Crisis is part of life. We may be able to avoid some through adequate planning, strategy. Crisis explosion is now given a wing to fly online, brand must add knowledge. Recent cases are there to access. Crises do strike many brands but it affects unprepared brands more than the ever ready brands. Interestingly most crises do not discriminate against any industry. If it is peculiar challenge of all it does mean it can reach brands in that industry. Every crisis has the potential to damage the reputation of a company.  Some crises have capacity of not only draining the financial reserves of some brands but can also affect the mental health of the brand at large. Certain factors are now available to show why many brands fail in their bids to cub brand crisis on time.
Our focus here is not about crisis prevention, that will be for some other days. Our intention is to outline process of online crisis formation

1. Concealed: online crisis at this level will begin with scattered comments, offline discussions, and casual exchanges of words which are typed on the internet. People have started asking questions from friends, colleagues as well

2. Emerging: at this level, there is an increase on the stakeholders’ awareness of the issues, some opinion leaders and industry influencers are beginning to take interest in the casual conversation of the community members.

3. Consolidation:  At this level of online crisis process, issues are reaching maturation and audience are already forming opinions and pushing it to the front burner of online community. People are already taking sides, forming beliefs; passing judgment. If a brand waits to this time to begin to act, it appears the effort is way behind the action. Most times this result when a brand do not have an online, community manager or it has uneducated manager in the field of digital reputation software, knowledge management. Since times are changing, brands need to create this position especially those that have global reach as their aims.

4. Critical: the worst and final stage of online crisis is the critical stage. Strong presence and planning before hand can safe a brand from total damage that this level of crisis can bring. Using all online social media tools here is required but even at that there is need for counsel from either a recognized consultant or a trained in-house staff. Brand must acknowledge that even though public forgives accident, but they hardly forgive corporate, personal brands whose attitude, response is either inadequate or not forthcoming. So where are you know and what plans do you have to combat online crisis when one happens

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4. Successful brand activation process
5. Brand online perception, reputation management