Cookbooks

Crisis Monitoring Cookbook

Set up focused monitoring for spikes, negative sentiment, public backlash, scams, outages, or urgent brand risk.

Set up a focused crisis monitoring workflow for spikes, negative sentiment, public backlash, scams, outages, safety issues, or urgent brand risk.

Use this cookbook when the team needs fast situational awareness and evidence-backed updates during an active issue.

1. Goal

Crisis monitoring should answer:

  • What happened?
  • When did it start?
  • Which platforms, sources, authors, and regions are driving it?
  • How negative or severe is the conversation?
  • Which mentions need response or escalation?
  • Is the issue isolated, growing, or declining?
  • What should the response team do next?

2. Start From An Existing Brand Project

If an always-on brand project exists:

  1. Open the saved brand project.
  2. Set the date range around the incident.
  3. Filter by negative sentiment, priority, scam flags, issue terms, sources, or high reach.
  4. Open the Mentions tab.
  5. Tag confirmed crisis-related mentions.

Starting from an existing project keeps historical brand context intact.

3. Create A Dedicated Crisis Project When Needed

Create a separate crisis project when:

  • The issue has specific keywords that should not be added to the main brand query.
  • The crisis needs its own reports and alerts.
  • A response team needs a clean dashboard.
  • The incident may run for several days or weeks.

Suggested project title:

Brand - Crisis - [Issue Name] - [Month Year]

Suggested project type:

  • General for a one-off issue.
  • Campaign if the crisis is tied to a campaign.
  • My Brand if it should remain part of brand operations.

4. Suggested Query Structure

Use the brand terms plus the issue terms.

("Brand Name" OR BrandName OR "@brandhandle") AND ("issue term" OR "complaint phrase" OR hashtag)

Include:

  • Brand name and variations.
  • Product or service involved.
  • Incident keyword.
  • Complaint phrases.
  • Viral hashtags.
  • Named executives, locations, or event names if relevant.
  • Scam or impersonation phrases where relevant.

Avoid making the query too narrow. You can use filters later to isolate specific angles.

5. Tracking Sources

Open:

Sidebar -> Settings -> Monitoring -> Social Tracking

Add or verify:

  • Official brand pages.
  • Posts that triggered the issue.
  • Public groups or threads discussing the issue.
  • Crisis hashtags.
  • Review pages if reviews are part of the issue.
  • News or community URLs where possible.

Choose Backfill 30 Days for critical supported sources when the issue may have started before setup. Choose From Now Only for live monitoring when historical data is not needed or backfill would waste quota.

6. Crisis Filters

Use filters to isolate the active issue:

  • Date range around the incident.
  • Negative sentiment.
  • Priority.
  • Scam or suspicious content where available.
  • High reach.
  • Specific platforms.
  • Domains or authors.
  • Hashtags.
  • Subtopics and intents.
  • Mention type, such as comments or posts.
  • Countries or languages when the issue is local.

Save or document the filter combination used for each report so updates are comparable.

7. Live Review Workflow

During the active period:

  1. Review the Overview tab every 30 to 60 minutes or at the interval your team needs.
  2. Use 1D chart aggregation for daily movement.
  3. Open Mentions.
  4. Sort by newest for live monitoring.
  5. Sort by influence or engagement for escalation.
  6. Visit high-impact original posts.
  7. Tag confirmed examples.
  8. Use Add to Report for representative mentions.
  9. Use Reply, Generate Response, Send, Message, or Mark as complete only where supported and after review.
  10. Ask Kommon Poll AI for a filtered summary.
  11. Verify the summary before sharing it.

8. Alerts

Recommended alert channels:

  • WhatsApp for urgent escalation.
  • Slack for response team coordination.
  • Teams for Microsoft-based response workflows.
  • Email for scheduled summaries.

Recommended rules:

  • Negative mention alerts.
  • High-priority mention alerts.
  • High-reach mentions.
  • Scam or fraud-related mentions.
  • Daily or more frequent summaries where appropriate.

Keep the audience small for urgent alerts. Send broad summaries only after the facts are checked.

9. Reporting

For a crisis update, use a short format:

  1. Current status.
  2. Mention volume trend.
  3. Reach trend.
  4. Sentiment trend.
  5. Top sources or platforms.
  6. Main themes.
  7. Representative mention examples.
  8. Open risks.
  9. Recommended action.

Use PDF for a fixed update. Use a Dashboard share link or Mention Wall for live visibility.

10. Best Practices

  • Separate confirmed facts from early signals.
  • Use exact date ranges in every update.
  • Verify original sources before escalation.
  • Avoid relying only on AI summaries.
  • Keep response drafts human-reviewed.
  • Tag every confirmed issue mention consistently.
  • Close or archive the crisis project after the incident ends.
  • Convert lessons learned into query exclusions, alerts, or tracking updates.

11. Checklist

  • Crisis keywords and hashtags are captured.
  • Date range is correct.
  • Critical sources are tracked.
  • Backfill choice is intentional.
  • Alerts go only to responsible teams.
  • Mention examples are verified.
  • AI summaries are checked.
  • Report format is ready.
  • Escalation owner is known.
  • Completion criteria are defined.