If you’re a startup business, tracking your brand’s online reputation is vital to maintaining a trustworthy image. With plenty of places for people to leave feedback — be it positive comments, complaints, or simply customers getting in touch through social media – it can be tricky to stay on top of your company’s image online.
The advent of monitoring software and apps however means these issues can be resolved, keeping your brand image spotless. Below are seven of our favorite apps to track your startup’s online reputation.
ReviewTrackers
ReviewTrackers is a key piece of software for startups looking to track reviews online.
This tool puts every online review in one place, enabling brands to note where the reviews have been published and what’s being said. Having that knowledge puts you in a position to review comments and respond quickly, maintaining that positive online reputation.
This tool has many key features including review alerts, smart response, review requests, spotting trends and its own app, which in turn offers plenty of benefits for brand reputation and undoubtedly, a few drawbacks.
Pros
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It can help resolve issues swiftly – With the reviews alert feature, you can see when a review is published and respond immediately. This method also enables you to determine the sort of time reviews are being posted.
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It keeps a consistent brand image – This tool allows you to input ‘brand-approved’ messages to your account and by using the ‘smart response’ feature, it’ll take one-click to respond with these automated messages. A quick response, keeps up a consistent and positive image for your brand reputation. A recent study has proven 53% of customers expect to hear back from a review within 7 days and this ‘smart response’ feature will help to ensure a trusting consumer base.
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You can track on the go – When you’ve clocked out of the office or away from your desktop, keeping track of reviews can be tricky. However, with the tool’s own app, you’re able to keep on top of the influx of reviews wherever you are.
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You can acquire even more reviews – Reviews are a necessity to build a trusting customer base and online brand reputation. This tool helps build more reviews by requesting reviews directly from the software. It also can directs customers to the websites lacking in reviews, building up your online presence across a range of platforms.
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You’re able to spot trends – There’s a map feature within this this tool which not only identifies where your customer base are located, but which location is performing best.
Cons
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Automated responses can sometimes backfire – Even though a quick response with a ‘brand-approved’ message can help your response time and efficiency, it can backfire. The automatic response feature can make your brand look a little robotic and impersonal for individual customers.
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Pushing for reviews can turn customers away – Constant notifications or emails from brands can deter customers from purchasing your product and encourage them to unsubscribe from your email newsletters. As this app directly requests reviews, it’s important to stay on top of how many requests it’s sending to prevent losing customers’ interest.
NiceJob
NiceJob is an ideal review platform for startups. It incentivises customers to write reviews and also optimizes reviews in every possible way. This involves promoting them via social media, using them as ‘customer stories’, to enhance your brand’s trustworthiness and publish reviews to your website.
This platform has many promising features including its customer stories feature, the tool to acquire reviews, social sharing and publishing reviews directly to the website. Although these features can enhance brand reputation, the automation has its drawbacks.
Pros
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Automatically send emails or SMS – For previous customers or those who have just purchased a product/service, this software automatically entices them into writing a review, via email or SMS. It can also follow up if that customer didn’t respond to the first review email.
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Promote via customer stories – A unique feature on this software is their ‘customer stories’. Customer stories allows you to personalise reviews, adding an image or additional comments to the initial review. By doing this, the review looks more authentic to new customers, enhancing your brand reputation further.
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Social media marketing made easier – Many consumers look into social media for reviews before purchasing a product or service. With its automated social media feature, you’re able to share the brands reviews or ‘customer stories’, directly onto social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.
Cons
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Continuous ‘asking’ emails deter customers – Even though it’s key to acquire reviews for a strong online brand reputation, pestering customers can often lead into the wrong direction. If a customer genuinely loved a product, they’ll usually leave a review after the first email, however if they don’t respond it could mean a variety of reasons including they didn’t enjoy the product/service. Continuous emails can therefore leave you with a negative review.
Falcon.io
Falcon.io is a multi-purpose tool for all social media marketing demands. including tracking your online brand reputation. The tool has 5 main areas: Listen, Engage, Measure, Publish and Audience which as a collective optimise your brand in the best possible way.
The software works effectively with its 5 main social media features. It allows you to keep up with online trends or hashtags, track potential problems, have a multi-purpose inbox for all your notifications, measure metrics, schedule content in one calendar and track every person interacting with the brand. These features offer many benefits for your online reputation, however there’s a few social media limitations to be aware of.
Pros
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Keep up with online trends – For any social media marketer, it’s important to stay on top of popular trends and the known hashtags in your industry. With this tool, it does it all for you. Discover trends and hashtags you’re able to use, track campaigns and their results.
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Schedule all content in one place – Scheduling is key when it comes to planning social media content and with everything in one place, it’s easier to see which content is going out. You’re able to have all your channels and notifications in one inbox with this software.
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Track engagement – To have a successful social media channel for a start up business, you need to be aware of how your posts are doing and which work best with your audience. By tracking all the performance metrics and engagement, you’ll be on top of the best time to post, the most successful content and your demographic.
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Identify your audience – You need to know your audience for a successful online brand reputation. This tool helps track every person who interacts with the brand and gives them a profile card. The stored information will benefit your brand immensely, with the knowledge on the best time to post, optimizing your engagement further and enhancing that positive voice.
Cons
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It’s a complicated tool – The multi-purpose software has a lot of features and plenty to get to grips with. Whether you’re a newbie to social media or have great knowledge, the tool requires some training to get the hang of it.
