How do you track audience sentiment and engagement?

If you want to grow your social media presence, you need to know how your audience feels and reacts to your content. Tracking audience sentiment and engagement can help you understand what works and what doesn't, and how to improve your strategy. In this article, we'll show you some of the tools and methods you can use to measure these key aspects of social media performance.

1 What is audience sentiment and engagement?

Audience sentiment and engagement are two related but distinct metrics that can help you evaluate your social media impact. Audience sentiment refers to the emotional tone and attitude of your followers and potential customers towards your brand, products, or topics. Engagement refers to the actions and interactions of your audience with your content, such as likes, comments, shares, clicks, or conversions. Both metrics can give you valuable insights into your audience's preferences, needs, and pain points.

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Cyril Edem

Finance Advisory. Business & Technology Assurance. Governance. Risk. Control. Compliance. Project Management. Cybersecurity. Data Analytics (BSc, ACA, CISA, CISM, CRISC, CCNSP, ISO27001)
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This view on audience sentiments and engagement is spot on. However, engagement outcomes are more tangible and easily measured.

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2 How to measure audience sentiment?

Measuring audience sentiment can be challenging, as it involves analyzing the language and context of your audience's feedback. One way to do this is to use sentiment analysis tools, which are software applications that use natural language processing and machine learning to assign positive, negative, or neutral scores to text or audio data. Some examples of sentiment analysis tools are Hootsuite Insights, Brandwatch, and Sprout Social. These tools can help you monitor and compare the sentiment of your audience across different platforms, campaigns, or topics.

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Sonakshi Mathur

Digital@BCG | ex-KPMG
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Adding 'Brandwatch' as a tool recommendation - it has helped me achieve great results especially for my sentiment analysis, crisis communication, and share of voice reports.

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3 How to measure engagement?

Measuring engagement can be easier, as it involves counting and tracking the quantitative data of your audience's behavior. Most social media platforms provide their own analytics tools that can show you the basic engagement metrics, such as reach, impressions, likes, comments, shares, and clicks. However, if you want to go deeper and measure the outcomes of your engagement, such as leads, sales, or loyalty, you need to use other tools that can connect your social media data with your website or CRM data. Some examples of these tools are Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Buffer.

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Sonakshi Mathur

Digital@BCG | ex-KPMG
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You can also use the special media listening tool - Brandwatch. (Just a recommendation) It has helped me improve my sentiment analysis and share of voice reporting.

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4 How to use audience sentiment and engagement data?

Once you have collected and analyzed your audience sentiment and engagement data, you should use it to optimize your social media strategy. For instance, you can identify the best times and frequencies to post, based on when your audience is most active and responsive. Additionally, you can create more content that resonates with your audience's emotions and needs, based on their feedback and reactions. Furthermore, adjusting your tone and voice to match your audience's expectations and preferences, based on their language and context, is also important. Moreover, segmenting your audience into different groups based on their sentiment and engagement levels can help you tailor your messages and offers accordingly. Finally, testing different types of content, formats, and calls to action can help measure their impact on your audience's sentiment and engagement.

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5 How to improve audience sentiment and engagement?

Improving audience sentiment and engagement is an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and testing. To boost your audience's feelings and actions towards your brand, be authentic and transparent, and show your brand's personality and values. Encourage conversations and interactions, and respond to your audience's comments and questions. Provide value and solutions, educate your audience about your products or services, reward loyal followers with incentives or discounts, and ask for feedback and reviews to improve your products or services. Tracking audience sentiment and engagement can help you create a more effective and engaging social media strategy, allowing you to understand your audience better and deliver more relevant content.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Lonnie Silberling

Integrated Creative Director Ex-REC ROOM / Ex-JAM CITY / Ex-ANT FARM
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I’ve leaned it’s important to analyze and summarize audience sentiment data so the insights can be shared with your team. This makes it easy to share audience feedback internally with cross functional teams, such as product and development, which is the next step toward customer centric design.

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How do you track audience sentiment and engagement?

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1 What is audience sentiment and engagement?

2 How to measure audience sentiment?

3 How to measure engagement?

4 How to use audience sentiment and engagement data?

5 How to improve audience sentiment and engagement?

6 Here’s what else to consider

Social Media Measurement

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