Turning sentiment into a strategy
What to look for and how to track changes.
Most PR dashboards or newer AI monitoring tools sort sentiment into three established buckets: positive, neutral and negative. But that’s no longer enough.
Bianca Prade, former visiting scholar and course developer at George Washington University, said what’s required is a shift “from sentiment to strategy.”
“We’re excited about this opportunity to move beyond just positive and negative,” she said during a presentation at Ragan’s 2025 PR Daily Conference.
Prade urged PR teams to look at deeper emotional signals like joy, anger, fear and trust. This is because emotion moves business outcomes.
“Emotion we know can predict purchase intent, customer churn and crisis velocity,” Prade said.
If you only track how much people are talking in broad positive or negative categories, you may miss how strongly they feel and how fast that feeling is spreading. She said three metrics matter: velocity, intensity and volume.
The metrics that matter for sentiment
Velocity is the speed of change. Are negative comments doubling in 20 minutes? Intensity measures emotional strength. Are people mildly annoyed or openly angry? Volume is the total number of mentions.
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