Michael Fauscette

Monitoring your brand: Sentiment analysis

Earlier this year at SAP's Business Suite 7 launch I saw a demo of some text analytics capability developed by Business Objects for sentiment analysis used as a kind of an online sentiment monitor feeding into SAP CRM. Interesting concept and one that is increasingly compelling for businesses as more and more real time social content is created. There are a couple of key bits of technology at play here, real time content creation, real time search (text mining) and some linguistic analysis algorithm. Beyond these basics it comes down to what do you do with the analysis once it is located, captured and run through the language sausage grinder.

The information available about your brand on the real time web falls into two basic buckets. On one side there's the immediate customer issue / problem / question. I've talked about this customer service opportunity, the delivering great service "when, where and how" the customer wants it and plan to make the topic a part of a larger post on social customer service in the near future. Today I'm talking about a broader category that is your real time social web brand image and opinion (or sentiment). The customer service information is specific and individual, social brand sentiment is an aggregation of social data from across the real time web. From this aggregated data it is possible to gauge overall public opinion about your brand at any given time (assuming you can collect that data of course). The data source is any or all online forum where people gather and discuss their opinions from public sources like Twitter and Facebook to your own private label communities. Once collected the data can be analyzed as text and using linguistics sentiment trends can be established from the tone of the language and the type of words used to describe feelings and opinions. The more data and data sources the more likely that the sentiment represented accurately reflects online opinion trends.

OK, cool technology but why should you care? Think about brand and how, in the past, in an offline world you would have tried to capture public opinion about your brand. First of all it was very expensive using surveys or focus groups. Secondly it was very time consuming and the data could easily be out of date by the time you had completed the analysis. This method is really historical brand sentiment at best. Today, using real time web, you could know with reasonable accuracy what the online world (a world this is rapidly growing all the time) thinks about your brand with reasonable accuracy. As a marketer that's a powerful tool. The uses span from crisis monitoring to marketing messaging (and method) testing.

Tools to enable sentiment monitoring and analysis are starting to emerge from both existing CRM vendors and also start ups with new product offerings. I mentioned the SAP / Business Objects capability, while not a full product the text analytics engine does have the capability to do sentiment analysis. Web analytics vendor Omniture offers Twitter integration to its SyteCatalyst analytics platform that allow sentiment monitoring. It does not, however have a linguistic analysis capability but instead lets you search keywords and combinations of keywords and slice and dice those searches. Sysomos offers broader social web analytics (2 tools, Map and Heartbeat) by searching blogs, wiki's, and social sites like Twitter. Once the data is collected it can be analyzed in a variety of ways (but no text analysis / linguistics capability). Evri, a Web 3.0 Semantic search engine, has a sentiment web API that pulls search data into it's semantic engine to provide sentiment measurement. The tool is basically binary, measuring positive or negative sentiment. SPSS has rich text mining capabilities in its PASW Modeler 13 product that allows deep analysis of text mining results. Autonomy, Nielsen and Techrigy all have sentiment analysis capabilities as well.

The Impact of Real Time Search

The social web is fundamentally about enabling conversations at scale. Those conversations are the building blocks of the new social enterprise. I was thinking about these two statements and it seems to me that one of the most critical tools for using the social web in a business is the availability of real time search. We're only just on the edge of starting to realize what real time search means though. Static search is very mature despite what Microsoft might want us to believe and is (and IMHO will continue to be) dominated by Google. But what about that next step? Well, we do have Twitter and search.twitter.com and as we've seen Google would like to bring that into its portfolio, even though that doesn't look possible, at least at present.

In a presentation I did with IDC colleague Mary Wardley earlier this year on social CRM we used this line "people are congregating online. People are talking about your brand but are you there to hear what they're saying?" In many ways I think that statement is the new mantra of a social business. You can't "control" what is being said but you could be there to join the conversation. But how do you join a conversation that is not conducted on your "turf" and in fact could happen almost anywhere and anytime online? In this new social web world you do not control the channels and the channels of choice are open to anyone with a device (notice I said device and not computer, the new internet is mobile) and an internet connection. You don't need to know what has been said, you need to know what IS being said. Enter real time search (and social analytics)...it's really about balancing immediacy with popularity and relevance.

