Social media is a powerful tool for building your brand, but it also comes with potential risks that can damage your reputation, trust, and customer loyalty. How can you assess these risks and prevent them from escalating into a crisis? Here are some tips to help you identify and manage the threats to your brand on social media.
The first step to assess risks to your brand on social media is to monitor what people are saying about you, your products, your competitors, and your industry. You can use tools like Google Alerts, Hootsuite, or Mention to track your brand name, keywords, hashtags, and relevant topics across different platforms. By monitoring your mentions, you can spot negative feedback, complaints, questions, or misinformation that could harm your brand image or reputation. You can also identify positive feedback, compliments, testimonials, or user-generated content that could boost your brand awareness and advocacy.
Good monitoring actually happens once an hour a day. It is best to switch on your channel notifications and be notified. Because once published, every minute counts. If you receive a negative mention, you still have everything in your hands right from the start and can decide for yourself what to do with the mention. Actively responding to the comment and admitting mistakes is the best thing you can do in this situation.
The second step to assess risks to your brand on social media is to analyze the sentiment of your mentions. Sentiment analysis is a process of using natural language processing, machine learning, or artificial intelligence to measure the tone, emotion, or attitude of a text. You can use tools like Brandwatch, Sprout Social, or Socialbakers to perform sentiment analysis on your social media data. By analyzing your sentiment, you can understand how your audience feels about your brand, products, or services. You can also detect changes in sentiment over time, across platforms, or among segments. This can help you identify potential issues, trends, or opportunities that could affect your brand perception or performance.
There are negative comments that simply want to vent anger and negative comments that express genuine criticism. Or praise that you can't simply ignore. Reading the comments very carefully (even between the lines) is super important. It's a dialog that you have to be very well prepared for. What mood is the author in, what is their goal? Analyzing this quickly is absolutely essential.
The third step to assess risks to your brand on social media is to evaluate the impact of your mentions. Impact is a measure of how influential, relevant, or viral a mention is based on factors like reach, engagement, authority, or sentiment. You can use tools like BuzzSumo, Keyhole, or Social Mention to evaluate the impact of your mentions. By evaluating your impact, you can prioritize the most important or urgent mentions that require your attention or response. You can also assess the potential damage or benefit of a mention on your brand awareness, reputation, or conversions.
The fourth step to assess risks to your brand on social media is to respond to your mentions. Responding to your mentions is a way of managing your online reputation, building relationships with your audience, and resolving issues or conflicts. You can use tools like Buffer, Agorapulse, or HubSpot to manage and respond to your mentions. By responding to your mentions, you can show that you care about your customers, value their feedback, and address their concerns or questions. You can also correct misinformation, apologize for mistakes, or thank your advocates.
The fifth step to assess risks to your brand on social media is to learn from your mentions. Learning from your mentions is a way of improving your social media strategy, optimizing your content, and enhancing your customer experience. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or Twitter Analytics to measure and analyze your social media performance. By learning from your mentions, you can identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats. You can also discover your audience's needs, preferences, or pain points. You can also test your assumptions, hypotheses, or ideas.
Mentions can sometimes be overwhelming. That's why it's very helpful to write down the tips and tricks you learn when dealing with them yourself. Prepare a Q&A in advance, draw up a crisis document so that you can react quickly. And you need a person who can respond directly on their own and without long coordination processes.
The sixth step to assess risks to your brand on social media is to plan for your mentions. Planning for your mentions is a way of preparing for different scenarios, anticipating potential risks, and mitigating possible crises. You can use tools like CoSchedule, Asana, or Trello to plan and organize your social media activities. By planning for your mentions, you can define your goals, objectives, or KPIs. You can also create your content calendar, editorial guidelines, or brand voice. You can also establish your crisis communication plan, escalation process, or response protocol.
People who mention a brand, who comment, always have a motivation. And that is either anger/disappointment or gratitude/love. There is rarely anything in between, because you have to feel intrinsically motivated to mention, so something is driving you. You always have to keep that in mind. And it's about change, about feelings management. It's not just about responding to a request. It's much more psychological and emotional.