Sentiment analysis uses natural language processing (NLP) to identify and quantify the sentiment of text, video, or images at scale. It is most commonly used to quickly and efficiently identify negative reviews or articles online.
At Reputation X, we put over a decade of online brand management experience into every strategy we develop. Part of our industry know-how includes a keen mastery of the tools that can aid our clients in building, improving, and maintaining their positive online reputations.
The tools we use serve a variety of different functions, all with the express purpose of helping us do more work and do better work. New tools are always being developed, but the majority of the tools used for reputation research can be broken down into a few distinct categories. This article shares some of our go-tos.
What is sentiment analysis?
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Sentiment analysis often uses artificial intelligence to identify the emotional tone of an online mention such as social media posts. We generally think about sentiment analysis as a measurement of customer satisfaction or driver of customer loyalty, but many other business objectives can be addressed with sentiment analysis. For example, it can also be used to monitor the feelings and opinions that people have about your brand.
This includes monitoring web page and social media mentions, as well as search listings to understand how people feel about a brand. Tracking these mentions allow us to perform detailed sentiment analyses, identifying and categorizing the general attitude toward you or your brand.
- Social Mention: This site captures all the social buzz about a name or keyword and aggregates it in one place. We can find out who’s talking about you, where they’re doing it, and even which keywords they’re associating with you.
- If This, Then That: IFTT allows us to write “recipes” on the web. For example, we can set it up so that if your name comes up on a certain website’s RSS feed, then we get a notification. From Wikipedia to Facebook, we’ll never miss a mention.
Rank tracking - watching visibility
Some tools show us why certain sites rank better than others for a given search term. Comparing your search terms against your competitors shows us where we can improve. We can also use these tools to gauge how challenging a project will be and what efforts will have the highest probability of success.
Tracking sentiment location
These tools allow us to think internationally, telling us what countries might be the best to target our search engine promotion efforts, what languages we should develop for, and where content could be hosted.
- Alterian: From management to analytics, this tool tells us exactly how you stand in the global markets. We can track mentions in different countries and different languages, so we know where we need to be focusing on efforts.
- Google Alerts: Web pages and social media sites that are mainstays in the U.S. may be irrelevant in other countries. By tracking all mentions across all websites in Google’s listings, we avoid missing key information.
Every strategy we develop encompasses a variety of tools specifically chosen to help us get the job done well. They’re our partners in data so that we can be your partner in reputation management.
Reputation and sentiment analysis
Monitoring online reviews, social media mentions, and press mentions are all great ways to conduct sentiment analysis on your company. Since online sentiment can change quickly, it is best to structure your approach to sentiment analysis by investing in some strategies and tools that can help with the process.
Online review management
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Online review websites like Yelp, Tripadvisor, and Google My Business have made it easy for anyone to champion a product or service at any time, whether it is good or bad. That kind of broad, instant feedback is both a blessing and a curse because the people posting reviews are not always accurate and truthful.
When it comes to how people feel about a company or a product, online reviews are a very important - and very public - barometer for measuring sentiment. However, many times they are marred by fake reviews designed to elicit a specific response from readers.
Using sentiment analysis, you can gain a better understanding of what may be lurking in the shadows of your review pages. If the overall sentiment is positive, you can simply continue monitoring things. If it's negative, here are a few tips to find out why.
- Check in with your customer service team. Often times, there may be underlying issues within the company that you are unaware of. If you can fix problems at the source, you can reduce the number of negative reviews you're receiving.
- Delete reviews that violate TOS. When reviewers violate a site's Terms of Service (TOS) the content can often be removed. Yelp will remove reviews that meet these requirements: irrelevant, inappropriate, conflicts of interest, violations of privacy, promotional, intellectual property issues.
- Ask for reviews yourself. Use review management tools to automate asking recent customers if they enjoyed their experience with your company. If they had a good experience, direct them to make a comment on a specific review site. If the customer reports having a bad experience, address it immediately.
Social listening
Social media listening helps you tune in to the right frequency by monitoring and assessing what is said about your brand online. With the right social media listening tools and attitude, you’re able to at least partially control your brand’s conversation and gain positive attention.
By tuning into the data that is available in the form of posts, comments, replies, and mentions on social media, we can gain a better understanding of what people are saying about you and your competitors online.
Social media listening provides insights into the following:
- Brand mentions: What are people saying about your brand?
- Relevant hashtags: What is trending that is related to your business?
- Competitor mentions: Who are your main competitors in the market? What are they doing on social media?
- Industry trends: What are people saying about the industry you work in on social media?
Net promoter score
Your Net Promoter Score is based on one simple question only:
“On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this company to a friend or colleague?”
To calculate NPS, take the percentage of your customers who would highly recommend your business, company, or service and subtract the percentage of those that would rank it negatively. On the ten-point scale, the detractors (those that would rank your company a six or lower) are subtracted from the promoters (anyone ranking you a nine or ten). Leave out the passives, which are those in the middle with sevens and eights.
Tools for sentiment analysis
There are many tools available to measure sentiment. Here are some popular options:
- Brand24
- Sprout Social
- Critical Mention
- Mention
- Parallel Dots
- Hootsuite Insights (UberVu)
- IBM Watson Tone Analyzer
- Brandwatch
- RapidMiner
- Semantria
Reputation and sentiment analysis FAQs
What is sentiment analysis?
Sentiment analysis is a technique used to identify the emotional tone of an online mention of your brand. This includes social media posts, online reviews, and blog articles.
Why is sentiment analysis important?
Sentiment analysis enables you to quickly respond to feedback (both negative and positive), develop a more powerful marketing strategy, measure the impact of social media efforts, form more impactful brand partnerships, stay ahead of the competition, and fast-track growth.
How can I measure online sentiment?
Measure online sentiment by monitoring web page and social media mentions, as well as search listings to understand how people feel about a brand. Tracking these mentions allow us to perform detailed sentiment analyses, identifying and categorizing the general attitude toward you or your brand.
