TORONTO--(Marketwire - January 26, 2013) - Many companies recognize the role social media can play in managing a public relations crisis, but what about preventing one before it happens? Savvy marketers are realizing that a sound social media strategy can help them stay ahead of changing sentiment and shift the conversation before it can do damage. "Turn Social Intelligence into Smart Crisis Prevention," the latest Tip Sheet from Sysomos, offers practical suggestions for identifying and even staving off a social media crisis, as well as navigating an impending crisis.

Report Highlights

• Every company should have an updated, readily accessible social media crisis plan that represents each of its departments, because a crisis can range from an executive faux pas to poor customer service to a product malfunction.
• Word clouds are great bellwethers for predicting a crisis. Monday's word cloud could reveal business as usual while Tuesday's could predict trouble in the making.
• Organizations can avert or more easily control a crisis once it occurs by developing positive relationships with their major influencers, fans and clients ahead of time.
• Overreacting to a crisis can hurt a brand as much as can underreacting. Monitoring tools reveal spikes in social sentiment during crisis response; the goal is to bring sentiment volume to pre-crisis levels.
• Pre-prepared messages help speed response, but the tone and content must be modified for each unique situation. It's critical for a brand's voice to be authentic and genuine when it explains how it's fixing the issue.

Background
"Turn Social Intelligence into Smart Crisis Prevention" is the seventh in a series of Sysomos Tip Sheets to help marketers leverage social media monitoring to advance their businesses.

Download a free copy of "Turn Social Intelligence into Smart Crisis Prevention."

Sysomos Tip Sheets available for free download include:

• Five Tips for Setting Measurable Social Media Goals
• How to Get Social Media Influencers Talking about You
• 8 Ways to Build Your Brand with Social Media
• How to Generate Leads through the Social Web
• 20 Social Media Resolutions for 2013
• How to Accurately Track Your Social Media Buzz

About Sysomos
Sysomos, a Marketwire company, brings business intelligence to social media, providing instant and unlimited access to all social media conversations to quickly see what's happening, why it's happening, and who's driving the conversations.

Through the use of contextual text analytics and data mining technology, Sysomos collects data from blogs, Twitter, social networks, forums, video sites and major news sources.

Our products give you the ability to quickly discover the tone of the conversations and identify sentiment by gender, age and location.

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