Social Listening Social Media Strategy Social media sentiment analysis: Benefits and guide for 2024

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Marketers are rightfully obsessed with metrics. With markets increasingly competitive and globalized, staying on top of data is essential for understanding overall business performance and making informed decisions.

However, it's important to remember that your customers are more than just data points. How they feel about you and your brand is an important factor in purchasing decisions, and analyzing this chatter can give you critical business insights. Yet, it's easy to overlook audience emotions when you're deep-diving into metrics because they're difficult to quantify.

AI-powered sentiment analysis can help with this.

Social media sentiment analysis is a powerful method savvy brands use to translate social media behavior into actionable business data. This, in turn, helps them make informed decisions to evolve continuously and stay competitive.

In this guide, we'll break down the importance of social media sentiment analysis, how to conduct it and what it can do to transform your business.

What is social media sentiment analysis?

Social media sentiment analysis is the process of gathering and understanding customers' perceptions of a product, service or brand. The analysis uses advanced algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) to evaluate the emotions behind social media interactions.

Research shows 70% of customer purchase decisions are based on emotional factors and only 30% on rational factors. By analyzing likes, comments, shares and mentions, brands can gain valuable insights into the emotional drivers that influence purchase decisions as well as brand loyalty. This helps ‌tailor marketing strategies, improve customer service and make better business decisions.

In other words, social media sentiment analysis gives you a background for your customers' conversations and shows if your brand is getting good or bad attention. And if so, why?

Think of sentiment analysis as a subset of social listening. While businesses should obviously monitor their mentions, sentiment analysis digs into the positive, negative and neutral emotions surrounding those mentions.

In the video below, hear examples of how you can use sentiment analysis to fuel business decisions and how to perform it.

Benefits of social media sentiment analysis

Does your product give customers a sort of warm, fuzzy feeling? Are you meeting their expectations with your quality of service? Social sentiment analytics is an important tool for modern marketers. By understanding how your audience feels and reacts to your brand, you can improve customer engagement and direct interaction.

Here are some of the benefits of social media sentiment analysis:

Understand your audience

Your mentions, whether positive or negative, don't happen in a vacuum. Rather than focusing on a one-off compliment or complaint, brands should look at the bigger picture of their audience's feelings. For example, a flurry of praise is definitely a plus and should be picked up in social sentiment analytics.

Monitoring these sentiments allows you to understand the overall perception of your brand. Are your customers happy to engage with you on social? Are you providing a great service if things don't go quite right? Sentiment analysis can answer these questions and then some.

On the other hand, a flood of complaints can alert you to problems with your product or service that you must address promptly. By understanding your audience's feelings and reactions, you can make informed decisions that align with their expectations.

Gather actionable data

The beauty of social media for sentiment analysis is that there's so much data to gather. With more consumers tagging and talking about brands on social platforms, you can tap into real data showing how your brand performs over time and across core platforms where you have a social media presence. This actionable data can be used to identify trends, measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and understand customer preferences.

For instance, analyzing sentiment data from platforms like X (formerly Twitter) can reveal patterns in customer feedback, allowing you to make data-driven decisions. This continuous feedback loop helps you stay agile and responsive to your audience's needs.

Meet customers where they are

Social media sentiment analysis helps you identify when and how to engage with your customers directly. Publicly responding to negative sentiment and solving a customer's problem can do wonders for your brand's reputation. By actively engaging with your audience, you show that you care about their experiences and are committed to improving your service.

Engagement doesn't just stop at addressing complaints. Positive interactions, like acknowledging compliments or thanking customers for their support, can also strengthen your brand's relationship with its audience. Social sentiment analytics help you pinpoint the right moments to engage, ensuring your interactions are timely and relevant.

Get meaningful insights about your brand messaging

As you look at how users interact with your brand and the types of content they prefer, you can retool your brand messaging for greater impact. Social sentiment analysis provides insights into what resonates with your audience, allowing you to craft messages that are more likely to engage and convert.

By analyzing the sentiment behind user interactions, you can fine-tune your messaging strategy to better align with your audience's values and preferences. This can lead to more effective marketing campaigns and a stronger brand presence.

How to conduct a social sentiment analysis in 4 steps

Now that we've covered sentiment analysis and its benefits, let's dive into the practical side of things. This section will guide you through four steps to conduct a thorough social sentiment analysis, helping you transform raw data into actionable strategies.

Step 1. Monitor your social media mentions

As noted, consumers are sounding off about brands like never before. This rings true both on social media and off.

Track conversations and social mentions about your brand across social media, such as X, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, even if your brand isn't directly tagged. Doing so is a great way to capitalize on praise and address criticism quickly.

Tools like Sprout can help facilitate this process by allowing you to monitor mentions, keywords and hashtags related to your brand and industry. This helps you stay informed about trending topics, competitors and complementary products.

That said, you also need to monitor online review forums and third-party sites. This includes Google Reviews, Reddit and sites such as Yelp. Tracking mentions on these platforms can provide additional context to the social media feedback you receive. For example, a trend on X may be mirrored in discussions on Reddit, offering a more comprehensive understanding of public sentiment.

