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Social Media Sentiment Analysis: Easy Guide for 2024 (+ Hacks)

By Leah Clark Last updated: 18 minute read Marketing Guides

To develop a successful business with a loyal and dedicated customer base, you have to know how your audience feels about your brand. Not just how many social mentions you have, but the sentiment or emotion behind those mentions. 

Social media sentiment analysis helps businesses extract vital information about the number of consumers who express positive, negative, or neutral emotions towards the brand on social media. 

71% of customers tell their friends and family about brands that have given them a positive experience. And for 86% of customers, an excellent experience turns one-time buyers into brand advocates. These statistics prove how crucial it is to understand your audience’s emotions toward your brand and to deliver a fantastic customer experience. 

With such in-depth knowledge, you can turn happy customers into evangelist brand advocates and improve your strategies and products to solve the pain points of unhappy buyers, for higher sales, and better customer retention, loyalty and satisfaction. 

So, how do you accurately conduct social media sentiment analysis?

How do you aggregate and analyze thousands of mentions across multiple social platforms? What tools do you need for this strategy, and how do you leverage such valuable analytics?

If it sounds like an impossibly huge task, don’t worry, where here to put you on the right track!

In this guide, we explore what social media sentiment analysis is, the top social media sentiment strategies, and how to perform a Facebook social sentiment analysis. 

Plus, we have some real-life examples of social media sentiment reports and how this approach has boosted real businesses!

Ready?

Here we go!

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    What is Social Media Sentiment?

    Social media sentiment analysis is a process to evaluate your buyers’ emotions behind brand mentions. Increased brand mentions don’t accurately show how your audience feels about you. While you might get hundreds of brand mentions, it doesn’t mean your buyers adore your products.

    With social media sentiment analysis, you can analyze what proportion of customers feel positive, neutral, or negative toward your brand. This valuable data allows you to identify your shortcomings and make changes accordingly. Of course, customers could be raving about your business. Social media sentiment analysis will make it possible to take customer experience to a whole new level.

    Manually checking each brand mention or interaction takes too much time and lacks in-depth analytics like social media sentiment analysis. You should still monitor social customer interactions. But integrate social media sentiment analysis for a robust interpretation of how customers feel about your brand and products.

    Now you know about social media sentiment analysis. Let’s look at how to conduct this method to grow an exceptional online reputation

    Source: GOSO.io

    Summary: What is Social Media Sentiment?

    Social media sentiment is a process to extract, prepare and evaluate data from your target audience. This process reflects on how customers feel about your brand, not only what they say.

    6 Ways to Do Social Media Sentiment Analysis 

    There are 6 ways to conduct proper social media sentiment analysis. Successful social media sentiment analysis relies on using all of these approaches. 

    1.Use Social Media Sentiment Analysis Tools

    It’s not optional to use any of the best social media sentiment analysis tools, this is standard if you want an accurate and robust analysis. 

    When you use a social media sentiment analysis tool, this is pretty much how you can view social sentiment data:

    Social media sentiment analysis stats
    Source: Brandium

    Here are the top 3 social media sentiment analysis tools for accurate data:

    MentionLyrics 

    MentionLyrics will give you everything you need to know about what your audience thinks about you, your competitors, and keywords. This tool monitors sentiment on social media and websites. You can scan and evaluate your mentions on various social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Instagram. 

    You can install MentionLyrics on your computer and register an account to use this tool. Plus, MentionLyrics is 100% free and a HootSuite app! So, Hootsuite members can assign and respond to mentions from their Hootsuite dashboard.

    Critical Mention 

    Critical Mention evaluates your mentions from online media publications like news, blogs and reviews. If your business relies heavily on publications Critical Mention can help you. 

    You can also use this tool to track your mentions on TV and radio. Let’s say you get an excellent mention during a live broadcast. Critical Mention will have real-time data on the broadcast. 

    Besides tracking your social reputation on TV and online publications, you can monitor your data on social media and podcasts too. To use Critical Mention, you can request a custom quote. 

    Brandwatch

    Brandwatch does as the name implies – it watches your brand. And what’s exceptional about this tool is that it evaluates images associated with your business. So, if you want to check if customers have mentioned your logo, Brandwatch can pull those results for you.

    This social media sentiment analysis tool has one of the world’s largest customer opinions and trends archives. With all this data at your fingertips, you can make smarter, data-driven decisions custom to your audience. Businesses can do more too. You can manage team workflows and marketing campaigns. 

    Contact Brandwatch for a custom quote to get started with this tool. 

    2.Monitor Audience Trends Over Time

    To understand how your audience feels about you, start by evaluating changing customer trends and insights. Your buyers’ needs and demands change over time. These changes affect how they feel about your business.

