herdHow social listening can stop a brand crisis
By Lim Wai Hong · · 3 min read
A brand crisis rarely starts big. It starts with one angry post that nobody answers, and then other people repeat it. Social listening finds that first post while it's still small, so you can reply, fix the problem and explain yourself before the story spreads.
What does a brand crisis look like for a small business?
For a big brand, a crisis makes the news. For a small business, it can be one post.
A customer finds a hair in their noodles, takes a photo and posts it with your name. By the evening, people who have never been to your shop have seen it.
The post doesn't have to be fair to hurt. I think what turns it into a crisis is the silence after it. People see no answer from you and fill the gap themselves.
How does one complaint grow into a crisis?
It starts with one customer and their friends. Someone shares the post with a comment of their own, and people who were never customers join in.
Then it moves. It turns up on other apps and in other languages, and someone digs up an old review that seems to fit the story.
By the time a friend tells you about it, the complaint is the first thing people see when they search your name.
How does social listening help you catch it early?
With social listening, a tool tells you about the post, not a friend two days later. You track your brand name, your products and the usual misspellings, and the angry posts go to the top.
What you're buying is time. At the first post, you have one person to talk to and a problem you might fix today. A day later, you have a story to correct.
What should you do when you find the first angry post?
Read the whole post and the replies under it before you answer. Find out what happened first.
Then reply in public, where other people can see it. Say sorry, say what you'll do next and keep it short. Offer to sort out the details in a private message.
Fix the cause, not only the post. Tell your staff what you said, so nobody posts a different answer. Then keep watching for a few days.
What should you not do?
Don't argue in the comments, even when the customer is wrong. Everyone reading sees a business fighting a customer.
Don't delete the post either. Someone will have a screenshot, and then the story is about you hiding it.
Why does language matter in a crisis?
The first angry post may not be in your language. A tourist writes a review in Korean, and you see the photo but not the words.
A translation tells you what they said, slang included. Without it, you're answering a post you can't read.
Can social listening stop every crisis?
No. Some problems are serious, and no reply makes them go away. A tool also only sees public posts, not private group chats.
What listening gives you is time and the real story, in the customer's own words. Reading the week's posts afterwards shows you if the same complaint keeps coming back.
How does Herd help in a brand crisis?
Herd watches social media for posts about your business. When a post looks urgent, Herd lets you know by email or text, whichever you opt in to.
If the post is in another language, you can choose to have Herd translate it. Herd can also draft a reply in your tone for you to edit before you post.
Herd helps you spot the early signs and step in fast, while the story is still small. If you need to put out a statement, every post sits in one dashboard, so whoever handles your PR can see what people are really saying before they write it.