If you're in ecommerce, your on-site reviews are particularly valuable. Don't neglect the insights from loyal customers who mean the most to your business.

Here's an example of positive sentiment from one of Girlfriend Collective's product pages.

Monitoring all of these platforms manually can be time-consuming. That's why we recommend a sentiment analysis tool such as Sprout Social. For example, with Sprout, you can pick your priority networks to monitor mentions all from Sprout's Smart Inbox or Reviews feed. With Sprout, you can see the sentiment of messages and reviews to analyze trends faster. And for certain networks, you can use Listening to also track keywords related to your brand even when customers don't tag you directly.

Step 2. Choose your terms for sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is most effective when you're able to separate your positive mentions from your negative mentions. This involves identifying sentiment-indicative terms within these mentions and categorizing them as positive, negative‌ or neutral.

That means searching for relevant terms that highlight customer sentiment. Some sentiment terms are straightforward and others might be specific to your industry. For instance, in the tech industry, words like "bug" or "crash" would be negative indicators, while "update" and "feature" could be positive or neutral depending on the context.

Either way, divide your sentiment terms into positive and negative sections. Below is an example of what some of those terms might look like for a sentiment search:

Positive:

• Best
• Love
• High-five
• Amazing
• Perfect
• Thanks

Negative:

• Worst
• Hate
• Ugh
• Disappointed
• Bad
• Avoid

Using analytical tools, you can assess key metrics and themes pertinent to your brand. Tools like Sprout can help you automate this process, providing you with sentiment scores and detailed reports that highlight the overall mood of your audience.

Step 3. Use the best social media sentiment analysis tool

Given the sheer volume of conversations happening on social media, investing in a social media tool with sentiment analysis capability becomes necessary. These tools simplify the otherwise time-consuming tasks related to sentiment analytics and help with targeted insights.

Real-time monitoring and organization

For example, Sprout monitors and organizes your social mentions in real-time with the help of social listening. Using its Query Builder, you can build effective social listening queries by specifying terms related to sentiment analysis you want to track. This ensures you capture the most relevant conversations about your brand.

Easy query management

The Active Listeners tab provides one-click access to queries, including complaints, compliments and specific customer experiences. This feature helps you quickly identify and respond to various types of feedback, which gives you context on how to engage with your audience.

Sentiment insights

Sprout's sentiment analysis widget in Listening Insights monitors your positive, negative and neutral mentions over a specified period. This tool helps you understand how these mentions evolve over time, enabling you to determine if your brand perception is improving. By analyzing these insights, you can make informed decisions to refine your strategies and improve your overall brand health.

Visual data representation

Sprout provides visual representations of sentiment trends, making it easier to spot shifts in public perception. The Sentiment Summary and Sentiment Trends metrics show you sentiment distribution of how people feel about your brand on social media. This gives you a clear picture of how well your brand is doing on each platform.

These tools allow you to conduct thorough social sentiment analytics, which can help you refine your brand messaging, engage more effectively with customers, monitor your brand's long-term health and identify emerging issues with your products or services.

Step 4. Apply social sentiment analytics to your strategy

Insights from social sentiment analytics can help you improve your brand recall and resonate better with your target audience. They also help you manage brand reputation and spot shifts in market sentiment so you can address them proactively.

With social media sentiment analysis insights, you can also:

Refine brand messaging

Use the data from social sentiment analytics to understand the emotional tone and preferences of your audience. Teams can craft messages that resonate more deeply, improving engagement and loyalty. Also, tailor your content to address the sentiments and topics that matter most to your audience, making your messaging more relevant and impactful.

Engage effectively with customers

Social sentiment analytics help pinpoint when and how to engage with your customers effectively. Foster stronger customer connections and build long-lasting relationships by engaging with them and solving issues promptly. Positive engagements, such as acknowledging compliments or sharing user-generated content, can further build brand recall and loyalty.

Monitor your brand's long-term health

Regularly analyzing sentiment data helps you track your brand's health over time. Identify trends in positive, negative‌ and neutral mentions to understand how your brand perception evolves. This ongoing monitoring helps you maintain a positive brand image and quickly address any issues. It also ensures your brand stays in good standing with your audience.

Identify emerging issues

Sentiment analysis reveals potential problems with your products or services before they become widespread. By keeping an eye on negative feedback trends, you can take proactive steps to handle issues, improve customer satisfaction and prevent damage to your brand's reputation. Early identification and resolution of emerging issues show your brand's commitment to quality and customer care.

Integrating these insights into your social strategy helps your brand remain responsive, customer-focused‌ and aligned with market expectations. This enriches your current operations and sets a solid foundation for long-term success.

Top 3 sentiment analysis tools for analyzing social media

Understanding customer sentiment on social media is an effective way to refine your brand strategy and improve customer engagement. By using the right sentiment analysis tools, you can gain valuable insights into how your audience feels about your brand and make informed decisions to enhance your online presence.

