How to do Social Media Sentiment Analysis in 2025? [Easy Guide, Benefits & More!]

The Nobel laureate of economics, Daniel Kahneman, proved that about 90% of our choices are driven by emotions. When you combine this fact with social media platforms (that are designed to trigger our emotions), the conclusion is simple – if you care about your brand, social media sentiment analysis is a must. Keep reading to discover how to use it wisely!

• Social media sentiment analysis – if used wisely – can be a priceless source of insights about your audience’s true feelings, brand reputation, and social performance. 
• After reading this article, you’ll:
  • Feel what social media sentiment analysis is
  • Understand the five benefits of implementing social sentiment analytics
  • Implement social media sentiment in practice thanks to the 5-step guide
  • Know which tool will help you achieve your social media goals
  • Be inspired by practical examples of Red Bull and Samsung

What is social media sentiment analysis?

Social media sentiment analysis is the automated process of understanding how people feel about a brand, topic, or event based on what they post on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms.

The analysis combines natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning techniques to process social media data and determine the emotional tone and opinions of people posting the content (such as posts, comments, reviews, or even untagged mentions).

Essentially, sentiment analysis models unveil whether people’s attitudes toward a brand, topic, or event are positive, neutral, or negative. 

💡 Advanced social listening tools like Brand24 can break down these general sentiments into more specific emotions like joy, anger, or disgust, offering deeper insights into audience reactions.

Such knowledge is simply priceless! Why?

Let’s dive into the benefits of social sentiment analysis!

Top 5 benefits of social media sentiment analysis

01 Understand your performance

First and foremost, sentiment analysis allows you to truly understand your social media performance.

Instead of focusing only on metrics like reach, clicks, or shares, you can gain insights into how people actually feelabout your content strategy, campaigns, or overall brand presence.

For example, Ferrari (the premium car brand I don’t need to introduce you to) often posts social media content underlining its historical legacy and being a cultural phenomenon.

According to Brand24’s AI Topics Analysis feature, retro content enjoys a very good reception among Ferrari’s target audience and significantly impacts positive brand perception.

That’s an insight you wouldn’t get from numbers alone, showing how crucial it is to understand the emotions behind the engagement.

02 Focus your efforts on the right social media channels

Sentiment analysis allows you to identify your top social media platforms. 

The ability to see and compare your performance on multiple platforms enables you to:

• Understand which campaigns worked well and which didn’t – high engagement doesn’t always equal positive sentiment
• Spot platforms where negative sentiment is a bit too high – it signals a need for a different approach or brand messaging style
• Prioritize resources and adjust strategy for channels that really matter – even the biggest brands usually focus on two or three top channels.

03 Improve customer service

In the age of strong competition, customer satisfaction is one of the most critical elements brands must master to stand out from the crowd. 

On the flip side, negative experiences can quickly escalate online, damaging a brand’s reputation almost instantly.

That’s why customer satisfaction analysis on what they post on social media plays a key role here. 

By monitoring the tone and emotions behind mentions, comments, customer feedback, and reviews, brands can detect pain points early and address them before they escalate. 

Moreover, real-time social media monitoring helps prioritize urgent cases, allowing brands to respond faster and more empathetically. 

That can boost customer engagement and increase brand loyalty.

04 Get inspired by competitors

The best social listening tools (like the aforementioned Brand24) allow you to set up multiple projects and track both your own and your competitors’ brands.

And that’s a goldmine of inspiration!

By gathering and processing sentiment data on your market rivals, you can quickly uncover what resonates with their audiences – and what falls flat.

This gives you a competitive edge and strategic advantage: you can learn from their successes, avoid repeating mistakes, and spot gaps in the market.

Example?

Well, a few years ago, Apple released the “Crush” campaign to promote its new iPad. 

The video presented a hydraulic press crushing various creative tools (like guitars or sculptures), symbolizing that all creativity now fits into an iPad.

Many viewers perceived the ad as disrespectful to art and creativity.

There have been a lot of negative comments about Apple these days!

Samsung quickly recognized the opportunity.

It launched the “Uncrush” campaign, featuring a girl playing the guitar and the message “Creativity cannot be crushed.” 

Samsung positioned itself as the brand that truly respects creators – all thanks to listening, understanding, and reacting to the emotional tone of the audience.

Read more: 7 Social Listening Examples

05 Prevent crises

Last but not least, social media sentiment tracking allows you to spot potential brand crises before they fully blow up.

And that’s something you can’t ignore!

In the research made by Deloitte, 87% of C-levels has pointed reputation risk as the most significant risk area. 

