Sentiment Analysis Tools for Social Media Marketers. Sentiment analysis tools can help with this. Martin explains, “Social media sentiment is the perceived positive or negative mood being portrayed in a social media post or engagement.” Tracking sentiment helps you understand what the individual behind a social media post is feeling. Why is social media sentiment important? Monitoring sentiment allows brands to conduct simple market research before going further with new products, services, or features. Sentiment analysis is also helpful when monitoring keywords for PR professionals. When using a sentiment analysis tool such as Hootsuite Insights, PR professionals can watch for when conversations surrounding their brand turn negative. Searching for both positive and negative sentiment is important. The tool recognizes the importance of every word in a sentence, and evaluates the sentiment based on this. Use Hootsuite Insights to monitor the sentiment of your social media audience.
If someone were talking about you, would you want to know what they were saying? For businesses, there’s no choice—they need to know what people are saying about their brand. It’s important for brands to listen carefully to what is being said about their business—and even more important to know whether the talk is positive or negative. Sentiment analysis tools can help with this.
We spoke to Nick Martin, social engagement coordinator at Hootsuite, about why social media sentiment is important and what tools he uses on a daily basis.
What is social media sentiment?
While you might be feeling great about the 10,000 mentions your brand got on Twitter last week, you’re in trouble if these are complaints. You can determine the state of your social media strategy by analyzing social media sentiment.
Martin explains, “Social media sentiment is the perceived positive or negative mood being portrayed in a social media post or engagement.”
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.
Why is social media sentiment important?
Provides 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.
“Through monitoring sentiment, you’re able to analyze the negative reaction to the product and hear straight from customers,” Martin explains.
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.
Supports customer service
Monitoring sentiment is a beneficial tactic for customer service and support representatives.
As Martin explains, “Users in these roles can monitor dissatisfaction and react effectively before more negative sentiment spreads… This is especially important for B2C organizations such as hostels, hotels, or businesses that can be reviewed on services such as Yelp. When you’re public-facing and rely on positive reviews for business, it’s important to be constantly tuned-in to your customers’ feelings towards your brand.”
This serves another purpose too—you have a unique…
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