Measuring Conversation
Posted by Mike Irwin on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 1:22 PM | More From This Author ยป
If you've run into me in a hallway or near the water cooler, it is likely that I've mentioned something about working on an equation to measure social media impact. And with that, you probably turned and walked away, thinking to yourself how lucky you are not to be plagued with the curiosity that affects most researchers.
At any rate, I've found a few different methods that measure sentiment in social media channels. Facebook has unveiled a prototype of an application called Lexicon and its application is pretty swift. It can track the number of mentions of a specific search term posted on Wall messages. And by doing so, it tracks the quantity of communication. Lexicon also has a feature that measures sentiment, by evaluating the percentage of positive comments to negative comments.
The concept is simply awesome from a marketing perspective. If you wanted to track brand sentiment over time, Lexicon appears to be able to offer some really detailed insights. As a prototype, the showing is somewhat limited, but its something I'll keep my eyes on for a while.
But, the measurement is simple sentiment. And while that is a critical indicator, it would be useful to understand sentiment impact. In doing so, you would have to understand the reach of each comment, factor that reach by a positive or negative number of instances and ultimately, you'd yield a net score. And that net score would, ultimately, be a reflection of the social media impact on that brand.