Crisis Averted: Identifying Brand Vulnerabilities Before They Escalate

Insights from Kelly Hudson, Vice President, Social Media

TL;DR: A single incident can damage your brand's reputation, so to ensure long-term success, organizations need to adopt proactive approaches to brand protection. Enter KWT Global's Brand Vulnerabilities Audit, which starts with in-depth social listening to identify potential risks and culminates with tailored strategies to mitigate any issues.

Information travels at the speed of light, and a single misstep—from a customer service failure to a viral social media post or news article—can quickly tarnish a brand's reputation.

In fact, a whopping 90% of online shoppers said they’ve chosen not to purchase from a company because of its bad reputation. To survive (and thrive) in this environment, organizations need to take proactive approaches to brand protection.

We’ve talked about using social listening to uncover trends and proactive opportunities, but it’s also a powerful way to identify any brand vulnerabilities or blind spots that may be lurking just under the surface. Tapping into this real-time data stream helps us uncover emerging threats and get ahead of issues before they escalate into full-blown crises that could erode brand trust.

A sophisticated solution

Whether big or small, “what if’s?” feel less intimidating when you know your bases are covered. To stay ahead of the curve, KWT Global’s Brand Vulnerabilities Audit starts with a comprehensive assessment of your brand's potential risk areas and accompanying solutions.

Here's how we pair social listening with our team’s reputation management expertise:    

• Comprehensive monitoring across platforms

  • Our first step is casting a wide net to monitor as many relevant online spaces as possible. We rely on best-in-class tools and manual analysis to track mentions of your brand, competitors, products, campaigns and more across social platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and Reddit), news sites, blogs, forums, review sites and the broader web. This allows us to identify vulnerabilities bubbling up across all edges of the internet.

•  Customized search queries

  • To ensure we're capturing all relevant conversations, we build customized search queries for your brand and industry. This tracks not just obvious brand mentions, but related terms, misspellings, slang, hashtags and coded language that discussions could be hiding within. Our expertise allows us to design comprehensive queries that leave no stone unturned.

• In-depth human analysis

  • Human analysis is essential for giving meaning to the numbers. Our team dives deep into emerging areas, immersing themselves in the conversations to understand core issues, drivers, trajectories and broader implications. This ensures that we don't miss anything that the tools may have overlooked, providing the necessary context behind any potential issues.

• Impact assessment and recommended approach

  • Once vulnerabilities have been thoroughly analyzed, we classify and score each one based on factors like potential impact, sentiment, scale and likelihood of escalation. This allows us to prioritize which vulnerabilities require immediate action and which may need ongoing monitoring. We'll make tailored recommendations for how to mitigate each threat, delivering these insights and recommendations in a comprehensive audit report that outlines the key vulnerabilities, risk assessments, recommended approach and more.

• Ongoing monitoring

  • For anything that requires ongoing attention, we’ll set up alerts to surface potential areas of risk based on spikes in volume, clustered topics, shifting sentiment and other anomalies in conversation patterns. We're alerted to new threats as soon as they begin to emerge so we can quickly investigate and report back.

Social listening guides strategic comms

Social listening is a key component of a broader crisis communications plan and playbook—all designed to prepare, protect and defend your organization.

With a playbook in place and social listening enacted, our teams can use real-time data to craft insights-led, stakeholder-specific messaging that mitigates potential threats and promotes credibility among key audiences. Additionally, when negative sentiment or emerging crises are detected via social listening, PR pros can step in with tailored messaging rooted in the brand’s mission and values and draft responses that address issues transparently and protect brand trust.

Beyond crisis management, having a public relations plan in place to amplify positive stories, engage key stakeholders and position your brand as a proactive leader ensures that your voice stays ahead of the conversation.

Protect and promote for sustained brand health

In a world of constant change, proactive brand protection is one of the few elements that businesses can control. Not only does it help brands mitigate short- and long-term risks, but it also makes it simpler to seize opportunities to enhance reputation, strengthen customer relationships and drive business growth.

Wondering if a Brand Vulnerabilities Audit is right for you? Get in touch with us today so we can talk through your unique goals and challenges.