We need positive word of mouth about our products, services, and even political candidates if we are to win in the marketplace or at the polls November 2nd.

To make it easy, SentiMetrix has, for a limited time, a  $29/mo feed for your website.  You’ll get news and social media posts from over 70,000 sources that have favorable comments or reviews toward your brand.

For those unfamiliar with the science behind the art of good PR, here is an explanation of  how Sentiment Analysis Technology can add value your brand

What Sentiment Analysis is and does

Sentiment Analysis is a form of qualitative measurement using a combination of natural language processing and statistical algorithms in a textual medium.

Opinions toward objects (nouns or noun groups) selected by the user can be measured over time to determine whether that object is becoming more or less favored by a particular audience and why.

Presently, Sentiment Analysis technologies are used to measure positive and negative opinions and the degree of change. This can be particularly useful to any brand dependent on word of mouth advertising, and will give your brand the opportunity to promote itself by highlighting the positive reviews it is already receiving. Over 70,000 sources are analyzed to deliver twice daily updated positive reviews about your company, product, candidate or service. An RSS feeds with clickable URLs back to the original source are provided to ensure authenticity of posts.

Additional Services: SentiMetrix™ gathers open source opinions and has several years of archives of news and blogs for historic positive to help you analyze trends. SentiMetrix™ can also process your data sets or message boards on a local or national basis to provide qualitative analysis on an extremely granular level as to what an audience is thinking and wants.

For more information, contact Laurel Earhart, Vice President of Business Development at SentiMetrix: 520-390-1421.  Or email her at Earhart@SentiMetrix.com

Now that I’ve had a chance to kick off my high heels, here are some of my reflections and observations based on the Sentiment Analysis Symposium aka #SAS10 that took place April 13, 2010 in NYC.

The most frequently asked question pertaining to Sentiment Analysis is: What does a score mean?

Sentiment Analysis engines measure opinions in social media online or in textual sources such as news and journal articles.

A single score, in and of itself, means nothing. To understand the value of the score, one must understand the system it is built upon. Here are five issues to consider:

1. A Sentiment Analysis system has a “scale” or, the absolute highest or lowest value of a descriptive term pertaining to an object in question. Simply knowing that something scored a “.25” means nothing if you don’t know if the scale of scores was from -1 to +1 or from 1 to 10.

2. A Sentiment Analysis system requires the ability to understand “velocity” or how sharply sentiment is changing over time. This allows a researcher to identify tipping points and hone in on the events that triggered changes in sentiment. Again, if something’s scored a .25 for the last week, but prior to that it had been rising sharply, that signals something has happened to level off rising public opinion.

3. Sentiment Analysis system requires the ability to demonstrate “relativity”, or, how sentiment has changed over time, is different between sources, or between objects. It allows the researcher to determine, for example, if blogs or news are more favorable to a particular political candidate, and whether that candidate should spend more time on interviews or on her social media campaign. By contrast, some systems may have “normalized” scores, so 0.5 means something like “half the mentions were positive”. Understanding what a score is relative TO is extremely important.

4. A Sentiment Analysis system should provide “granularity” – how subtle a shift can be detected? Does the system provide “positive – neutral – negative” rankings or a more sensitive analysis? If something declines from .8 to a .25 it is still positive, yet it represents a sharp decline.

5. A Sentiment Analysis system has “accuracy” – who decided these were the scores, anyway? Many systems were designed to replicate human scoring as closely as possible, and tested against human subjects in a variety of applications. SentiMetrix was tested at the University of Maryland and was determined to be comparable to human scoring. It was also similarly tested in government applications. If a system is not designed to replicate human scoring, what exactly is it designed to do?

Trying to figure out a score without understanding the system is like trying to figure out which way is North without a compass or any earthly cues.

Once the system is understood, then the scores make sense.

“Polls are like watching animals in a zoo. You can obtain perfect specimens, observe them from every angle, but then you wonder why they aren’t mating.

Sentiment Analysis is like watching those animals in their natural habitat.”

I think we all have a lot to learn from this statement.

Polls are important, but as you’re developing a social media strategy, consider what sentiment analysis can do for you to win in November.

