Sentiment analysis is the science of assessing the attitude of the writer with respect to the topic he or she is writing about. The assumption behind automatic sentiment analysis is that a computer program can instantly assess the current ‘value’ of a word, such as your brand name.
There are too many social media accounts in the world for any human to sort through by hand, so the prospect of automated sentiment analysis sounds enticing. But… NEXT Analytics does not perform sentiment analysis, and here’s why:
- The Web contains many mentions of your brand words that aren’t relevant to you. For instance, if your name contains a word like ‘NEXT’ or ‘analytics,’ like ours does, there are going to be many, many instances of people using those words, even in the same sentence, that have nothing to do with your brand. (e.g. “Using Anaconda Social Media is the key to bringing your analytics to the NEXT level.”
- Some mentions are benign. Your brand word may simply be part of a list, or used in some other neutral way. (e.g. “We are comparing three different web analytics programs today, starting with NEXT Analytics.”)
- Reasons for retweeting can be ambiguous. Some believe that users only retweet or repost things they like or think are important. However this is not always the case. (e.g. “‘Retweet: NEXT Analytics does a poor job working with lists.’ –That’s not my experience.”)
- Human communication is just too complex to rely on. Ask lots of people to interpret a phrase and chances are you’ll get lots of different answers. That doesn’t even include complex language patterns like sarcasm.
Automated sentiment analysis can cause real problems for brands, especially if they are basing product development or marketing strategies on the basis of sentiment analysis. .Are you willing to risk your business by basing decisions on less-than-reliable data?
At NEXT Analytics, we make it easy to get and analyze all your social media data to make smart, evidence-based decisions.
Here’s What NEXT Does:
- Offers unlimited analytics. You can manage unlimited Web and social media properties, profiles, mentions, audiences and more in one solution—no more manual reporting!
- Fetches your data from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Analytics, AdWords and more
- Puts your data into an organized, searchable, sortable spreadsheet that you can customize
- Provides a library of free, ready-to-use sample reports to get you started
- Refreshes your data with one click (or set up automatic batch refresh to have all your data from the weekend ready and waiting for you every morning)
- Works on Cloud. Upload your spreadsheets to Google Drive, NEXT Cloud or other storage solution
It’s time to get started. Sign up for a free 14-day trial today!