That's fine for brand monitoring, where you need to manage sentiment and image; and customer service where you want to have a dialog and solve customer issues but are there other places where real time search are important? Why couldn't you adjust current adword-type marketing to serve contextual ads or offers during a conversation? Now I don't mean in an in your face offensive way of course, but in a trust-based and transparent way during a conversation. I also don't mean in a Facebook ad way either, at least not the way Facebook serves ads to my profile. They clearly use triggers/keywords out of my profile information but it is also clear that they are taken out of context (and that they don't give much weight to my thumbs down voting, I've been on an all out campaign against those dating service ads for over 3 months now and they will not go away, grrrr!). Anyway, the point is that real time conversations (and the ability to join them through real time search) would enable real time advertising in context.

There are a few fairly new services that I'm trying that are real time search based. I have used many of the Twitter-based real time options like search.twitter.com / RSS, Tweetdeck groups and searches, Tweetscope, Tweetmeme, dailyrt,  etc. for awhile. I'm talking about aardvark, scoopler, OneRiot   and LazyFeed. LazyFeed is new and I have been using it since its launch a few weeks ago. The site enables the user to establish relevance through tagging and then uses those tags to show the latest content from the sites you connect (currently Twitter, Flickr, Blogs, and Delicious). There is also a hot topics feed. Aardvark is a very different real time experience. The site establishes a community and then allows members to ask questions via the web, IM, email or Twitter. The questions are sent to self identified experts via email or IM for an answer. The "experts" either answer or pass. Scoopler and OneRiot are more of a Google-like search experience, at least from a user perspective although they also serve up hot topics. OneRiot also adds a video search tab. Even Facebook is moving into real time with its acquisition of Friendfeed. This is a rapidly evolving space that is reaching outside of Twitter and even spilling into video, which could be the next big "thing". It will be exciting to watch the rapid evolution of these tools and to see if Google makes a move for real time as well.

Social media: Marines no, UK Military yes

Last week saw two military organizations announced social media policies that fell about as far apart as possible. The US Marines announced a one year ban on the use of all social media sites by Marine personnel. During the same week the UK Ministry of Defense announced a new service wide policy aimed at commanding officers and line managers that encourages the use of social media. The 13 page guidelines encourage military and MoD personnel to blog, Tweet and generally engage through social media use. While the guidelines are designed to help managers advise their troops they will also be worked into training for all personnel. Armed forces and MoD personnel can talk about their work and lives within the advice of the guidelines without prior permission.

I've read several commentaries on the two policies over the last few days, everything from condemning the Marines to using them as a model for corporate policy. A few bloggers have recognized that without prior military experience they were not qualified to comment on the Marines very restrictive policy. As a ten year veteran Naval Officer I do actually have the background to form some educated opinions and of course I do have those. That's not really what I want to talk about in this post though. I will say that I applaud the UK MoD for taking a very realistic approach to the use of SM, and recognizing that there is value in its use by service members. My real point in this post is to use these two opposing views to talk about corporate policies on employee use of social media. There are two things that I want to focus on, 1. how realistic is it to ban social media use entirely, and 2. can reasonable guidelines be applied in a way to prevent behavior that is counter to the objectives of the organization?

There was a third announcement last week that we could also include in this analysis, ESPN's clamp down on employee use of social media sites for posting sports related content and content that gives "behind the scenes" information on ESPN programming. The policy prevents ESPN personnel from having personal web sites, blogs, Tweet or use social networking sites for sports related topics, one of the most restrictive policies announced for traditional media employees. While we might question how reasonable these guidelines are, after all, many of the people in question are celebrities in the sports field and have a strong personal brand around sports already, this is still an example of policies that are clear and aimed at protecting the objectives of the organization.

So back to my questions, first how realistic is it to ban social media use entirely? I've been asked frequently "what do we do if our company has blocked social media use at work (by blocking access while on the corp network)?" My response, well, actually I usually snicker and hold up my iPhone and point out that companies can block SM sites on their network but unless they think they can control smartphone use too, they are only fooling themselves. (this is a corporate comment btw, certainly the Marines could control anything they decide to) From a corporate perspective it's simply not realistic to think that you can control employees use of social media. You may block it on the network but that really doesn't stop anything. The forbid SM and "stick your head in the sand" approach will not work in corporate America IMHO.

Which brings us to question #2, can reasonable guidelines be applied in a way to prevent behavior that is counter to the objectives of the organization? This is of course the UK MoD approach as well as ESPN's (and many others). I believe the answer is yes, developing a reasonable policy around the use of SM is a much more informed approach. I'll add to that and say that the company should tie this into an overall SM strategy as well, I mean if you're going through the trouble of considering how you want your employees to use SM (and how you don't want them to use it also) then why not use the opportunity to align this policy with your overall enterprise social strategy? Companies can drive real value in an integrated approach to use of SM that helps employees understand how they can fit into the overall company strategy. And a look at the UK MoD overall plan is important, they build the guidelines to help managers manage SM use AND they are planning a comprehensive training program to make sure everyone understands the guidelines and how they relate to the individual.

