Let’s face it. If you aren’t using some form of social media, then you are missing out. More than three billion people worldwide have a social presence, making it one of the largest networking platforms.

Numerous businesses and brands are harnessing the power of social media for marketing and brand loyalty. The more advanced ones apply sentiment analysis on data retrieved from social networks to gather information about how customers perceive their products or brands and improve their overall satisfaction.

What Is Sentiment Analysis?

Sentiment analysis refers to the process used to determine the emotion behind what your clients think and say about a brand or a product, usually from analyzing large amounts of text, surveys, or even photos and videos. As most of the data nowadays is generated by users, AKA UGC (User-generated content), sentiment analysis is mostly the realm of big data firms that use high-tech algorithms to measure information customers share.

Applied sentiment analysis can track positive, negative, and neutral feedback and help brands gauge and understand where your organization’s growth opportunities lie and what their weaknesses are. Some even take it to the next level and monitor their competitors and industry and create a “social media” SWOT analysis.

So, Why Should You Use Social Media?

Connecting With Your Customer

Social media is precisely what the name says it is. These are social platforms that people use to connect. Not only do people make use of these sites to join, but they also utilize them to build new relationships.

Social networks offer a valuable opportunity for businesses to gather information and then use that data to develop strategies to guide their business towards success.

Social Sites Offer Real-Time Information

One of the vast benefits of these platforms is that getting the information is fast and live. In the past, collecting customer’s data was a long, drawn-out process. By using these networking pages, you can get real-time data and demographics on your clients.

Track Your Target Market

Social networking sites can also share a great deal of information about where your clients’ location and what others like they share online. If most people who like your business page are fitness orientated, then it makes sense to appeal to that side of people when deciding on a marketing strategy.

It’s also important to remember that other individual’s actions influence people. If your page starts to receive many likes, friends and family members will begin to follow suit.

A Wider Reach

Due to social media sites’ popularity, you can be sure that your marketing reach exceeds any other advertising means. You can personalize your content to suit your desired outcome just by tracking users online.

How to Get the Data

Online Surveys

An excellent sentiment analysis technique is the use of online surveys. You can post questions to get a feel for something you need to know, or you can create longer, more detailed surveys online.

Social networking sites have consistent traffic of enormous numbers, so you are always guaranteed to get a response. You can offer clients incentives when they update their information or run competitions and promotions to increase engagement with your customer base.

Monitor Trends

You can also use big data firms to track the number of likes pages receive online or measure activity on your company page in real-time. It’s crucial to make sure that you have up-to-date, relevant information about your business.

Many companies like to track the number of hashtags their company receives. This is a growing trend on networking media sites, and several large brands employ brand ambassadors to set the tone for online users.

Hashtags allow a user to mention a brand or product they are using, making it easier for the company or the data collector to quickly track the comments.

Conclusion

Social media usage is increasing at a rapid rate. It has fast become one of the most widely utilized and cost-effective tools for any business owner worldwide. It doesn’t matter if you are a small business owner or a massive corporation; everyone enacts with social media in one way or another.

Sites like Facebook and Instagram are great platforms if you’re starting. It pays to get online and spend some time creating a page that can attract customers far and wide. You won’t be sorry you did it.