Here are three of the top tools to help you with social sentiment analytics:

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that gives you in-depth social media sentiment analysis insights. Get a nuanced understanding of your target audience, and effectively capitalize on feedback to improve customer engagement and brand reputation quickly and accurately.

You can monitor and organize your social mentions or hashtags in real-time and track the overall sentiment towards your brand across various social media platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. You can also monitor review sites such as Google Reviews, Yelp and TripAdvisor, and online communities and forums like Reddit and Quora.

For e-commerce businesses, Sprout also tracks mentions on platforms like Amazon and Etsy. This extensive coverage ensures that you capture a holistic view of public sentiment about your brand.

Brand use Sprout to:

• Improve customer service. Quickly address negative mentions and highlight positive feedback to show customers their opinions matter.
• Product improvement. Gather insights from customer feedback to understand what features or products need enhancement.
• Competitive analysis. Compare your brand's sentiment with competitors to identify strengths and areas for improvement.
• Content strategy. Use sentiment data to tailor your messaging and content to better align with customer preferences.
• Monitor brand health. Track sentiment trends over time to ensure a positive brand image and quickly address potential issues.

1. MonkeyLearn

MonkeyLearn is a text analysis platform that uses machine learning to perform sentiment analysis. It can analyze various forms of text data, such as tweets, emails and documents, for insights. The platform integrates with popular tools like Zendesk and Google Sheets, facilitating workflow integration. MonkeyLearn can analyze large volumes of text data to extract patterns and sentiments. Its intuitive interface makes it easy for users of all technical levels to build and deploy sentiment analysis models effectively.

1. Lexalytics

Lexalytics provides cloud-based and on-premise deployment options for sentiment analysis, making it flexible for different business environments. Lexalytics' tools, like Semantria API and Salience, enable detailed text analysis and data visualization.

The Semantria API makes it easy to integrate sentiment analysis into existing systems and offers real-time insights. The Salience engine handles comprehensive text analysis, like sentiment to theme extraction and entity recognition. You can choose the deployment option that best fits your brand's needs and data security requirements.

5 Tips to improve your brand sentiment on social media

The insights you gain from sentiment analysis can translate directly into positive changes for your business. By understanding and acting on these insights, you can enhance customer satisfaction, boost engagement and improve your overall brand reputation.

Here's how to use sentiment analysis to drive real business outcomes.

1. Step up your customer service

Sentiment analysis helps brands keep a closer eye on the emotions behind their social messages and mentions, ensuring they are more attentive to comments and concerns as they pop up. Addressing these conversations-both negative and positive-signals that you're actively listening to your customers.

For example, Sprout users with the Advanced Plan can use AI-powered sentiment analysis in the Smart Inbox and Reviews Feed. This feature automatically categorizes posts as positive, neutral, negative or unclassified, simplifying sorting messages and setting automated rules based on sentiment.

2. Spot opportunities to improve your products

Monitoring compliments and complaints through sentiment analysis helps brands understand what their customers want to see in the future. Today's consumers are vocal about their preferences, and brands that pay attention to this feedback can continuously improve their offerings. For example, product reviews on e-commerce sites or social media highlight areas for product enhancements or innovation.

3. Conduct competitive analysis

Understanding how people feel about your business is crucial, but knowing their sentiment toward your competitors can provide a competitive edge. Social media sentiment analysis can help you understand why customers might prefer a competitor's product over yours, allowing you to identify gaps and opportunities in your offerings. This competitive insight is vital for staying ahead in the market.

4. Ensure your messaging is on-point

Finding the right tone on social media can be challenging, but sentiment analysis can guide you. Brands like MoonPie have found success by engaging in humorous and snarky interactions, increasing their positive mentions and building buzz. By analyzing how users interact with your content, you can refine your brand messaging to better resonate with your audience.

5. Monitor your long-term brand health

Tracking sentiment over time ensures that your brand maintains a positive relationship with its audience and industry. This is especially important during significant business changes, such as product launches, price adjustments or rebranding efforts. By keeping an eye on social media sentiment, you can gain peace of mind and potentially spot a crisis before it escalates.

Implementing regular sentiment analysis into your strategy improves your understanding of customer perceptions and enables you to make informed, data-driven decisions that drive business success​.

How do your followers and customers feel about you?

Your customers' feelings and emotions are too important to ignore. With sentiment analysis, there's no second-guessing what people think about your brand.

Sprout's sentiment analysis tools provide real-time insights into customer opinions, helping you respond promptly and appropriately. This proactive approach can improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and brand reputation.

To understand how social media listening can transform your strategy, check out Sprout's social media listening map. It will show you how to use social listening for org-wide benefits, staying ahead of the competition and making meaningful audience connections.

Phoebe Lown

Phoebe Lown is a former social media manager turned content writer specializing in SaaS technology. When she's not writing, she can be found exploring the cobbled streets of Amsterdam and photographing random cats. Check out her website: http://www.phoebelown.com

Read all articlesby Phoebe Lown