“If you don’t appreciate your customers, someone else will.”
– Jason Langella
There are quite a few tools on the market that you can try; thousands, in fact. When you’re looking through them it is easy to feel overwhelmed. You’re left wondering which one should use, and which tool or tools are actually going to help your business thrive. Sentiment analysis is one of the features offered by many tools that has been gaining more recognition recently. Rightly so, as well, since it can be exceptionally beneficial to your business and its continued growth.
Why Sentiment Analysis?
“Capitalize on charm by continually captivating your customer.”
– Ryan Lilly
But why should you be bothering with sentiment analysis, which you may also hear it referred to as opinion mining or emotion AI? It essentially means that text is scanned to determine if the tone is positive, negative, or neutral. This means that you are able to discover the way people feel about you and your company across the web. This technology is being used along with machine learning functionality.
It’s a fantastic feature to use when running a social media audit, learning how to better engage, interact with your audience, and it can also show you which marketing campaigns might need to be altered for a better reaction. It is one of the best ways to stay in touch with your target audience. It also means that you can stop potential social media crises from happening. This is because you can nip any and all drama in the bud by addressing customer issues and concerns.
While sentiment analysis is an exceptional feature to have and is accurate most of the time, it isn’t always right.
This means that positive reviews could come up as negative, and vice versa. So, you have to take the results with a pinch of salt when you are scrolling through them. Sometimes, it is a good idea to check a few of them manually as well so you can gauge the accuracy for yourself.
Here is a brief review of 5 popular tools, in no particular order of preference:
#1 Hootsuite
This tool provides you with a rich and smooth experience that many others wish they could offer. Using all the features it offers, you will be well on the way to making smarter and better-educated business decisions. Each of the insights is carefully laid out for you on the dashboard. It’s a legend when it comes to real-time information, and does so in over 50 languages.
The sentiment analysis tool is fantastic and detailed. It gathers insights into what your customers think of you, and helps you to understand the areas you could improve on. You can even filter the mentions according to gender, location, and language, as well as the tone.
#2 Brand24
This is a social listening tool, which means that it analyses social media platforms to monitor and improve things like engagement, mentions, and hashtag tracking. All the information and various features can be found quite easily on the dashboard in separate tabs, making it quick to navigate. When you decide to look at your mentions, you can also take advantage of the sentiment filter.
This allows you to view your mentions according to the sentiment behind them. So, you can organise them into positive, negative, and neutral. It’s a great way to organise things, and it also gives you a clear idea of what people are saying on both ends of the spectrum. You can get in-depth and basic analysis for everything from Brand24, and its flexibility is part of what makes it so great and useful.
#3 Talkwalker
This company has always believed in taking good care of your brand; it’s what they are passionate about. They are a social media search engine. This tool leaves a lot of power in your fingertips when it comes to tracking down the competition and seeing what they are doing that you are not. You can also use it to find content ideas, influencers, and discovering the latest trends that you can join in.
Their sentiment analysis tool works a little differently. But the main thing I love about it is the fact that it directly compares your sentiment with that of your competition. Who do customers love more; you or your competitor? There is no better way to learn more about your audience and the way you could be improving things.
#4 Social Mention
This is another social media search engine, and it is completely free to use. It works by aggregating user-generated content across the web for your viewing pleasure. Honestly, it is one of the best tools to use if you are just starting out in the social media monitoring game. It works hard to provide some pretty valuable information about your company.
The tool itself is able to monitor over 100 social media properties. You don’t even need to set up an account to get started. It’s a handy feature. But the downside is that you cannot save previous searches to look at again later. The results will show you the sentiment behind your chosen keywords. The tone of the mentions is marked accordingly on the web page itself.
#5 Social Searcher
This is like the older brother to Social Mention. It has loads of extra tools and features that make it easy to use as well as exceptionally versatile. This includes Social Buzz, Google Social Search, and Media Monitoring among others. You can use it with or without an account, and there is also the option to remain on a free plan or use a paid one – which unlocks loads of useful extras.
There are sentiment analysis filters to help you get a clear idea of the results, and the pages are marked with green, grey, or red dots according to the overall sentiment behind them. The filters also mean that you can choose to view specific sets of mentions at a time, allowing for deeper analysis and understanding of your target audience.
You may also want to read: What You Need to Know About Social Media Sentiment Analysis
To Conclude
These are the best tools out there for determining the sentiment behind the text people are writing about you and your company. I should know, I’ve used them all, and continue to use them. They work well, and many of them have features outside of what I’ve mentioned above, to really help your company grow. If you are going to choose a tool, it’s best to try out of those that are listed above first, as each is highly reputable and credible. Not to mention they work quickly and effectively to provide you with the data you need.
Let me know what you thought of my choices in the comments – especially if there are tools that you think should have been included in my list.
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- A Brief Guide to Sentiment Analysis - May 21, 2019