    If you don’t adapt to these ever-changing trends, you can’t deliver what buyers want.

    customer changes stats
    Source: ProProfs

    When businesses consider changing customer trends, they must evaluate how external factors from the physical environment around them shape customer patterns.

    For example, KPMG outlines four world events that influence customer patterns and buying trends. From this report, customers lost economic balance during Covid-19. They believed corporations didn’t understand the economic impact on them. The erosion of brand trust and buyers wanting more localization also influenced buying decisions.

    By paying attention to how the world around them influences your customers’ purchasing trends, you can adapt your business to stay aligned with their needs. 

    Your primary goal is to keep your customers happy and customer appreciation rising. The secret to this is giving them what they expect and need. 

    If you’re unsure how external factors influence your customers, ask them. Use polls and surveys to determine how buyers feel about your brand’s response to world events. 

    Evaluate the most recent 6 months to 2 years of this data. Wider data ranges are better for bigger and more established companies. Look at data regarding external customer buying, and consider these factors:

    • How often do buyers mention your brand during global events or changes?
    • How do customers feel about how your brand responds to global changes?
    • Which aspects do you feel customers believe you could improve?
    • What were your most vital strengths? 
    • How have you adapted to global changes? 
    • Do customer’s feel you understand how global changes impact them?

    3.Evaluate Customer Sentiment Over Time

    Besides how your customers’ buying trends have changed, consider how they’ve felt about your brand over time. If you’ve never performed a social media sentiment analysis, you don’t have a solid idea of how buyers have felt about your brand before vs. now. 

    Your social sentiment analyzer tool will help you gather this data. You can follow the steps we provide below for Facebook sentiment analysis to determine buyers’ emotions toward your business over time. 

    From this data, understand:

    • When have customers appreciated your brand the most, and why?
    • When have customers disliked your brand the most, and why?
    • Do customers trust your brand and recommend it?
    • Where can you make improvements based on how buyers feel about your brand?
    • Based on customer emotions, what are your strengths and weaknesses?
    • Has your customer sentiment improved or declined, and when did this change occur?

    4.Optimize Customer Experience

    Buyers care about customer experience and support.

    Short of 90% of customers would leave a brand after just 2 negative experiences. And US buyers tell an average of 15 people about bad customer support. 

    If you don’t provide excellent customer experience and support, your buyers won’t have positive feelings toward your brand. You could have thousands of buyers, but without providing them with fantastic customer support and brand experience, they won’t have much to merit you on. 

    With top-tier, speedy customer-centric support, buyers will notice how much your business appreciates them. And this makes it possible for customers to associate your brand with an excellent experience that evoked positive emotions.

    Social media sentiment analysis and customer support
    Source: SuperOffice

    Understand your audience through social sentiment analysis before deciding how to change customer care and experience. It’s vital to do this, so you can make informed choices to optimize customer support and brand experience.

    If you notice repeated phrases like “delayed responses” or “rude customer service agents”, pin down about three or four of these phrases. Ensure you deploy measures to solve these pain points and reduce negative customer experiences for improved social sentiment.

    After employing new strategies, search for these terms in your social sentiment analysis to determine if customers still experience these issues.

    You may also notice buyers are asking the same questions on social media. With this knowledge, you can reconsider how your customer agents relay information, and you can update your FAQ page.

    Doing this can add to a fantastic customer experience and support because buyers can easily access the resources and materials.

    5.Understand How You Compete Against Your Competition

    How your audience feels about you vs. your competitor matters to gain the leading edge. You can spy on your competitors with a social sentiment analyzer tool.

    Here are a few of the best competitor sentiment analysis tools:

    • FeedlyFeedly evaluates and reports data on the content of your competitor’s post. On one page, Feedly provides all your competitors’ content so you can find trending content. 
    • BuzzsumoBuzzsumo is like Feedly but more robust. You can see the most shared content by your competitors and their social engagement rates. 
    • Sprout SocialThere’s no doubt this is a fantastic tool for competitor sentiment analysis. You can access a suite of tools to measure your presence and social sentiment on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Sprout also has a premium advanced listening tool for detailed customer sentiment. 
    • Phlanx: Instagram is essential for social media campaigns. Phlanx gives you insight into how active any Instagram account’s followers are. You can find much more valuable data than an account’s followers with Phlanx. It’s easier to check for fake followers with this tool too. 

    By using these tools, you can use your competitor’s sentiment analysis to your advantage. 

    6.Track Customer Sentiments on Different Social Platforms

    Audiences differ across social media channels. But evaluating how your customers feel on all these channels gives you a broader range of aspects to consider. You’re not relying on one channel to measure your social sentiment. You can understand it from various angles, across a range of audience segments and demographics. 

    If you only use one social media platform, now you have the motivation to create a presence on others. Evaluate what your audience says about you on different platforms, and find ways to improve your business based on buyer reviews.

