Understanding the sentiment of users towards your brand is essential to create winning marketing strategies. This is what Sentiment Analysis is and why it is so crucial.
Nothing circulates on the net more than the opinions of users regarding brands, public figures, institutions. Any relevant post (in any social media) is shared, commented on, liked or despised. Analyzing this large amount of reactions, thanks to Sentiment Analysis , is essential to understand the degree of appreciation obtained by a person or company that is exposed on social media. With this data, correctly analyzed and reclassified, it is possible to plan marketing strategies and refine your target audience.
So let ‘s try to understand what Sentiment Analysis is and why it has become so important for companies.
- Sentiment Analysis: what it is
- Where does the Sentiment Analysis come from
- Why is the analysis of feelings important
- Where it is used
- Utility for the company
- How to read Sentiment Analysis data
- The semantic question
- Feelings Analysis Tool
Sentiment Analysis: what it is
Sentiment Analysis can be defined as an activity focused on analyzing and listening to the web, with the aim of understanding what users say and think about their brand. Not only that, the Sentiment Analysis also focuses on the investigation of what concerns the activity of competitors . This analysis has the strength to understand what the reputation of the company is and, at the same time, lay the basis for more targeted marketing strategies .
Where does the Sentiment Analysis come from
The main fields of investigation of Sentiment Analysis are undoubtedly the Social Networks . These social networks allow continuous interaction between users, as well as a continuous exchange of points of view between a brand and its community. Sentiment Analysis starts from these main platforms to understand the feelings and opinions that circulate on the net and that can concern a person as well as a brand starting from user generated content .
All those who operate on social media by releasing comments, opinions, reviews are technically called opinion holders or opinion sources . This means that they are entities capable of releasing opinions of any kind, positive, neutral or negative , capable of labeling and changing the perception of a person or a brand.
Why is the analysis of feelings important
From a purely technical point of view it is very difficult to think of extracting the emotion present on social networks and transferring it into data that can then be useful in the marketing field. For this reason, as we will see later, there are aggregation techniques capable of putting on paper the emotions experienced by users.
But why is sentiment analysis so important for a company?
The answer is quite obvious: thanks to these methodological analyzes it is possible to understand the sentiment of users with respect to the brand in a given time period and in a defined context. This can be related to the marketing of a new product, as well as the campaign of a politician or the evaluation of a certain marketing strategy. In Sentiment Analysis the emotions and reactions of the target audience become the main vehicle for evaluating the goodness of one’s strategies , especially those oriented towards emotional marketing .
Where it is used
The fields of action of Sentiment Analysis are increasingly broad. The sectors approaching this methodology cover different areas of trade and information. The policy , for example, relies on the analysis of feelings for feedback in real time. Each post, stance, political choice corresponds to comments, shares, tweets from users . All this information is then recalculated to have a complete view of the audience’s responses and plan subsequent data driven marketing campaigns . Was it a positive or negative post? Are there more consensus or dissent comments? Were there numerous shares or not?
But there is not only the political sphere to rely on the Sentiment Analysis. The stock markets and the economic sphere in general depend a lot on these considerations, as does the sports sector , where the athlete finds immediate confirmation of his performance from the social media audience.
Utility for the company
The so-called market surveys have animated the thoughts of corporate marketers for decades. How’s my product doing? How was it perceived by users? And has that commercial choice brought results? Before the advancement of Sentiment Analysis, actions such as telephone surveys, surveys via email, SMS or so-called focus groups had a great impact . Today it seems that such activities are marginal in the market surveys of companies, as they are completely overcome by the analysis of sentiments.
Thanks to this practice, companies today have the opportunity to have much more information related to the simple perception of users . The Sentiment Analysis allows at the same time to profile users and understand what their main demographic characteristics are. Not only that, from a purely operational point of view it proves to be a much less cumbersome and expensive activity than the previous ones , because it is based on an aggregation of data already present on the web.
How to read Sentiment Analysis data
The ease of data collection, however, should not be confusing. The Sentiment Analysis is based on fact extremely sophisticated tool, which must be able to accurately read all the data available. These data continually arrive from different platforms (Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Youtube, photo and video sharing platforms, etc.) and in different “format”: they can be comments, reviews , likes, dislikes.
But it’s not just the source that complicates the process. Within each comment, the software must be able to consider these characteristics:
Tone of voice : apparently it is a foregone analysis. A friendly tone of voice presupposes a positive judgment and, conversely, a more aggressive tone concerns a negative judgment. But, for example, there can always be a joke to complicate the situation, an ironic comment that the software must be careful not to confuse.
Intensity : The intensity of the comment or review must also be taken into account. There can be an extremely fiery or almost disinterested comment.
Emotionality : emotionality can be extrapolated from the proposition as it is expressed. What adjectives are used? What punctuation was used? Are there any emoticons in the analyzed text portion? How many? Which?
Relevance : another element not to be underestimated is the relevance of the comment with respect to the main topic. In the social cauldron it often happens that you find comments that are completely out of place and not at all relevant. This is why a good Sentiment Analysis cannot be separated from a perfect evaluation of the relevance of the data with respect to the context.
The semantic question
The tools are not people and as such they could misinterpret certain words with double significance, or polysemics. Any idiom, from Italian to English, includes headwords that in different contexts take on different meanings . An example could be: “Maybe tomorrow I’ll go to the beach, it depends on the weather”. In this case the word “time” refers to the climatic conditions, but it could also be understood as the subject’s “time available”.
A good Sentiment Analysis tool must therefore be able to understand the context in which the word is used. The latest generation software is almost all supported by Artificial Intelligence, whose latest implementations also allow you to fully understand the textual context and not be fooled by any polysemic words.
Feelings Analysis Tool
And here we are at the evaluation of the main tools for Sentiment Analysis , or the best software to allow a perfect estimate of the emotion generated by a post or an action on social networks and SEO NYC services:
Brandwatch : is a Sentiment Analysis and Social Media Monitoring platform that operates in 26 languages. Inside it is possible to insert queries to extrapolate the data you need. The software then returns numerous details relating to the liking of the brand or the person sought, all thanks to a very exhaustive series of graphics.
Talkwalker : Perhaps the most popular social listening platform. Inside there are numerous functions: aggregation of statistical data, identification of new trends, creation of insights on the target audience, discovery of new influencers.
Radian6 : it is an optimal tool for large companies. Radian6 is able to analyze all the conversations concerning brands, products and competitors . Everything is returned in the form of simple and intuitive graphics. Not only that, the tool also includes the presence of real time graphics, useful for analyzing which are the main social mentions of the moment regarding the brand or the words most associated by users. Its cost is quite high but, as already mentioned, it is recommended for companies with high turnover.
Meltwater Buzz : it is a tool able to monitor and track the content created by users on the main social networks. The data is extrapolated and then reproposed in the form of interactive graphics.
Sysomos : software that groups together all the relevant conversations related to the brand that are online, returning full-bodied and precise graphics and insights. Perfect for large companies.