The Role of Sentiment Analysis in Social Media

We live in a world where ‘Customer is King’ and this has only become more relevant today! Social media is not only important in keeping up with what’s happening in the world, but it has also become a place where people come to gather the information that is important in deciding to ‘purchase’. This is precisely the reason why a lot of brands are now depending on social media to know how their products are doing and what the customers think about them?

This is the reason why brands conduct social sentiment analysis for their brands. Let’s dive into it a little deeper.

What Is Social Media Sentiment Analysis?

As the name suggests, this kind of analysis takes into account the emotions and opinions of people rather than a simple counting of mentions or comments. It can be considered as a subset of ‘social listening’. This kind of analysis is also known as ‘opinion mining’ and this is because it is the process of defining and categorizing opinions on social media as – positive, negative, or neutral.

Sentiment analysis is done by collecting and analyzing information in the posts that people share about a brand on social media. This way the brands can know about consumers’ perception of their products and services.

Many social media monitoring tools like convocean.com use sentiment analysis to give their users the idea of how the public feels about their products, services, business, or topics of interest. A very common example where it is widely used is by the email services to keep the spam out of your inbox and also by the review websites that keep recommending you some new content like films or TV shows.

Now that we know what social sentiment analysis is, let’s understand why it is important for any business?

Why Do Brands Need Sentiment Analysis?

There are some very obvious benefits of conducting sentiment analysis for a business. Let’s have a closer look.

Understand Your Audience

Social media sentiment analysis can keep a brand on top of their game in knowing when the customer preference and desires change in real-time!

A very good example of this is KFC. It faced tough competition from the likes of McDonald’s and Burger King and was left behind when its adversaries were reinventing themselves as health-conscious and feel-good brands. Instead of joining the crowd, it decided to listen to what people were looking for and added just that to their brand! KFC started riding on the waves of memes and brought in some very famous pop culture elements to reinforce their brand image. They used the character of RoboCop to promote their new products. Now that’s a way to deal with your competition!

Improve Your Customer Service

Monitoring for social mentions with negative sentiments allows the brands to analyze where they are going and what they can do to improve. It also alerts them of any new issues that can occur and allows them to prepare a proper response, strategy, or script to control the damage.

An excellent example of this is seen in big tech companies like Microsoft and Apple. These companies have very detailed and responsive troubleshooting quizzes that are designed to generate maximum information from the user. This enables them to not only solve an existing issue (if any) but also gives them additional insight into any particular trend in product use.

Tweak Brand Messaging and Product Development

When brands start following trends and investigating spikes in positive or negative sentiments, they get an idea about what their audiences want! This insight can be effectively used to create a focused brand messaging for social media!

For example, Translink, the company that runs transit services in Metro Vancouver launched a campaign where Seth Rogan is making etiquette announcements on the SkyTrain!

Know Where You Stand in Your Niche

Monitoring sentiments on social media helps brands to know where they stand in their niche market. Where they are lacking and how they can improve their brand image? It also allows them to tap into the unexplored potential of the market.

For instance, using sentiment analysis, it was found that Heathrow Airport is known for good Wi-Fi, washrooms, restaurants, and lounges. However, on social media, a lot of people were seen complaining about the airport’s parking, immigration and passport control procedures, and staff. Using this information, Heathrow Airport was able to improve and work on these aspects.

Proactively Handle Brand Crises

Brands should continually monitor social sentiments for their products and services because by doing this they would know where their brand is headed!

Analyzing the social media users’ sentiments can help them spot any problem early on and make sure that it is handled before any major harm is done.

For example, back in 2015, Taylor Swift, a US pop artist, very publicly boycotted Apple Music since it offered a one-month free trial of its streaming feature. At the same time they did not pay the artists for any of their music that was played during the free period. Apple immediately apologized and rectified the situation.

Due to social media, big brands are directly connecting with their audiences and learning about their usage patterns, buying patterns, and pain points; and at the same time are also building their brands. With many discussions going around about how social media is affecting businesses and people negatively, one should read the above-listed facts, twice and decide for themselves!