How to Do Facebook Sentiment Analysis? Example & 7-Steps Guide

Do you REALLY know if your brand is loved or criticized on Facebook? Sentiment analysis reveals the hidden truth behind thousands of mentions. For instance, LEGO’s data shows that 29% of mentions are positive, 2% negative, and the rest neutral. And that’s just the beginning! Detailed sentiment analysis can uncover key emotions, trending topics, and the impact of specific campaigns, giving you powerful insights to maximize your Facebook efforts.

Facebook sentiment analysis is the process of discovering emotions or attitudes behind posts, comments, and other engagement by the platform users. It helps understand whether particular Facebook mentions are positive, negative, or neutral.

On a deeper level, Facebook sentiment analysis works well for determining public opinion, uncovering emerging trends, improving customer service, and tracking brand reputation.

What is Facebook sentiment analysis?

Sentiment analysis examines online text to uncover its emotional tone, identifying whether the sentiment is positive, negative, or neutral.

Simply put, it determines the author’s feelings about a particular topic or brand.

On Facebook, sentiment analysis focuses on interpreting the emotions and attitudes expressed in posts, comments, and other user interactions.

It helps businesses and brands understand the tone of specific mentions, providing insights into how audiences perceive their content or messages.

Sentiment analysis on Facebook is critical because it allows you to:

• Understand customer emotions by learning how people feel about your brand or content.
• Improve communication by adjusting your tone and messaging based on audience feedback.
• Spot problems early by detecting negative trends before they become bigger issues.
• Boost engagement by focusing on topics and themes that resonate with your audience.
• Strengthen brand reputation by addressing concerns and highlighting positive feedback effectively.

How to do Facebook sentiment analysis?

There are only two ways to do the Facebook sentiment analysis: the basic one and the right one.

Okay, just kidding! Both methods can work well. It all depends on the size of your online presence.

The first method is manual.

Simply put, you create an Excel sheet and add a new row each time someone mentions your brand on Facebook.

Then, categorize each mention as positive, negative, or neutral based on its tone. This approach is fine if you only have a small number of mentions to review each month.

The downside? You’ll miss untagged mentions (those that don’t trigger notifications on Facebook) no matter how thorough you are.

The second method is using sentiment analysis tools. And let’s be honest – it’s the most effective method, especially if your online presence is large.

Well, these tools can handle large volumes of data quickly and accurately, something that’s impossible to do manually.

Take LEGO, for example. With hundreds of Facebook mentions daily, manually tracking them all would be overwhelming and not worth the effort.

The best sentiment analysis tools leverage the power of AI, analyzing thousands of mentions in just seconds to determine whether the sentiment is positive, negative, or neutral.

Plus, they offer additional analytics features that make the entire process faster and more efficient.

However, these tools aren’t perfect. They can struggle with challenges like sarcasm, where a comment like “Amazing service, just waited an hour!” might be misread as positive.

Thankfully, there is a solution – merging human intelligence with the artificial one. Together, they create a powerful system that addresses these challenges perfectly – and trust me, it works!

Facebook sentiment analysis example

Now that you know the two methods of analyzing Facebook sentiment, you can decide which suits you best. If the manual method works for you, there’s no need to continue reading this article.

But if you’re curious about how to analyze Facebook sentiment using a sentiment analysis tool, sit back and relax. I’ll guide you through the step-by-step process using Brand24 as an example.

Brand24 is an AI-powered social listening tool designed to track and analyze your sentiment and, more broadly, monitor your brand’s reputation.

In addition to Facebook, Brand24 can perform sentiment analysis across various sources (or combine them for a complete overview):

• Social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, TikTok, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Telegram, Reddit, and Twitch;
• News sites, blogs, video platforms, podcasts, review sites, newsletters, and other websites.

Are you ready to dive in? Great, let’s take the first step!

Step 1: Set up the monitoring project and collect data

In the beginning, you have to create a monitored project. Choose the keyword you want to track; it can be literally anything:

• Your/your competitor’s brand name
• Hashtag
• Industry name
• Event/campaign
• Any other keyword your imagination tells you!

Then, be patient. Let the tool gather all your brand mentions and bring you valuable insights. That’s an excellent time to brew coffee. I’ll be right back!

Once your mentions are ready, you can see a dashboard resembling visual sentiment reports.

You can easily adjust your view using different filters, such as sources, sentiment, geolocation, language, intent, author, and more.

As we discuss sentiment analysis on Facebook, check the “Facebook” box in the Sources filter.

Now, we’re ready to take another step!

Step 2: Check the sentiment breakdown

Okay, let’s dive into Facebook sentiment insights!

When in the Mentions tab, switch the chart view to Sentiment. You’ll see two lines: green for positive sentiment and red for negative. Pretty intuitive, right?

You can spot the overall sentiment trend at a glance. Take the LEGO brand, for example.

Its Facebook sentiment is clearly and overwhelmingly positive.

If you want to dig deeper into the proportion of positive and negative mentions, you have two options:

1. Count it manually – This will work well if you have at most 100 monthly mentions.
2. Check the Analysis tab – Here, you’ll find a detailed breakdown. You can see the total number of mentions, as well as how many are positive and negative. Additionally, a quick look at the semicircular diagram will give you a visual overview of your sentiment breakdown.