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You can’t run paid advertising – With Facebook algorithm not working in many business’ favour, paid advertising can sometimes be the step forwards. However, even though this is a multi-purpose social media tool, you’re unable to run paid campaigns.
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There’s no Instagram – Instagram is essential for many business and this tool has no integration with the app, and therefore you may need to consider that drawback before purchasing.
LocalClarity
LocalClarity is the software to choose if you’re a startup business set in multiple locations. This software enables businesses to take control of their online presence and reputation through its range of features including insights to trends.
The tool has many features including review management, which syncs up every review platform and monitors reviews, tracks performance and allows team members to share their input. Even with the benefits of team collaboration and review management, there are limitations to consider.
Pros
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Stay on top of all review platforms – There’s plenty of review sites for consumers to write positive feedback or share complaints and as a startup business, keeping track is key. This tool syncs up every review platform including top contenders, Google My Business, Facebook, Tripadvisor plus many more. You’ll be able to monitor every review all in one dashboard.
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Work as a team – Even though this platform tracks every review, it’s hard for only one person to keep on top of all the reviews coming in. However, this software also allows access for other team members to contribute.
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Track every performance – As well as monitoring reviews flooding in, you’ll able to track which review websites are most successful for your brand and the daily, weekly or monthly trends.
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You can track multiple locations – For businesses which have offices across the country or globe, you’ll be able to track insights in one place. The tool is designed for multiple locations and you’ll be able to see all insights.
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It caters to any industry – Whether your industry is healthcare or a financial service, this tool is designed to help with a variety of local search challenges.
Cons
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The app is built for scale – This software works best for companies of multiple locations and bigger audiences, so if you’re a startup business, it might be worth considering a smaller scale software.
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The tool can become too busy – With multiple locations and people jumping in with their ideas, the tool can have an overwhelming amount of data to track.
eClincher
If your startup will heavily focus on social media marketing, eClincher is the tool to choose. The social media management software covers a variety of platforms to track your online reputation.
This tool has many features which will benefit your social media marketing including its management feature, the scheduling calendar, Instagram direct posting and its access to a content gallery. With the many positives of this tool, there’s also a couple of drawbacks to consider.
Pros
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You can post directly to Instagram – Any social media wizard will understand the inconvenience of most scheduling apps, not posting directly to instagram, with the usual method involving using a push notification on a mobile device. This software however, offers Instagram direct posting without any added hassle.
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There’s free content – Social media content can sometimes run dry, however this tool offers a stock gallery and gifs, which you can use at your leisure for a different approach.
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Manage and schedule social content – The tools management features allow you to schedule content in its visual calendar, engage, monitor and analyze the posts’ success.
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Boost to your Facebook ad account – Unlike many other software, this tool allows you to boost posts straight to your Facebook ad account.
Cons
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The social media feeds/searches are generally UK/US focused – For companies starting up abroad in either Europe, Asia or further afield, be wary that the social media feeds and searches within the software are mainly focused for UK or US.
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You have to upgrade to premium for team members – If you have a big social media team, you’ll need to buy the pricier option to access the ‘team member feature’. This costs nearly double the basic fee – and to get even more team members, you’ll have to upgrade again to the ‘agency’ option.
Percolate
Percolate is a leading content marketing platform which offers solutions to manage the production of campaigns and content.
The content marketing tool has many features including coordinating content with the rest of your marketing initiatives, a marketing calendar and integrating team members ideas. This software offers many benefits for content, however you need to weigh up the limitations before considering this software.
Pros
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Have an organised marketing strategy – The best benefit to this software is having all your content in one calendar and coordinating it with the rest of your marketing initiatives. This helps with tracking and monitoring how well content is doing.
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Integrate team members – You’re able to have everybody on the same page with this tool. Other members will be able to access all the content and add in their ideas.
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It integrates stock photos subscriptions – If you’re subscribed to any photo stock website, it’ll integrate this into the ‘asset management’ section, allowing you to use for content planning.
Cons
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There’s no month-by-month view point – When reviewing content on this tool, it’s only available on a week-by-week basis, instead of seeing which content is going out for the whole month.
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It’s not the most convenient for personal notifications – For every comment tagged by a team member, you’ll receive an email, and can only access this comment through the email rather than notifications.
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It doesn’t integrate with Instagram – For social media planning, this tool doesn’t integrate with Instagram and you may need to download a tool.
Grade.us
Grade.us is a review management and marketing platform used for marketers, SEOs and agencies with many features to help track your online reputation.
The top benefits include everything from acquiring customer reviews to amplifying the customer’s voice, enhancing your online brand reputation further. However, the tool isn’t perfect and has limitations.
Pros
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Fast response rate – This tool is a top choice for detecting unhappy customers online and allowing you to respond directly from the ‘Command Center’, before the negative word gets out.
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Source reviews from various platforms – You’ll be able to automate campaigns via email, text or print to entice customers into sharing reviews with this tool.
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Alerts everyone about reviews – This software allows additional team members and notifies them all once a review has been published.
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Stream reviews on social media channels – Getting a positive message out on social media channels helps with your brand online reputation. This tool automatically shares reviews across social platforms.
Cons
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It’s a pricey tool – Compared to other tools which offer similar features, this tool is in the higher price range for what it can do.
About the Author – As the founder of Open A European Company.com, Heather Landau has honed her skills in service advisory from the pragmatic to the practical. With 25 years’ combined experience in international marketing and business development, Heather is a leading voice on company formation, and works with partners to provide online reputation management services.