    Summary: 6 Ways to Do Social Media Sentiment Analysis

    1. Use social media sentiment analysis tools
    2. Monitor audience trends over time
    3. Evaluate customer sentiment over time
    4. Optimize customer experience
    5. Understand how you compete against your competition
    6. Track customer sentiments on different social platforms
    customer sentiment stats
    Source: ProProfs

    3 Social Media Sentiment Report Examples

    You know how to use social media sentiment analysis. Let’s see how some brands have used it in action. 

    1.Adidas vs. Nike

    You’d be surprised how many major brands aren’t as beloved as it seems. Take a study by IOP Science, for example. Nike and Adidas are global brands but are they loved? These researchers evaluated the social media sentiment on Twitter for both footwear giants. 

    To perform this study, analysts used social media sentiment Python-oriented analyzer, Tweepy. First, they collected all the data, like the keywords “Nike” and “Adidas”.

    Then they removed all duplicate tweets and reformed slang spellings like “loooovveee” to love. The study found that Nike has a positive reputation among less than 25% of its audience, while Addidas scored slightly over 27%.

    They evaluated the negative reviews and used word bubbles to group words for Adidas and Nike. Common terms associated with negative reviews from buyers for both brands include Gucci, utility, and gang.

    By using social media sentiment analysis for Adidas vs. Nike, the study concluded:

    • Sentiment analysis is one of the most vital components for text and data mining.
    • Because Nike had a higher neutral %, it proves this brand has better customer satisfaction, despite Adidas having more positive remarks.
    • Customers are looking for specific styles because of the keyword “utility”.
    • Customers compare Adidas and Nike to many other brands, and some prefer alternative options.
    social media sentiment for Nike vs Adidas
    Source: ResearchGate

    This study proves that social media sentiment analysis can help you leverage robust audience insights. You may assume your buyers are happier with your business than they are. 

    2.Sentiment Analysis for Airline Carriers

    Sentiment analysis for airline carriers is vital because customers trust these brands with their safety. Emerald took a closer look into how social crises on Twitter affect airlines.

    This study used two features to measure audience emotion, valence, and arousal. And the purpose of doing this research was to provide airlines with the data to approach social media crises in the future.

    From this study, the findings were:

    • Using social sentiment analysis to detect and handle social media crises is effective.
    • Social sentiment analysis makes providing prompt and informative responses to online users easier.

    Social media sentiment is a valuable strategy for businesses in all sectors. Thanks to performing social sentiment analysis, these airlines have the resources to maintain a positive brand reputation and reduce the impact of bad PR. 

    3.Beverage Industry Brand Uses Social Media Sentiment

    A client of ProductLead wanted to find the best influencers for their influencer marketing campaign. 

    But how do they choose the best influencers that align with their audience?

    Well, they integrated social media sentiment analysis into their process to find the perfect influencers. 

    Using social sentiment analysis, ProductLead evaluated data for each potential influencer, like:

    • Authentic engagement
    • Quality audience
    • Reach
    • Engagement rate
    • Demographics
    • Activities
    • Sentiment activity
    • Motivations

    To visualize and compare each influencer’s social sentiment, ProductLead created an intuitive graph. They also took a step further and created a “motivational map” for influencers. 

    This map evaluated the influencers’ presence based on three motivations- vitality, power and recognition.

    What’s essential to take away from this social media sentiment analysis is how ProductLead used this strategy in two different ways.

    1. ProductLead gathered and compared data on the influencers’ social sentiment. 
    2. ProductLead found ideal influencers by choosing emotional traits to vet them against. 

    By using social sentiment analysis, ProductLead found:

    • Personalizing brand approach and experience is easier with social sentiment analysis.
    • Visualizing data makes evaluating and comparing it effortless.
    • Social sentiment analysis isn’t only for businesses but influencer marketing too.

    Performing Facebook Sentiment Analysis

    There are only three simple steps in performing Facebook sentiment analysis: gathering data, preparing data, and analyzing data. You’ll need a social media analyzer tool for performing Facebook sentiment analysis. You can either use any of the best software we outlined above, or the tools we’ll discuss next! 

    1.Gather Audience Data

    To start your social media sentiment analysis process, gather data from Facebook. You can collect data from your Facebook pages through methods like using:

    • APIs
    • Web scraping tools
    • Public data sets

    Unfortunately, you can’t do this manually. You have to use a dedicated tool. Like the tools we mentioned above for conducting social media sentiment analysis, many of these tools rely on artificial intelligence, Python, or machine learning.

    Let’s explore some of the top tools for gathering Facebook data!

    Sequentum

    Sequentum is a web scraping tool allowing you to extract data from any web page. You can export data as a CSV file. After this, you can upload the CSV file to your social media sentiment analyzer tool, and gain the customer insights you need. 

