May 1, 2019 By:

SENTIMENTS!

A very firm and definitive word. And probably the most important word, when it comes to human emotions.

But the horizons of this word is no longer limited to just personal lives. Its aspects have broadened and penetrated into the corporate life as well.

Today, companies are analyzing the sentiments of their audience and based on that they are drafting their marketing strategies.

Surprised! Are you?

Don’t be. Yes, this is actually happening. Sentiment analysis has become an important part of how marketing strategies are being planned.

How Sentiment Analysis Will Change Digital Marketing?

Today, I am going to share some very interesting facts on how sentiment analysis will change digital marketing.

But before we dive into that, let us just get our math clear about,

What is sentiment analysis?

In a nutshell, sentiment analysis is analyzing the reactions of the users towards any product or service.

I know, it is a little confusing. It was for me too in the beginning. Let me just elaborate a little more on this.

For example, if we talk about a smartphone. It has many features. Let us take handwritten notes for instance. Many of you may like the feature and many may not. And analyzing this reaction of liking or not liking the feature is basically sentiment analysis.

I think things are getting a little clear now.

Imagine, how the tables could be turned if you knew, exactly how your customer feels about your product.

Yes, we are getting to the point.

Let us now explore sentiment analysis from a business point of view.

If we talk about the digital world, social media platforms are the biggest medium of interaction with your audience.

It is an inevitable part of digital marketing. And not just a part, but it is becoming an answer to many problems when it comes to branding and promotion.

To mark your footprints in the digital world, you need to know what people are saying about your brand.

And the best way to know that is through social media.

So, let us understand…

How does sentiment analysis work in social media?

After reading a reply or seeing an emoticon, how many of you have wondered, what it exactly meant?

Suppose you get a reply, “Thank You”, with a smile emoticon, for practically not doing much. You think was this a sarcastic thank you or a genuine one? What exactly is the smiley saying here?

Have I done something wrong?

Ohh!! Too many questions. Whenever something like this happens to me, I wish for some magic tool where I could just feed in this reply and get the answer of what exactly does this mean.

But unfortunately, science has not advanced to this level yet. However, it is not very far also.

Though we do not have anything that could give us a magical answer. But we do have some analytical tools, who can actually understand human emotions and categorize them as positive, negative or neutral.

sentiments

In the social media world, sentiment analysis is more broadly known as social listening.

Basically, a set of tools identifies the emotions of an audience, in regard to a particular post, text, video, etc.

It analyzes, how many reactions are positive, negative, neutral, etc. These algorithms, really dive in deep to study and record the attitude of a user towards the service or product.

Let us come to the point now.

How sentiment analysis will change digital marketing?

The very basic logic behind this is, if you know about the reactions of your customers, you will be smart enough to make future strategies accordingly.

How sentiment analysis will change digital marketing?

1. Sentiment analysis and SEO practices:

What according to you is the most important part of digital marketing?

I believe, SEO is one that reaps the fruits. If your SEO is strong, traffic will automatically flood in and the rest just follows. So brushing up your SEO skills now has become all the more important.

Sentiment analysis has already paved its way to the search engines. They are affecting the way websites rank.

Bing introduced the sentiment analysis algorithm in its system in 2018. And Google has hinted more than once that it is going to do the same in the very near future.

One of the major change this will bring into SEO is the way backlinks are interpreted by the search engines.

According to the research, it is said that unsatisfied clients/customers are more likely to give reviews or comments than satisfied ones. This means even if you have authentic backlinks, but the reviews are not positive, you don’t stand a chance to rank.

Negative backlinks will only decrease your SEO score.

So, if you are looking forward to enhancing your SEO skills, now is the time.

2. Sentiment analysis and content creation:

Well, SEO may be the most important part of digital marketing. But content is its backbone.

No matter how good your SEO skills are if your content does not support it, it is a waste. Any SEO practice can only be successful if the content is pitch perfect.

The better the content, the more rewards it will reap.

If you want sentiment analysis to work in your favor, Content is your best buddy.

The secret to achieving this is, your content should be rich with:

  • Authenticity
  • Reliability
  • Emotional connection
  • Best user experience
  • Information that the user is looking for

If your content is offering all this, there is no reason for the user to be unhappy. This in return will increase the positive reviews and hence an entry in the good books of sentiment analysis algorithms.

And, if your content enters there, by default the SEO practices will too.

3.Sentiment analysis and customer service:

I mentioned about SEO and Content marketing, but WAIT….

What good will SEO and content marketing strategies do if your customer service is not good?

