Brand Monitoring & Crisis Management
Author: Masumi Atul Parmar
Intelligence by: Wan Habibullah
Published: Wednesday, May 26th, 2021
What is Brand Monitoring? Simply put, brand monitoring is the process of monitoring various channels to find mentions of your brand or products and assessing the necessary actions to be taken. The purpose is to be able to both respond to and act on these mentions. It gives brands the opportunity to jump on good publicity or spot a crisis before it snowballs into a bigger issue. The latter being the greater concern, as crises can easily go viral in digital marketing and curbing the matter is always easier before it spreads.
There are multiple aspects to consider when carrying out brand monitoring. Whether your company is that of a startup or a multinational, chatter is inevitable. Key channels that are typically monitored are:
- Social Media Platforms
- Online Publications and Blogs
- Review Sites & Forums
- Broadcast & Traditional Media
In this day and age, people talk and they aren’t afraid to share their opinions and views whether that be about a company, its product, or its staff. People are constantly sharing their experiences and opinions in their daily lives, and millions more are listening to them. This is why it is integral to monitor brand mentions and product mentions, to know what people are saying among your target audience and beyond.
Another key thing to monitor is employee mentions. High level, influential employees can bring in a ton of great publicity but it is important to keep a keen eye on it on the off chance that you have a negative story popping up that you’d like to get on top of.
Keeping updated on industry-related contents, posts, and influencers is important. Without it, you may miss out an update from a competitor on a new product or even a crisis a competitor may be facing. By keeping track of these, your brand will be able to stay vigilant and relevant to industry trends.
What is crisis management and why is it important?
Every now and then, monitoring may reveal some growing negative mentions. While most dissipate with time, some may snowball and become a crisis. This is when crisis management is required to control the damage and address the issue. Thi can be in the form of multiple strategies designed to assist a company in dealing crises of different stages and aspects.
A crisis can occur as a consequence of an unpredictable event or a consequence that was not expected. In such cases, decisions need to be made quickly and efficiently to curb as much damage as possible. Depending on the scale and nature of the crisis, health, safety, finances, or reputation, brands need to be able to adapt and respond accordingly. Certain scenarios require brands to refrain from elaborating too much, else it may bring even more attention to the topic and fuel greater outrage. This often happens when the brands respond haphazardly with a poor choice of words or context.
The ultimate goal of crisis monitoring is to minimize the amount of damage caused and addressing the issue in an effort to retain the customers. Crisis monitoring is a comprehensive process which is put into place prior to a crisis even setting in, keeping everyone prepared and on the same page.
By outsourcing brand and crisis monitoring services to an expert agency, brands are able to work on more urgent matters to keep the business running while leaving some of their worries away, knowing that it is being handled and monitored constantly. It helps companies stay on top of their game without spending too much precious time away from what they do best.
iWISERS has a multitude of social intel solutions and custom objective research services working with brands across APAC. Drop an email at [email protected] or chat with us on LinkedIn@iWISERS for social intel or industry studies that enable people-centric-data-based decision making.
