Here’s a well known fact: the rise of digital media—and social media especially— has significantly restructured the communications industry. The construction and dissemination of clear messages are no longer the sole tasks of the communications manager. Instead, she works in a world where she is in permanent contact with her brand’s audience, where they are as free to initiate contact with her as she is with them. This means many good and bad things. For instance, it has opened up enormous potential for, and impatience with missteps. Make one false move, and you (plus all your ancestors, plus all your future generations), can (and probably will) get dragged. (Just ask Dammy Krane how he is feeling today. Or Pepsi and Kendall Jenner. Or Oge Okoye. Or KCee). But there’s a lot of good that has come from the rise of digital media. One thing? Listening.
Listening has always been an integral part of communications. After all, didn’t someone (or a people) once say that listening more and talking less makes one wise? That ish is true yo.. That time that our communications manager was primarily making and sending out messages, she wasn’t operating in a void. There were all kinds of tools like surveys that allowed her to understand the tenor of the people to whom she was speaking. What makes digital media different is the way that it allows us to listen well. In particular, because everyone and their grandmother’s best friend is openly sharing their thoughts on current events, politics, brands, etc., online, and media reports are part of this mix, there’s a massive, organic data pool to work with. Now there’s a good chance that you’ve already done this. You (or a member of your team) may have begun combing through online chatter about your brand. But what if there was a way that you could get this information quickly, so that instead of spending precious time doing your analysis by hand, you can get it in seconds? There is. It’s called Sentiment Analysis and e5 is set to launch Versus, its first iteration in the Nigerian market.
Sentiment analysis is the process of making sense of the overall tone of information, whether it is positive, negative or neutral. e5’s Versus pulls pieces of text from the most popular sites in Nigeria to make sense of what is being said about your brand, as against your nearest competitor. The same can be done in any other region in the world. All of e5’s work is data-driven: samples are selected based on up-to-date stats about the most visited sites in Nigeria, and the team works with statisticians at Google to ensure that they maintain a high accuracy level on results derived. e5 also brings a keen cultural understanding: the team is Nigerian, which means they recognize and account for nuances in language that shape the meanings conveyed in text. And they are also here in Nigeria, so they can keep abreast of the shifts in these linguistic nuances as they occur, keeping interpretations relevant.
Sentiment analysis’ power is also in its capacity to generate intelligence for returns on investment for agencies, companies and essentially any entity in a position of budget or fund management. No doubt, this kind of insight is invaluable for executives trying to decipher how best to put resources to work. Your marketing team runs a campaign– you can see how well it’s received. You’re running a political campaign – you can look into public sentiment about your candidate. You can also get intel for smart investments in the stock market. I’m sure you can probably think of a few other contexts where sentiment analysis would sharpen decisions. Basically, sentiment analysis is is a legit sub industry in itself under tech/digital. You should get on it.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
