Social media sentiment analysis – opinion mining – finds and analyzes the emotional tone in consumers’ online chat. Revealing not just the words but understanding the feelings behind – love, hate, happiness, anger, sadness, etc. For a business, recognizing these emotions harvests business insights that can shape future marketing campaigns, innovate product development, and improve customer service.
I’m going to assume that you’re using social media to promote your products and services. Let’s be honest. Who isn’t, in this digital age? Do you know what’s working and what isn’t? Are your posts randomly shared, or do you have a plan? What’s your ROI?
Social media – more than a billboard
Social media is so much more than just an advertising platform. It’s the garden fence where neighbors gossip about their neighbors. The water cooler where office stories are swapped. The soapbox from where opinions are shouted. Excitement about a new movie, dissatisfaction with the latest smartphone, anger at a delayed flight. It’s all spewed out using different languages, slang, sarcasm, irony. As humans, we get it. But what about machines? Do they truly get the meaning behind?
Genuine praise, or sarcasm?
Social media is an ever-growing database of customer feedback, packed with data about how your brand is seen by consumers. How it compares in your industry. How it ranks with your competitors.
I’ve just published a guide to Social media sentiment analysis. It explains what sentiment analysis is, why you should be using it, and how to do it. I’ve used real brands using opinion mining to find insights. There’s a case study with a leading science and technology company who used Talkwalker’s sentiment analysis to improve product development. And, there are demonstrations of the best tool on the market – 90% accuracy – in action.
Yeah, great job, guys!
Here’s a taster of what the guide covers.
Social media sentiment analysis
Social media sentiment analysis, opinion mining, emotion AI – is the use of natural language processing (NLP) to understand online chatter.
There are three methods:
Keyword scoring – giving positive or negative scores to words. Good = positive. Bad = negative. It’s quick, predictable, and cheap. But it’s not accurate – roughly between 50 and 80%. You don’t want to make business decisions based on these kinds of stats.
You see the problem?
Predefined categories – users categorize a set of results – the training set – then an algorithm is used for future analysis. Accuracy is higher, but man-hours are through the roof and you only get a handful of results.
Humans – accuracy is at its highest but man-hours are intensive. Plus, there’s the danger of not reacting quickly enough to an issue before it escalates into a crisis.
Then there’s the Talkwalker method:
AI-powered sentiment analysis – Talkwalker’s data science team has developed AI-powered social media sentiment analysis that understands the meaning behind a sentence – the emotional meaning. The algorithm recognizes the sentiment behind online social media conversations – with 90% accuracy. Yep, I said 90%! And, get this… it understands 187 languages, sarcasm and irony. The algorithm copies how human brains understand.
Are you for real?
Why use social media sentiment analysis?
Here are 5 reasons why you’d be a fool to ignore sentiment analysis…
#1 Improved marketing campaigns
Using sentiment analysis with social listening, you’ll be able to analyse reactions to your marketing campaigns. Are they working? Do your messages target the right audience? How’s your tone of voice working?
#2 ROI of marketing campaigns
It’s an ego boost – winning more followers. Makes you feel all warm and cosy. But a successful campaign is not just increasing the numbers. If your marketing campaigns are truly successful, your levels of positive sentiment will grow, and grow. By combining the quantitative and the qualitative measurements, you’ll be able to accurately measure the ROI of your marketing campaigns.
#3 Crisis management
Poor customer service, product faults, misjudged marketing campaign, dead in the water product launch… What can start as an issue can quickly escalate into a crisis. Social media adds fuel to the fire. Your crisis goes viral, your brand’s reputation will be tarnished.
Using sentiment analysis, you’ll uncover issues quickly. You’ll be alerted to negative feedback in real-time, and you’ll be able to stop an issue becoming a full-blown crisis.
#4 Give consumers the products THEY want
In the past, sending out a survey to consumers brought insights that could steer your product development. But surveys take time, they cost money, and they’re often ignored. Now, we can listen to the online conversations consumers are having with each other, and with other brands. You’ll hear what they think about your product, whether it does what they want. You’ll get honest customer feedback.
I’m talking about using sentiment analysis. Technology that not only understands 187 languages, but gets sarcasm, slang, and irony with 90% accuracy.
#5 Customer service that supports the customer
Sentiment analysis makes it easy for your customer service team to identify negative feedback and respond quickly. When consumers post complaints, they expect a fast response. Keep them waiting and the negativity can explode into a viral mess.
Deal with the issue quickly and you’ll not only be demonstrating that your company cares about consumers, but you could win yourself a brand advocate.
The future of sentiment analysis
It’s vital that you accurately classify the sentiment behind consumers’ comments. That you manage brand reputation, crises, product development, levels of customer service. I know that you want to give customers what they want, and you can…
I previously referred to the best sentiment analysis tool on the market, with regard to accuracy. My opinion, biased or otherwise, is Talkwalker. It captures consumers’ sentiment with 90% accuracy – sarcasm, slang, irony.
Sentiment analysis isn’t an exact science, but Talkwalker’s sentiment analysis technology comes close, and the data science team will not stop, ever, until they’re reach perfection.
Take a look at my guide to Social media sentiment analysis – it has everything you need to give your customers everything they need.