Exactly, you are getting my point right. Customer service is also equally important.

Well, it seems like everything is just as important as the other in digital marketing.

Let me tell you a short story and that will perfectly explain what I mean by, sentiment analysis plays an important role in customer service as well.

 

Some time back, a travel company launched a vacation campaign. Fair enough, nothing wrong in this. The only disturbing factor in its commercial ad was the screeching violin sound in the background. Instant public reaction was seen all over the Internet. Everyone was talking about it. And the commercial spread across like the fire forest.

WOW, AMAZING! Isn’t it?

Well, it was not so amazing as you think. The commercial was the talk of the town, but not in a positive way. Everyone was talking about it but about how much they hated the screeching sound.

Soon enough another commercial was launched, with the same actor as in the first one, only that now it was smashing the violin away.

The crux of the story is, with the help of sentiment analysis, the travel company quickly registered the reactions it’s first commercial bought and immediately changed that. Though the first commercial got a solid metric, they were negative.

With the help of sentiment analysis, you can not only know how your customers feel about your brand but also give them the services they are looking for.

Now you know how sentiment analysis plays an important role in customer service as well.

4.Sentiment analysis and market research:

Sentiment analysis is not as new as it seems to be. During the presidential election in 2012, The Obama Administration had used this tool to predict public opinions.

Don’t be too surprised.

Ever since 2012, this tool has undergone several changes and updations. Now, it stands at the position, where it can even judge from an emoticon if the reaction is positive or negative.

If you know, how to use the analytics of this tool, you can be the ruler. The best thing about this is, it does not work only for you.

Ok, now don’t get me wrong.

You can use this tool to analyze what people are saying about your competitors as well. Think of about the gold mine you can just hit upon.

This deep market research of what people are thinking about you and your competitor can give you insights like never before. This will not just help you to reevaluate your marketing strategies but also give you enough wavelength to pull down your competitors.

I think it might have been clear by now, how sentiment analysis is going to change the way digital marketing will function.

Now it is time to leap to the next in the queue, i.e.

What are the types of sentiment analysis?

By far you know, what sentiment analysis is and its relevance in digital marketing. Now you need to know how it works for your business. And for that, you will have to take a look at the types of sentiment analysis.

What are the types of sentiment analysis?

The different types are:

1. Fine-grained – this type of analysis is mostly binary. It can specifically focus only on positive or negative reaction. However, this may have subdivision like negative, very negative, neutral, positive and very positive. Like it happens in 5-star ratings.

 

2. Emotion-detection – this analysis is strongly based on emotions and mainly detected in texts. A combination of the vocabulary of a person, language, branch of knowledge and machine algorithms, determine and record the reactions.

 

3. Aspect-based – this type of sentiment analysis is deeper and is usually for some specific element. It can be specifically for the feature of any product or service. Aspect-based sentiment analytics comes handy when looking for product specific reactions.

 

4. Intent-analysis – it is all about determining what is the real intention expressed in the message. It is mostly useful to streamline the customer support system workflow.

Now that we know about:

  • What is sentiment analysis?
  • How does sentiment analysis work in social media?
  • How it will change digital marketing?
  • What are its types?

I guess it is a time that we shift our attention to…

The different tools of sentiment analysis

Life could practically become hell if there were no tools for digital marketers. But fortunately, there are several tools available for each and every task of digital marketing.

So, when I say several tools for every task, I also mean for sentiment analysis. Considering the mammoth of data out there on the Internet, it is practically impossible to analyze, who is saying what and what they mean.

Thanks to the following sentiment analysis tools that have made data collection easier, which ultimately results in precise conclusions and better decisions.

Some of the common tool used for sentiment analysis are:

  1. Brand24
  2. Talkwalker’s Quick Search
  3. OpenText
  4. Hi-Tech BPO
  5. Social Mention
  6. Sentiment Analyzer
  7. Social Searcher
  8. ParallelDots
  9. Tweet Sentiment Visualization
  10. Hootsuite Insights

The speed at which the technological world is turning sides, it will not be a surprise if the next day you wake up and have something new to explore. Being in the digital marketing world is not difficult. But holding on to the position there and keeping yourself updated with the trends surely is.

You need to stay a step ahead if you want to sustain in the digital world. And the best way to do this is, keep updating and experimenting with every new trend and change in the market.

Sentiment analysis is the right weapon for you to win the battle, but only if you know how, when and where to use it.

Feel free to share your knowledge and feedbacks in the comment box below.

 

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