Sentiment analysis is one of the cornerstones of social media analysis - and it is key
to helping you understand your customers better.
But what should you analyze to find out what your customers like?
I’m Chia and I’ll be explaining this inside this video.
Hey, it’s Chia from Brand24, and today I want to talk about sentiment analysis and
how it can help you find out, just, what your customers like.
So, just in case anybody’s wondering ‘what is sentiment analysis’ in the first place,
let’s start by answering that question.
Sentiment analysis is about taking digital text (like customer reviews, threads in discussion
forums, on blogs or social media - things like that) and then classifying it as positive,
neutral or negative.
It’s a type of emotional artificial intelligence - or Emotion AI - so you can also analyze
other feelings like fear, joy or love.
But in terms of basic business and e-commerce needs (finding out what your customers like)
- it’s enough to focus on positive, neutral and negative sentiment.
So what does sentiment analysis show us, exactly?
Well, I mean, a lot - if you look at the context of text with positive sentiment, you can see what
customers like about your product, and oftentimes, they’ll also tell you how you can make it
better for them - like with more sizes & colors to choose from.
And feedback with negative sentiment is just as valuable!
So, let’s say a customer has a bad experience with your service and leaves a really negative
review for your company, like Mary here on Yelp, where everybody can see.
Now, ideally, you’re already tracking your customer reviews, so you’d find out about
this as soon as it was posted, and deal with it BEFORE it got over 1500 votes - seriously
hurting your brand reputation.
You can’t always make a bad review online go away, but the key is to find it before
it gets out of hand, and then you can decide how to take action.
Like with an apology, maybe a voucher, and in some cases, a really strong defense.
Basically, sentiment analysis is exactly what you need to help you find out what your customers
like and dislike.
But, unless you’re doing general market research, then first you need to have something specific
to analyze.
And if you want to find out what your customers like - or dislike - then that something is
going to be customer feedback.
So I’m going to show you 4 simple ways to get customer feedback, plus a couple free
tools that you can use for this.
One way to get customer feedback is by creating surveys or questionnaires.
You’ve probably taken a survey yourself at some point (I know I have), and there’s
a good chance that it was powered by SurveyMonkey.
This is a great tool for creating customer surveys, and it’s not the only one - there’s
also SurveyAnyplace - which is a similar tool for building surveys, and they also have some
interactive features that you can incorporate to make your survey experience a little more
interesting.
You can share surveys on your company’s social media channels or embed one in a blog
post.
Share it wherever you can to get as many responses as possible.
And e-mail is another way to get customer feedback.
This is a pretty good one since with the right copy, you can make it feel personal, even
if it’s an automated message - and it’s not very intrusive.
So, as long as you’re not pestering your clients with an e-mail every single day, and
assuming you have a good open rate - you’re not landing in too many Spam folders - then
your customers will see your message.
And if they want to, they’ll respond at their own convenience.
Plus, you can also stick a survey inside an e-mail.
So, a 3rd way to get customer feedback is, of course, face-to-face.
You may or may not have many chances for this, but if you attend a conference, or host a
meet-and-greet on a smaller scale, then you can talk to your customers in person.
And if you get a good conversation going, this is a good opportunity to find out what
they think about your company and your product.
Now, the 4th way is, I think, the most laid back way to get customer feedback - and this
is by monitoring online mentions of your company.
So, I’m all about taking up as little of other people’s time as possible - at least,
when it comes to getting customer feedback.
And, monitoring mentions of your brand is one way that actually requires NO engagement
with your customers at all!
(I know how this sounds - and I promise, I do actually like people!)
But another important benefit of social media monitoring, is that with some monitoring tools,
sentiment analysis is automatic.
Like with Brand24 - not only will it collect your customer feedback from all over the Internet
- that’s from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, discussion forums, review sites like TripAdvisor,
Google Reviews, Yelp, in blogs - and a bunch of other places - Brand24 also ANALYZES that
feedback for positive, neutral and negative sentiment - automatically.
So you don’t have to look for customer feedback and manually analyze it for sentiment - you
can focus on the CONTEXT of their feedback and the best ways to apply it to your brand.
So, this was just a general look at sentiment analysis and how it helps you find out what
your customers like, but if you’re really curious about sentiment analysis as a topic
and you want to learn more about how it works - there’s a great book that you can check
out.
Kris, our research & development guy at Brand24 - who is also our resident expert on sentiment
analysis - recommended it to me.
It’s called “Sentiment Analysis: Mining Opinions, Sentiments and Emotions” by Professor
Bing Liu of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
And Professor Liu is actually one of the first people to have created a sentiment analysis
algorithm, so it’s coming straight from the source.
I learned a lot from the book when I was researching the topic, and found it interesting, so you
can check that out if you want to learn more about sentiment analysis!
And that’s it for now - if you have any questions, just let me know in the comments
section below.
Or you can also give me YOUR feedback on what you want to hear about.
And if you found this video helpful, feel free to like, share and subscribe to our YouTube
channel - where I will be explaining all things related to social media & digital marketing.
Thanks for watching - I hope you learned something useful - and I’ll see you next time.
Bye!