology and operations to easily collect reviews bursting with life.
That is exactly what customers feel when they look at your business. They want to see reviews that can be trusted and are relevant to their situation. That has a way of gravitating more people to your business.
That is why authentic reviews must be collected at the right time. With the providers on this list, you are able to send out review requests while your service team is on the phone with the prospect. This allows your business to capitalize on the ideal time to get customers to leave a beneficial review.
The process of building reviews people can trust is simple and uniform with the providers we reviewed on this list—no matter what representative is dealing with a customer.
Industry-Specific Expertise
This is something we here at Crazy Egg believe in wholeheartedly. We are always talking about specialization and how you often get more value from working with a specialist.
The same holds true for reputation management and the industry you work in. Real estate firms require a different type of representation or PR approach than, say, a donut shop that had a couple of cockroaches in their store and wants that review gone.
Many providers on this list offer specialized services for helping a particular type of business. Healthcare and automotive service providers, to name two examples, need delicate approaches to reputation management.
You need an account manager that knows this and knows how to build reputations or improve them if a business or individual is found in a negative spotlight.
What we hope you understand is generalization often means you are not getting the best service available for you. There are benefits to specialists knowing the quirks of your industry intimately and also how customers and prospects view that particular industry.
This is something a general reputation management company may lack the agility to provide, leaving you at a disadvantage.
Too often, business owners hop into a contract with a provider thinking they know what they are getting—only later realizing there was no concrete plan built for their specific industry or client base.
By following this methodology you can avoid this expensive mistake.
Clear Deliverables
The best online reputation management companies make it crystal clear what steps it takes to repair your reputation.
This shouldn’t be a guessing game. They should provide clear performance indicators and procedures with checks and balances, along with tangible metrics and what the final results will look like.
You want a provider that creates a strategy, deploys it, and optimizes it over time based on the strategy, testing, and data they collect. Reporting and analytics are key.
For example, REQ gives you a roadmap of how they provide service to your business—starting with a personalized approach and management tools they use to analyze the landscape and collect data about your current state of perception from people.
A lack of clarity can ultimately cost your company unnecessary aggravation and stunt its growth. It’s up to you to know what platforms you want to use. And it’s a wise choice not to leave it all up to the provider.
Don’t just read through a reputation management service’s website and sign up immediately. Instead, reach out to the service and explain the kinds of problems you are having to get an idea of whether they can help.
Ask for examples of how the service solved problems similar to yours in the past. If a service tells you it cannot give you such examples until you subscribe, this should be a massive red flag.
Ideally, an online reputation service provider will be honest with you about whether it can help with your specific problem or needs. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen, so be proactive and vigilant in your search for the right partner.
Transparent Pricing
Making sure you read the fine print about pricing is always a good idea.
However, what’s even more important is that you know how the process of trial periods work. In one example we found, a company stated the plan was risk-free for 90 days, but after the first 30 days charged the provider for the full year.
This mishap is enough to blow up your business budget for a few months if you can’t get out of the contract. There are hidden fees and tiny extras that can be charged because of deliverables you may want provided.
Everything should be listed clearly for your pricing. All the better, too, if you can get a service level agreement in place.
Another thoughtful idea is to read online reviews about how pricing works. Are there complaints about the company being dishonest or having incognito charges that damaged the relationship between a business owner and the provider?
When there is a lack of transparency in pricing it always leads to disaster, so prevent unwanted charges and surprises by being as diligent as possible when reviewing pricing and procedures as a new customer.
It’s also a huge boon to get a direct point of contact at your reputation management provider, so you have one person to call or email about questions, concerns, misaligned expectations, or ongoing support.
Top-Tier Account Management
Having an account manager in your corner means you have a dependable person to count on and one that understands your business and what your plans are for creating a brand that people love.
The only problem is some providers don’t offer this kind of support and communication. And if you can’t find a reputation management company that communicates well with you, how can they offer the right representation of your brand?
Think about Go Fish Digital, for example. They are known for their award-winning service and communication. They don’t leave you fending for yourself when incorrect content is added to your site and you need it removed ASAP, or a poor review shows up and is tearing through social media like a tornado through a cornfield.
When you need things from your provider, you don’t want to lean solely on a chatbot or have to only communicate through email. Your reputation is on display every day; it’s only fair you get the attention from your online reputation manager that resolves problems quickly, instead of being passed around like a hot potato between support reps.
When you are shopping for an online reputation provider, you want to speak with support, not only sales. You want to find out who your point of contact will be and if they can actually make the changes you need, or if they are only a person that takes down your concerns and passes them on.
It’s critical to understand that every feature and benefit in the world doesn’t matter when you can’t get emergent issues dealt with quickly—especially if suspicious billing charges show up, but you can’t get any support. That helpless feeling is what top-tier account management helps you avoid.
Technology
While online reputation management is most often thought of as a service, the technology used to power that service is of equal importance.
There are two tiers to consider when you’re evaluating the technology of an online reputation management solution:
- What technology is the provider using?
- What technology are they offering you?
For example, you can ask a provider how they plan to monitor your brand mentions and identify reputation attacks across the web. Are they using some type of proprietary model? Or are they simply setting up Google Alerts?
The best technology not only tracks mentions but can also identify customer sentiment. This is far more valuable information to uncover what’s being said about you online.
Some companies also offer self-service technology that you can access on your own. A review management dashboard that lets you view and respond to reviews from every platform is a common example of this.
Other dashboards contain real-time reputation insights. You’ll even find some tools with AI-powered response generators to collect customer reviews.
Ultimately, it’s about finding the right balance between service and technology that aligns with your reputation management goals.
Proactive vs. Reactive Reputation Management
In a perfect world, online reputation management should be an ongoing business initiative for your brand.
If you set up alerts, monitor reviews, respond to customers, and take other steps to ensure there’s a positive sentiment about your business online, then minor bumps along the road can be addressed quickly before spiraling into a bigger problem.
However, there are some instances where a specific incident or reputation attack against your business can’t be stopped. In these rare scenarios, it’s best to work with an online reputation management service with in-house expertise and guidance to resolve everything.
Something like brand alerts or DIY software probably won’t be enough for those types of problems.
So while you should definitely be taking a proactive approach to build and maintain your online reputation, sometimes you’ll need more of a reactive solution to help with one-off incidents and reputation repair.
Expanding Your Knowledge: Best Online Reputation Management
Summary
What’s the best online reputation management company?
It depends on your unique needs. Use the methodology I described above to help narrow down your options. Then refer to the reviews and top picks mentioned in this guide.
Regardless of your company’s current online reputation, you can use the companies in this article to manage it.