Back to our LEGO example.

I entered the Analysis tab and found the “Overview” table (it’s easy to spot).

As you can see, over the past 30 days, LEGO was mentioned 6,167 times on Facebook, with 1,809 positive mentions and just 136 negative feedback mentions.

Scrolling down, I located the sentiment breakdown diagram. It revealed that positive feedback accounted for 29% of all mentions, negative feedback was just 2%, and the rest was neutral.

The conclusion? LEGO enjoys an overwhelmingly positive reputation on Facebook.

Step 3: Discover the exact emotions

Brand24 is a sentiment analysis tool that goes beyond simply categorizing mentions as positive, negative, or neutral.

The tool can detect six specific emotions of your Facebook audience: admiration, sadness, joy, fear, disgust, and anger.

This detailed sentiment data can provide valuable insights into how your audience feels about your brand, products, services, or the messaging you use in your Facebook posts.

By uncovering these emotions, you can tailor and evaluate your marketing strategies to strengthen positive customer sentiment while addressing negative Facebook comments.

With this level of emotional understanding, you can build stronger connections with your audience and refine your communication for maximum impact.

Step 4: Check the emojis

Another feature that makes Brand24 stand out as the best sentiment analysis tool is its Emoji Analysis. Why is it important for Facebook sentiment analysis?

Because emojis are designed specifically to express or emphasize feelings! In many cases, they reveal human emotions better than plain text ever could.

By analyzing which emojis appear next to your mentions, you can identify specific emotional reactions to your content, campaigns, or announcements.

The Emoji Analysis feature is super simple – larger emojis closer to the center of the matrix indicate a higher frequency of use.

As you can see below, the most popular emojis associated with LEGO are overwhelmingly positive!

Step 5: Dive into topics

If you’re the type of person who loves a data-driven approach, I have great news! There’s even more you can uncover from Brand24’s sentiment analysis on Facebook.

AI Topics Analysis is a form of market research that allows you to identify which themes or subjects are most frequently associated with your brand in Facebook posts, comments, and other online communications.

Additionally, it shows the exact number of mentions for the specific topic, their reach, share of voice within your project, sentiment, and more.

Let’s take LEGO as an example.

I wanted to explore which topics resonate most with customer opinions among LEGO’s Facebook audience.

I navigated to the AI Topic Analysis tab and applied a source filter to focus exclusively on Facebook results.

It turns out that specialized LEGO collections, the brand’s history, and franchise-based LEGO sets generate the most interest – both in terms of volume and positive sentiment share.

What could I do with this knowledge if I were LEGO’s communication specialist?

For example, I could direct future campaigns to spotlight these popular themes, driving even greater engagement.

Additionally, I could craft targeted content that emphasizes specialized collections and franchise sets to strengthen positive customer feedback.

Step 6: Detect influencers 

Like other largest social media networks, Facebook is home to its own influencers.

Brand24 helps you identify these influential profiles and analyze their impact on your brand awareness, visibility, and reputation.

By recognizing key influencers, you can uncover which profiles drive the most engagement with your content, start meaningful discussions, or extend your reach through their audiences.

This feature allows you to determine the best candidates for collaborations or partnerships, helping you connect with a broader audience beyond your current customers.

With these insights, you can build meaningful relationships with the right people to maximize your brand visibility on Facebook.

Step 7: Track the sentiment over time

You should treat sentiment analysis not as a one-time thing but as a continuous process of tracking and evaluating your communications strategy.

In other words, you should make doing your sentiment analysis a habit.

It’s important because even one negative comment (i.e., from an influencer) can harm your brand reputation on Facebook. Therefore, always keep your finger on the pulse.

To track and understand your Facebook performance, use Brand24’s “Compare periods” feature.

It’s a view presenting a table and charts that let you compare Facebook metrics (including sentiment analysis) over different periods.

As you can see below, LEGO is doing really well in terms of consistency. Their current Facebook efforts are even slightly better than in the past.

Keep going, guys!

Why should you constantly monitor the sentiment of Facebook?

• You can see how positive, negative, and neutral mentions change over time and identify trends or anomalies.
• It helps you evaluate the effectiveness of your communications strategy or measure a particular PR campaign.
• You can spot potential issues early and respond to them quickly to protect your reputation.

Conclusion

Facebook sentiment analysis is essential for understanding how your audience on the platform truly feels about your brand and content.

It helps you identify trends, address negative feedback, and uncover what resonates with your customers.

Ignoring sentiment analysis is never a good idea. It can lead to unresolved issues, missed opportunities, or even harm your reputation.

Remember that while manual analysis might work for small-scale monitoring, AI-powered tools like Brand24 are necessary to effectively manage large volumes of data.

Plus, it offers many powerful features to deepen your analysis and make your Facebook efforts as targeted and impactful as possible!

No matter which method you choose, a data-driven approach is essential for social media success.

Final thoughts:

• Sentiment analysis highlights issues, like product complaints, so you can resolve them before they escalate.
• AI-powered tools like Brand24 make tracking emotions and trends at scale easy.
• Manual sentiment analysis usually misses untagged mentions, leaving gaps in your understanding of audience sentiment.

Ready to check your Facebook sentiment right now? Start your Brand24 14-day trial and see how easy it can be!