Sentiment analysis has never really gone away, but it’s certainly seen a strong resurgence as social media has grown to become a core channel for so many brands and consumers the world over. Before social media, where exactly did we garner data for sentiment analysis?
Sentiment Analysis and the birth of the internet
Believe it or not, SA has been around since the 1950s, when it was primarily used on paper documents. Over the decades, it’s closely followed the channels and communities in which we express ourselves. By the birth of the internet, the use of SA adjusted to include the early channels of the social web, such as forum posts and online articles.
Today, it’s difficult to comprehend just how many sources and data points can be included in SA. But this works in our favour for several reasons.
- The more data we can gather, the more accurate we can be in our reporting
- The more channels and sources we can monitor, the more broad and diverse our data
- The more choice we have, the more we can customise our requirements
Putting the customer front and centre
Sentiment analysis is one of the most valuable exercises in making your brand or organisation more customer centric. It’s a direct line to the collective voice of the consumer, whether they’re bought from you, plan to buy from you, and even if they aren’t planning to buy from you.
We must remember that positive, neutral and negative data are all good data. Brand strategy isn’t just built on why people want your product or service, but also why they might not want it too. And it’s important to use that data to shape your marketing and ultimately, your own voice.
Is all this data too much data?
It’s a very valid question. Can we have too much of a good thing? In our view, the current SA landscape is a wild, wild west. With new platforms springing up left, right and centre (notable new additional in the last several years include sites such as Glassdoor and Polywork) and entirely new ways of sharing content can completely disrupt a channel (we’re looking at you, TikTok), it’s tough to keep up, and it’s even tougher to sift through so much data.
That’s where Predyktable helps. Traditional SA methods can be time-consuming, confusing and sometimes inaccurate due to undetected anomalies. Our model accounts for all of this and takes the hard work and frustration out of SA. In fact, we go a step further, taking SA way beyond social media, a point at which many traditional SA businesses stop and send you their invoice.
A method to the madness
The concept of monitoring such a broad range of sources, including blogs, reviews, call centre logs and even search engine terms, might be a little daunting. All of that unstructured data from so many different kinds of people using so many different channels.
This is where our data visualisation tool comes in, breaking down broad and complex models into easy understandable data, which most importantly, is actionable.
This quite literally gives you a clearer picture of pain points, frustrations, experiences and more. And with the increasing power of not only our tools, but the social channels that your customers are using, we’re able to segment by demographics such as region, gender, age and even lifestyle.
Imagine the future
Our sentiment analysis is different, and we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve built and will continue to build upon and improve. Imagine being able to understand your brand’s reputation across such a broad range of sources. Imagine being able to spot potential areas of growth and investment, and to be able to act upon them now rather than later.
And perhaps most importantly in this day and age, imagine being able to spot negative sentiment and being able to deal with it there and then, long before it spirals out of control and causes damage to your brand. (To be clear, we’re not talking about something malicious like covering up bad reviews, we’re talking about an interactive and agile approach to your brand strategy, and making positive improvements to your product or service as a result of negative feedback.)
It’s also important to consider how SA can open you up to more modern ways of marketing. For instance, imagine being able to identify key social media influences to champion your brand. In the age of influencer marketing, this isn’t a channel to be ignored. Our platform is so powerful that it will even ensure the influencers that you’re seeing within your data have been fully verified for reach and engagement, ensuring you work with the right people.
A voice of reason
In a noisy, crowded world of challenging reviews, increasing customer expectations and online channels where opinions fly overhead like rockets, it’s never been more important to harness the power of sentiment analysis. What’s difficult is finding the right people and platform to cut through the noise and make sense of it all.
Thankfully, that’s us. If you’re looking for a technology service that has its ear to the ground and will go the distance with you, let’s talk soon.