Social Media Sentiment Explained

Two faces

You will definitely feel great and elated even more about the 800,000+ mentions your brand got on social media last week, you will be in trouble if these are issues, complaints or user rants about something being amiss. You can determine the state of your social media strategy by analyzing social media sentiment. And that is what we are going to look at today

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Tracking sentiment helps you understand what the individual behind a social media post is feeling. Knowing the emotion behind a post can provide important context for how you proceed and respond. This has to be beyond and better than just dictionary match and token search that just counts mentions for you.

Is social media sentiment important?

Yes it is. It is one of the most important metrics that you need to track and here is why

Audience insight

Marketers benefit from having as much information about their audience as possible. Understanding your audience’s reactions to your posts helps you plan strategically for future campaigns and content.

Say, for example, your social media team is running a campaign about your brand’s new body wash, which features microbeads as scrubbing agents. After the launch of the new body wash, your social team notices the majority of conversations are negative due to the environmental impact of microbeads.

In the example above, the brand can take action (such as revoking the product from the shelves, making a public donation to a recognized environmental organization, etc.) and adjust messaging accordingly.

If there was a large outcry in response to the product, monitoring sentiment also helps the brand refrain from sharing any tone-deaf social media posts.

The situation above could have been avoided if the brand had tested for sentiment prior to launching their new product. Monitoring sentiment allows brands to conduct simple market research before going further with new products, services, or features.

Customer service

Monitoring sentiment is a beneficial tactic for customer service and support representatives.

This serves another purpose too—you have a unique chance to turn a bad customer experience into a positive one.

Corporate messaging

Public relations and corporate communications professionals need to be aware of brand perception. Part of a PR professional’s job is to ensure the message they’re sharing is relevant and targeted. Using sentiment analysis, they can take the temperature of their target audience before sending out any message.

Sentiment analysis is also helpful when monitoring keywords for PR professionals. In addition to seeing what the general public has to say, they can find influencers and thought leaders having conversations about their brand.

Using sentiment analysis tools, PR pros can see the influencers having positive discussions about their brand, and use this information to build relationships.

When using a sentiment analysis tool such as Hootsuite Insights, PR professionals can watch for when conversations surrounding their brand turn negative. The tool will recognize an unusual spike in the volume of conversations—and measure tone.

Source: Hootsuite

About Shakthi

I am a Tech Blogger, Disability Activist, Keynote Speaker, Startup Mentor and Digital Branding Consultant. Also a McKinsey Executive Panel Member. Also known as @v_shakthi on twitter. Been around Tech for two decades now.

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