This figure shows that protecting your brand’s reputation isn’t just about reacting to problems – it’s about actively monitoring early warning signs.

Real-time public sentiment tracking equips you with the ability to detect issues before they escalate. 

In practice, tools like Brand24’s AI Events Detector and Storm Alerts allow you to spot sudden changes in the volume or sentiment of online conversations quickly. 

They automatically notify you when a potential issue is growing, enabling your team to find the cause fast and respond appropriately.

How to perform sentiment analysis for social media? 5 practical steps

Now, let’s turn the theory into practice! 

Here’s the 5-step guide that will allow you to include social media sentiment analysis into your work routine.

01 Use social media sentiment analysis tools

In the beginning, it might seem that we can do the sentiment analysis on social media manually. However, this would require lots of time and effort.

To be honest, I can’t imagine analyzing each mention and post. 

Luckily, we don’t need to do it because (yeah!) we have freaking awesome technology!

Social media sentiment analysis tools monitor all your brand mentions published on multiple social platforms and automatically analyze the emotional tone behind them.

How does it work?

Tools apply natural language processing (NLP) to analyze online mentions and determine the feelings behind the post.

Yeah, sentiment analysis tools are a game-changer. They allow you to sift through the noise and extract valuable insights.

Texts that have similar meanings for humans will also have similar meanings for the sentiment analysis algorithm.
That way, the algorithm can detect synonyms and correctly identify feelings behind the message.

The two most important factors that you should consider when choosing the right social media sentiment analysis tool are:

• The number of monitored platforms – the more, the better
• Insights it can provide – the best tools don’t just show raw, unstructured data but deliver actionable insights, recommendations, and trends

Undisputedly, one of the top sentiment analysis tools is Brand24. 

This tool tracks and analyzes both tagged & untagged brand mentions published on all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Telegram, Twitch, and Bluesky.

Moreover, Brand24 offers plenty of powerful AI features that allow you to gain valuable insights much faster than with manual analysis only.

These features include:

• AI Brand Assistant – a kind of ChatGPT, but more accurate and equipped with internal project data
• AI Insights – a powerful report presenting insights, trends, and recommendations

… and much more!

02 Monitor brand mentions regularly

Brand sentiment can change quickly. Even a single TikTok video can skyrocket your reputation. And even one Reddit thread can ruin it.

That’s why sentiment analysis is not a one-time effort but a continuous process. 

And that’s why constant media monitoring is a must for brands that take themselves seriously. 

The good news is that monitoring social media conversations doesn’t mean you should stare at your sentiment analysis tool 24 hours a day!

Good practices to build your workflow (and not get crazy):

1. Set up smart & automated alerts. 

Most of the best sentiment analysis tools allow you to create customized notifications based on a sudden spike in mentions volume or an unexpected increase in social media reach.

2. Get a quick overview of the anomaly with the help of AI. 

Whenever an unexpected event occurs and you get your notification, it’s necessary to understand what happened as quickly as possible.

Here, the AI enters the stage.

For example, Brand24 offers an AI Events Detector feature.

In short, whenever the anomaly appears, the detector crawls the project and web to discover what happened and, in the end, presents the cause in 2-3 essential sentences.

3. Check the most important social media posts.

Not every post has an equal impact on your reputation.

The more influential the profile, the bigger the potential impact on your brand image. 

Prioritize mentions from verified accounts, industry leaders, or viral creators, as their opinions can quickly shape public perception.

03 Analyze sentiment trends over time

Individual mentions provide important signals, but it’s the overall trends that reveal the full story. 

Tracking sentiment over time helps you understand the bigger picture, so how public perception of your brand evolves weekly, monthly, and after major events like product launches or campaigns.

Such sentiment insights give you a lot of valuable information regarding your performance:

• Allow you to identify trends.
  For example, a steady increase in positive mentions and sentiment after implementing a new customer service strategy;
• Highlight the long-term impact of your marketing strategies.
  For example, a successful brand awareness campaign may lead to a lasting increase in positive mentions and overall sentiment across social media platforms
• Give you benchmarks for the future.
  By understanding how your previous campaigns influenced sentiment, you can set realistic goals and better evaluate the success of your future efforts.

Time for a quick experiment. 

Below you can see the Red Bull’s sentiment chart for March 23 – 30th, 2025.

Now, take a look at Red Bull’s sentiment chart for the last four months (January 1st to May 15th).

Moreover, the visible spike in positive mentions in late February has skyrocketed Red Bull’s online Presence Score.

Fine, but what exactly happened then?

We’ll look for an explanation in the next step of social media sentiment analysis, which is…

04 Draw insights and act!

Collecting sentiment data is necessary, but it requires action to truly make an impact. 

