Sentiment is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as a thought, opinion, attitude or idea based on a feeling about a situation or a way of thinking.
Social sentiment is the attitudes and feelings people have about your brand on social media. Social sentiment is one of the metrics that should be measured and analyzed, if you are effectively tracking your social media. Social sentiment is sometimes referred to as Brand Sentiment or Opinion Mining. When you measure sentiment, you are not tracking how many people are talking about your brand, you are measuring the emotions behind the online mentions, comments and conversations.
Are those mentions Positive – happy, excited, joyful, enthusiastic
Are those comments Negative – frustrated, annoyed, angry, mad
Are those conversations Neutral – seems satisfied but no feelings are expressed
If you are not measuring sentiment, the data can be misleading. If your brand receives a large number of posts regarding a new product that you have launched, you may assume that people are interested and will purchase your new product. If most of the posts are negative, your product will most likely not be successful and you may not understand why.
The presence of negative sentiment does not always mean failure. The measurement to consider is the ratio of positive to negative. You must take into account neutral sentiment as well. If the largest amount of your sentiment is positive and neutral, you can consider that the overall social sentiment as positive.
Most social media platforms provide a tool to measure and track sentiment i.e., Twitter’s NCSU Tweet Visualizer. There are also other providers that track social sentiment such as BuzzSumo, Hootsuite and Brandwatch to name a few.
Measuring social sentiment can also reveal information that can help future decisions around your social media strategy.
Brand Health – social sentiment analysis can provide information about how customers feel about your brand, product and company. Sentiment analysis inspires companies to gather feedback and engage directly with their customers.
Deal With A Crisis – sentiment analysis can identify a shift in your brand sentiment. Analysis may uncover a problem. You will be able to deal with it right away before it becomes a much larger issue.
Research Competitors – social sentiment analysis can show how your brand is perceived compared to your competitors. Through sentiment analysis you may be able to determine why a customer chose your competitor’s brand over yours and then work to win the cutomer back.
Improve Customer Service – sentiment analysis can lend a hand in measuring customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. By acting on the findings, it shows you are listening to your customers and that you care about them.
Social sentiment is an important part of social media monitoring. The total number of mentions or comments only tells you part of the bigger picture. Sentiment analysis can discover a problem early on and help you to avoid a social media crisis in the making. Sentiment information can aid in protecting your brand reputation and improving customer satisfaction. Sentiment analysis provides businesses with insights to keep up with the changing needs and opinions of their customers. This can translate into positive advances for your business.
Do you feel that without social sentiment analysis, you would miss out on important information for your social media strategy?
Facebook: What’s your opinion, is social sentiment analysis an integral part of a social media strategy? https://bit.ly/3gB1cbK
Twitter: Social sentiment, is it part of your social media strategy? https://bit.ly/3gB1cbK
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 