At what point does a negative blog post, an angry tweet or an inaccurate comment become a crisis that your team needs to respond to? Anyone who’s made anything has a critic — but how do you know when to jump in and respond to an issue before it gets bigger than it needs to? Here are three ideas to help separate the pointless troll comments from something that deserves a response.

What to look for:

• How influential the commenter is. Probably the biggest early indicator of a potential crisis is how influential the person raising a fuss is. The bigger the network the critic has, the faster the negativity can spread.

• How your core fans are responding. If you see that your core group of evangelists is upset about an issue, that could be an early warning that something is really wrong.

• If it spreads to another channel. Seeing an issue translate from a few comments on a blog to an increase in angry calls to the call center should be a clear signal that you’ve got a serious issue brewing.

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3. Andy’s Answers: What General Mills has learned from early experiments in social media