When it comes to protecting and managing your reputation online, influencers are a double-edged sword. While they can be invaluable as brand advocates, they can also do real damage. Read on for Visibrain’s top tips on how keeping an eye on influencers can help to avoid a brand crisis.

In spite of the old “sticks and stones” idiom, words can do a lot of damage to brands online. One angry Facebook post or tweet can escalate rapidly into a social media storm, leaving a permanent stain on a business’s image. Which is why keyword analysis can prove to be a crucial tool for online reputation management. Tracking which keywords and expressions are being used in conversations about a brand can be crucial to spotting the first moments of a crisis, before it has time to snowball.

Would you be able to spot the first signs of a looming crisis in your data? Brands are increasingly turning to the use of monitoring tools to pick up on any budding PR issues before they have time to escalate - but with the hundreds of millions of news stories, blog articles, social media posts, photos and videos being published every day, the warning signs of a crisis are often difficult to detect amongst all the noise.

Visibrain has come up with a comprehensive guide explaining how - and where - to spot the first moments of a crisis in your monitoring data.

It’s no secret - keeping an eye on what is being said about your brand is vital to maintaining your reputation, but it’s easier said than done. The huge quantities of information being shared online every day - along with the speed at which it can be published - have turned reputation management into a challenging affair.

With the ability to go international in just one hour and damage a brand’s reputation forever, a full-blown social media crisis is many a PR or communication professional’s worst nightmare. Social listening provides insights that could save your brand from lasting damage, and with its real time characteristics, Twitter data can be particularly valuable.

Here are some of our top tips for using media monitoring effectively to prevent and manage social media crises.