It’s always better to be proactive than reactive – but some social flare-ups leave your brand with no choice but to react. When that happens, one wrong post can make things better – or much worse.
On May 10 at 1 p.m. ET, we’ll be partnering with AdWeek for the webinar When Your Brand Is in Crisis: How to Track Reputation Repair on Social Media to talk about how social listening can keep your brand on the right side of disaster.
Crises strike quickly, but real-time listening helps
Lots of things can take down a brand – rumors about questionable business practices, misguided social posts, customer service mishaps gone viral. Not every crisis originates online – but most quickly spread and inflame via the internet. Whatever the source, your brand needs to be ready to act when bad things happen – and social listening tools are most important to that state of readiness.
Why? We’ll talk in-depth during the webinar, but part of the reason is because social monitoring software analyzes consumer data in real-time. Without that information, you might not even know there’s a problem until it’s spun way out of control. By then the damage may be irreparable.
To keep that from happening, you’ve got to constantly track consumers’ emotions on social. That way you can catch issues as they appear, and repair your reputation quickly.
Tracking social sentiment also helps you:
Spot trends and predict crises before they happen. If you’re only following metrics like brand mentions and impressions, you’ll never know when sentiment around your brand is starting to devolve. Conversely, if you’re paying close attention to the conversations surrounding your brand – and your competitors – you can spot the warning signs of potential trouble before they pick up steam. A few negative voices left unchecked are all it takes for things to snowball. The sooner you can spot them and shut things down, the better.
Respond quickly and sensitively to the situation. Once a crisis is underway, however, it is possible to make it worse if your brand doesn’t respond in just the right way. Luckily, social listening platforms with natural language and sentiment analysis capabilities provide all the raw data your marketing team needs to craft the perfect response.
Part of that data is the intensity of emotions being shared on social. The most extreme negative voices are the ones you have to address first. And the most passionate positive voices are the ones who can help you defend your brand, if that’s what’s needed.
The important thing is not to guess what consumers need to hear to amend the situation. Social listening gives you a full and precise picture of your audience and how they’re feeling so you don’t misstep when you’re already on shaky ground.
Start to rebuild and repair your reputation. Consumer sentiment analysis also helps you understand how to rebuild your reputation, by revealing consumers’ concerns and opinions. When you address these concerns in the right way, you can make the relationship with your brand even stronger. That’s the best case scenario to any brand crisis – and it’s something we’ll talk more about on May 10.
We’ll also share a few real-world war stories, including one brand who recently came out victorious on the other side of a high-profile social crisis. We’ll talk about how they did it, and how you can too.
So join us May 10 for the webinar When Your Brand Is in Crisis: How to Track Reputation Repair on Social Media.
Or reach out sooner to see a demo of our social listening tools in action.
Image from Leo Leung