One more interesting military example came to light today, an article from the AP talks about the Airforce unit the "Combat Information Cell" is used to monitor Twitter and other social media to understand public reactions to related news releases. The unit came to light in the recent Airforce One fly-over photo op scandal in NYC. The corporate analogy is the concept of brand monitoring and how important it is to know and understand what people are saying about your brand online.

It's not a full-duplex world

I remember buying my first speaker phone. I had them in my office of course but I needed one for my home office so I bought a good consumer model and set it up. The first conference call I did was very frustrating, it seemed that every time I talked no one else could interrupt me and even worse, when someone else talked I couldn't interrupt them. Was not like the office at all (commercial phones and a lot more expensive), and not conducive to useful conversation. The problem, the phone was half-duplex, so it only worked in 1 direction at a time. My office phone, full-duplex, real conversation enabled.

We're in this time of transition as the social web starts to impact business in a significant way. We've learned a lot from our efforts to use the web and the new social enablers like Facebook, Twitter, 12Seconds.tv, Qik, YouTube, etc. I wonder though, if our business are ready for a full-duplex conversation? Business, for the most part, has been at best half-duplex for a long time. My favorite (or least favorite) is the customer service nightmare we call Interactive Voice Response (IVR), talk about a bad name, interactive, right. Anyway, where are the conversations? I've talked a lot about the culture change that needs to happen to support the transformation to a social business and I'm starting to think this might be one of the biggest changes. Full-duplex conversations are very different than half-duplex talk.

Talking with customers happens across your company but who is listening? Are the two parts of a conversation assigned to different departments? Does marketing always talk and customer service always listen? Are our businesses designed to handle full-duplex conversations in each customer facing function? Can marketing listen and talk to the customer? One of the key advances that move into a social business is the ability to hold conversations with customers at scale. This only works though if you have an organization that is ready for two way communication. And this is not just a customer facing issue. The problem fundamentally starts as an internal issue. In a traditional hierarchical organization communication is designed to flow in a single direction (which is not duplex at all), or possibly in a half-duplex design but in a vertical path. It is not designed to flow horizontally across different silo's and definitely not full-duplex. The basic culture shift that a social business must embrace starts with full-duplex communication internally and in all directions. Once that barrier is overcome then you can turn this to customers, partners, suppliers, etc. It's not easy, old habits are very hard to break. What do you think, are businesses ready for this?

Engaging a community

Humans are social animals. Given opportunity and a reason they will come together and form a community. In a traditional sense a community is defined as a group of interacting people with common values and social cohesion living in a common location. Not a difficult concept on its surface anyway, although sociologists don't really agree on that definition (according to Wikipedia there are 94 different definitions used by sociologists for community). Still let's use that as a basis for looking at how communities manifest online. The social web has opened up the ability to create community in a very different way (online) yet in many respects these communities do not appear or behave differently from a community outside the Internet. One of the major differences though is that the online community is generally one of specific intent, not one of general cohesion, but not to say that intent isn't a necessary ingredient in any community. Online communities generally have a specific purpose, for example to build loyalty around a brand, or to gain support for a cause, or perhaps to share an interest in some hobby.

Open source vendors were really the first to get this online community thing right IMHO. The realized that transparency and openness build trust and that people join communities to contribute but also to gain / improve their reputation and demonstrate prowess. The high level of engagement of many of these communities is demonstrated by the fervor and passion the community members exhibit in participating and engaging with the OSS vendor and other community members. Here are a few random thoughts to use in launching a new online community and creating an ongoing relationship among members.

• Why are you members in the community? What's in it for them (yes, I know YOU want them to be in your community but really, why would they want to)?
• What are you giving (content?) - what are they looking for?
  
• Make your community relevant to the potential member if you want to draw them in.
  
• Communities control themselves, you don't "manage" them.
  
• Create heros, know who really has influence?
  
• Give before taking. This is really the same social networking advice you'd use personally, give or add value to get value back.
  
• Trust is a fragile thing, especially online. One breach of trust can have disastrous and long term effects.
  
• Ask, after all this is supposed to be a conversation.
• Attention is the major currency in our ADD inflicted world. It's difficult to attract and even more difficult to hold.
• Social capital is a critical factor, help increase the influence of your community and its key members.

What else should be on the list?