You must translate them into insights and – ultimately – make actionable decisions!
Because how you act defines your brand’s future.

We can reduce it to the following scheme:

Collect Data -> Draw Insights -> Make Decisions

Here is a sample, practical workflow:

1. Discover what works.

If a specific type of post or campaign generates a lot of positive sentiment – focus on it even more!

Create similar content, invest in similar campaigns, or maximize the impact of existing, successful efforts.

💡 Tip: Use AI Insights

The Brand24 AI Insights is an extremely helpful feature for drawing insights about brand’s online performance. 

A massive increase in Red Bull’s positive sentiment at the beginning of February was driven by two events:

Red Bull Hardline (an extreme mountain biking competition) and the Formula 1 season launch (Red Bull owns an F1 team).

According to AI Insights’ recommendations, Red Bull should continue capitalizing on extreme sports success and leverage its Formula 1 connection.

2. Address negative feedback fast.

If you spot negative emotions around a particular topic, product, or service – don’t ignore it.

Find the cause, acknowledge the issue, and fix it if possible.

I quickly investigated Red Bull’s spike in negative words from March 2025 using Brand24’s AI Brand Assistant.

It turned out that the backlash was caused by replacing one Formula 1 driver with another.

3. Spot new opportunities.

Sometimes, sentiment analysis uncovers unexpected insights.

Maybe your audience is praising a feature you never promoted. Why not build a campaign around it?

05 Report – iterate – repeat

As I told you before, social media sentiment analysis is not a one-and-done task — it’s an ongoing process that requires continuous improvement.

Once you have gathered the data and turned them into insights, it is time to present the results of your work. 

You can create a report yourself, but many sentiment analysis tools have a built-in reporting feature.

The most important aspect of reporting analysis is the ability to choose the data you want to include. 

You will be able to show exactly the insights you have worked on and the impact your activities had on the key metrics on every platform you are present.

Some good practices to implement: 

• Summarize your findings.
  Create simple reports that capture sentiment trends and key insights. Highlight what worked, what didn’t, and what requires attention.
• Share insights across teams.
  Deliver clear, actionable takeaways to your marketing, PR, customer service, and product teams. Equip them to make smarter decisions based on real customer emotions.
• Test new strategies based on insights.
  Whether it’s adjusting content, changing messaging, or launching new initiatives, sentiment analysis should inspire new experiments.
• Measure the impact of changes.
  After implementing new actions, monitor how brand sentiment changes. Did positive mentions grow? Did customer satisfaction improve? Treat every campaign and adjustment as a new hypothesis to be tested.

3 bonus tips to improve social sentiment

Personalize interactions

Personalizing customer interactions can help build a stronger connection and improve social sentiment.

Using customers’ names and addressing their specific concerns or interests can make customers feel valued and understood.

Create valuable content

To succeed in the online space, you need to establish your brand. 

Producing relevant content will help boost social sentiment around your brand. People will trust your company, automatically creating a positive buzz around your brand.

Moreover, Internet users will share well-written and interesting content. 

Creating engaging content will help you spread positive news vibes around your company. It will also help your brand reach new audiences.

Show your brand’s human side

Be authentic in your communication and interactions with your audience. 

Customers are more likely to engage with and feel positively toward brands that show their human side. 

This can include sharing behind-the-scenes content, showcasing employee stories, or highlighting the company’s values and culture.

Conclusion

Social media sentiment analysis is a powerful way to understand how people truly feel about your brand. 

Instead of focusing only on numbers, it gives you emotional insights that help you improve your marketing, communication, and product strategy. 

Tools like Brand24 make it easy to track mentions, uncover emotions, and spot opportunities or problems early. 

By analyzing various social media platforms, you can find out where your audience is most engaged and where you need to adjust. 

Real-time monitoring also strengthens customer service, helping you react before small issues grow into bigger problems. 

Also, you don’t need to limit your analysis to only your own sentiment! Observing your competitors can be incredibly inspiring and give you a smart edge in the market. 

Tracking trends over time helps you understand the bigger picture, while acting on insights turns data into real results.

In short, smart use of sentiment analysis means smarter, faster, and more human-centered brand decisions.

Final thoughts:

• Use social media sentiment insights to guide your long-term marketing strategies.
• Treat every sudden change in sentiment as a chance to learn and improve.
• Remember that emotions drive most customer decisions.
• Focus on building real, emotional connections with your audience.
• Make social listening a daily habit, not a one-time project.

Start a 14-day free Brand24 trial and discover your social media sentiment right away!