1. Track virtually real-time opinions in traditional and social media about what people are saying about YOU and your opponent.

By watching trends over time, you’ll know soon whether your education policy or your courtesy in the face of mudslinging is giving you an edge. In fact, good scoring techniques allow you to see which terms associated with your name are giving you that edge.

2. Understand that there is more to Sentiment Analysis than a “positive-negative-neutral” score. The more granular the scoring, the better the opportunity to shore up a campaign against negativity or to capitalize on an opportunity. Granularity matters. Would you rather know that people have a positive opinion about you? Or that last night it was +.61 and this afternoon it is +.42. Both are still positive scores. But now you know there might be a problem.

3. Is there a believability gap between traditional and social media? Does the press hate you and love your opponent?

Do the social media measurements trend the same way? Knowing the answers to these questions will tell you if you should be buying more ads, talking to reporters, kissing babies or… maybe even keeping your day job.

4. Have you discovered something you want to share?

Syndication of charts comparing and contrasting you and your opponent, specific issues, and social media or traditional media is now possible! You can email a chart, publish it on a web page or on Facebook, or send it off to the Twittersphere.

5. Mobilize your volunteers: What issues do they care about?

You do support those issues, right? Now your volunteers can champion you and their pet causes through these social media sharing tools and be part of a viral marketing campaign for you, all the while generating publicity for your campaign.

These tools are free. Just go to http://tinyurl.com/sentimetrix-elections
and register for a new account to get started. Type in the name of a politician and toggle between blogs and news or both to see what’s news. You may want to start with “Obama” as there is more data and issues about him than anyone. Then click on any of the “ancillary” issues on the left to see how those issues are trending.

Laurel Earhart is Vice President of Business Development at SentiMetrix and is the former Director of Business Development of the News and Politics channel at America Online, Inc.

Let’s spread the word - we are live!

A 1-minute registration is all you need to access SentiGrade (c) sentiment charts. Explore the topics that interest you,  compare scores for different brands, products, celebrities… go ahead!  Satisfy your curiosity!   There is a lot of data behind these charts, coming from over 50,000 traditional and social media sources, so it is likely that we have an answer to your query.  And we add more sources every day.

As the year progresses, we’ll be rolling out new features: - widgets, RSS feeds, alerting capabilities, advanced analytics and reporting, additional languages, open API and more.   But first - we want to know what you think.  Drop us a note and tell us what you like and what you want, and, what additions would, in your opinion, make the site more useful.

Do you have an great idea for using sentiment data?  Share it, and let’s make it a reality together.

2010 is the year of sentiment.   SentiMetrix invites you be a part of it. Welcome aboard!

SentiMetrix team.

Corzine up by a razon-thin margin

In Virginia, sentiment for Governor Bob McDonnell (R) is trending higher than scores for Creigh Deeds (D).

Deeds vs McDonnell

SentiMetrix recently expanded its data set to include a larger number of news and blog sources to capture a broader array of opinions pertaining to these important elections.

In the past few days, Chris Daggett’s Sentiment Scores  have improved considerably in the media and in blogs due to voters expressing their strong support for Daggett and dissatisfaction with their other candidate choices.

Voter and Media Sentiment toward Chris Daggett relatively positive in the last few days

In response to a request from a reader, we have decided to begin tracking Chris Daggett in our Sentiment Analysis trend charts in New Jersey.  The race appears close again in Virginia, where McDonnell and Deeds sentiment are very similar.

Sentiment toward Deeds improves largely due to discussion about Obama coming to Virginia to campaign for him.  In New Jersey, Sentiment toward Chris Christie remains relatively unchanged while sentiment toward Corzine decreases somewhat into negative territory for the first time in days.  This is largely due to the candidates’ performance on the debates held on the 16th.

Would you like to learn more about how our tools work? Email me at laurelearhart@aol.com for details and information on our twice weekly online tutorials.

By Laurel Earhart

As the days leading up to the November 3rd election grow shorter, we’re seeing similar sentiment of voters and media toward each candidate.  As our results are continuously updated, we will provide examples of blogs and news stories that validate this trend.  There are several mayoral elections happening on November 3rd as well, if you would like to see us track these, please email me at Earhart@Sentimetrix.com