So what is social media sentiment? And why is it important to understand?
Social media sentiment is the emotional assessment of the conversations surrounding you and your brand. Beyond keywords and mentions, social media sentiment is a gauge of the tone of what’s being said about you online, and whether they’re positive, negative, or neutral. This is important to understand because you need to know how your audience is feeling. And addressing those feelings fueling the conversation about you, whether positive or negative, is an opportunity to double your sales.
This article does a great job of explaining the sentiment surrounding BP in light of the recent oil spill, and provides a visual on social media sentiment…
Let’s pretend you didn’t know about the BP oil spill, but you set out to measure how many people were searching ‘BP’. You might find an overwhelming amount of searches and be impressed by the large volume of interest in BP. But, without understanding, if the conversation were positive or negative, it would be hard to know if visibility is good or bad for BP’s reputation. This is exactly why you need to understand the social media sentiment that surrounds you and your company to double your sales.
Sysomos is a great online tool to measure social media sentiment. It focuses on the following solutions that could be difference-makers for you and your business:
- Listen: To the social media landscape to monitor the noise and context of what’s being said about you.
- Measure: In real-time, track, and measure by analyzing results over time, as well as comparisons with competitors.
- Understand: Get insight into the conversations happening and make adjustments to your communications, marketing, or sales plans.
- Engage: Identify the people driving the conversations and engage with key influencers and opinion leaders to build, nurture, and manage relationships.