5 ways PR pros can use social media sentiment

Measuring your efforts on social media is crucial to success, but sometimes metrics only tell you part of the story. Here’s how you can add context with this analytic.

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Too often, they lack context, telling you the “what” but not the “why” or “how.”

However, one metric that stands out from the rest is “sentiment.” Social media sentiment—a feeling, emotion, attitude or opinion conveyed in a brand mention—is a measurement that can add context to other metrics.

It’s important to get as much context as possible around online mentions. PR pros should know how big the conversations about their brands or clients are, but you also should know how people are talking about you.

Is it glowing praise? Bashing rants? Utter indifference?

Each sentiment category brings your brand social media mentions that mean very different things. A glowing mention is a reputation management win—but a rant may be a customer service issue and indifference probably isn’t high on any team’s radar.

Some social media management tools offer algorithms or filters to make it easy to gauge online sentiment. These sentiment analysis features measure and report the tone of your social mentions. Most tools group different sentiments or feelings into three categories: positive, negative or neutral.

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