    Sequentum
    Source: Sequentum

    Zapier

    Zapier is a popular choice for extracting data because of the wide variety of app integrations. How Zapier works is pretty simple – you extract data from one platform and export it to another. But to start this process, you should first integrate Zapier into your social media sentiment analyzer.

    After you’ve done this, you can gather and export your social media sentiment data in only one step!

    Zapier for social sentinment
    Source: Zapier

    ScrapeStorm 

    Heard of ScrapeStorm? This tool allows businesses to extract data from any web page, using a URL only. To get started with this AI-powered web scraping tool, you can register an account and use the web app or download this tool. 

    ScrapeStorm tool
    Source: ScrapeStorm

    2.Prepare Audience Data

    After using your chosen tool to gather the Facebook data you need, it’s time to prepare this data. You need to remove the “junk”. These are unnecessary words, incorrect grammar, URLs, and special characters. It’s vital to remove this unstructured data, so you can accurately analyze what matters.

    And what’s fantastic is your Facebook sentiment analyzer tool will automatically prepare audience data for you. So, you don’t need to worry about manually removing this unstructured data.

    Here’s an example of how many different keywords a social sentiment analyzer tool can find. Notice there aren’t any unwanted and incorrect words, special characters, or URLs because this tool has removed all of that.

    Steps for Facebook social sentiment
    Source: MonkeyLearn

    If your social media analyzer includes “junk” words, ensure you manually remove these phrases from your keywords. However, if you don’t do this, your social media analyzer will assume those are the terms you want to analyze.

    3.Analyze Audience Data

    After preparing your audience data, it’s time to analyze it to determine how your audience feels about your brand. Once again, you need a social media analyzer for this process.

    Businesses with established social media sentiment analysis campaigns and highly targeted keywords take a more expert approach. Rather than relying on pre-built machine learning and AI models from standard social media analyzer tools (like all the ones we’ve discussed), they create their own models to extract and evaluate highly targeted keywords and data.

    But you don’t have to worry about doing this for now. It’s best to get familiar with performing Facebook social sentiment analysis first.

    You can understand how your audience feels and, in turn, have a complete idea of what keywords to target. At this stage, you can train your own models, making preparing and analyzing audience data more accurate and custom to your business.

    For whichever method you choose, your analyzer will automatically show your results from the analysis. From this data, you can determine which percentage of your audience regards your brand positively, negatively, or neutrally.

    After analyzing your Facebook data, put what you’ve learned into practice. Consider aspects like:

    • What are the most common pain points between my brand and audience?
    • How can you modify your brand approach and products based on customer feedback?
    • How can you generate more positive customer feedback?
    • Do customers trust your business and know what to expect from you?

    After analyzing your Facebook data, create strategies based on the above factors. Don’t forget to evaluate these strategies to determine what works for your business and buyers. 

    Summary: Performing Facebook Sentiment Analysis

    To perform Facebook sentiment analysis, use these steps:

    1. Gather audience data
    2. Prepare audience data
    3. Analyze audience data

    Conclusion

    Social media sentiment analysis helps businesses understand how customers feel about their brand. With this data, you can personalize your marketing approaches and modify your product to improve customer satisfaction. You don’t know how your customers feel about your brand unless you analyze buyer sentiment. Even brand’s like Nike and Adidas don’t have all positive impressions.

    To conduct social media sentiment analysis, start by choosing the best social sentiment analyzer tools. Be strategic and monitor audience trends while figuring out how to improve customer service. Use social media sentiment analysis on various social channels for a wider range of quality data.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is social media sentiment?

    Social media sentiment is the way your customers feel about your brand. Rather than focusing on what customers are saying about your brand, you can evaluate whether customers feel positive, negative or neutral toward you. Read the full article to find out how to use social media sentiment analysis, examples and the best use cases.

    How to conduct social media sentiment analysis?

    To conduct social media sentiment analysis, start by finding the best sentiment analyzer tools and monitor your audience trends over time. Brand's must evaluate customer sentiment changes over time and improve customer support. Read this article for more details on use social media sentiment analysis and the top examples.

    How do you perform Facebook sentiment analysis?

    To do Facebook sentiment analysis, start by gathering audience data with tools like Zapier or ScrapeStorm. Then you need to prepare this data to make it easier to use for social media sentiment analysis. Read the article to find out the last step to use social media sentiment analysis for Facebook, and other top methods to use this data evaluation process.

    References

    Khoros: Must-know customer service statistics of 2022 (so far)

    Oberlo: 10 Social Media Statistics You Need to Know in 2021

    Emplifi: Report: 11 key things consumers expect from their brand experiences today

    Netomi: American Express #WellActually – A Homage To The Internet’s Most Famous Customer Service Research Study

    IOP Science: Twitter Sentiment Analysis: A Case Study for Apparel Brands

    Emerald: Applying sentiment analytics to examine social media crises: a case study of United Airline’s crisis in 2017