There are an estimated 36 million negative posts about brands on the internet every single day.
While not every complaining tweet or accusatory Instagram post is a crisis, lurking in those millions of posts could be a fin in the water that will prove to the Great White that will eat your brand whole.
But how on earth do you track an emerging issue amidst so much noise?
The answer is data and analytics.
The importance of these tools in issues and crisis preparedness is explored by Jeff Bodzewski, an expert in the field from the award-winning agency M Booth, in a fascinating new chapter in the 2nd edition of the eBook, ‘The New Rules of Crisis Management’.
Jeff in his chapter looks closely at the tools and the signals that are available to all organizations to catch a bubbling issue early and prevent it becoming a full-blown business threat.
One valuable application of data in a crisis is the real-time tracking of visitors to your website, showing who is looking for more information, what information is most valuable to them and the ‘catalyst’ organizations that are motivating them to action – all of which are elements that should guide a crisis communications response plan.
Jeff identifies four key sources of web analytics:
- REFERRAL TRAFFIC: A tiered list of all the external websites, including media, influencer and brand sites, where visitors to your website are coming from.
- SEARCH TRAFFIC: A complete list of the organic search terms that are taking people to your website.
- OUTGOING LINKS: A list of the websites that people visit next AFTER your site, including social, e-commerce, media, law firms and other relevant organizations.
- SITE VISITORS: Demographic, geographic and other data about who is spending time on your website.
Jeff also makes the point that while the most sophisticated data and analytics tools cost thousands of dollars – the democratization of data in recent years has created a myriad of FREE tools that give any organization at least a basic ability to track how an issue is evolving and what response is warranted, including:
- Google Alerts: Alerts for a phrase, name or word
- Google Trends: Updated data from global events to a single city
- Social Mention: Tracks thousands of social media channels
- Tone Analyzer: Analyzes content to understand the emotional slant
- Trendsmap: Filters the Twitter topics and hashtags that are trending
To read more about these tools and Jeff’s guide on the importance of data and analytics in issues and crisis management for the digital age, the newly published 2nd edition of the ‘The New Rules of Crisis Management’ is available for free download at https://www.rockdovesolutions.com/the-new-rules-of-crisis-management.
