In the wake of Apple’s recent iPad unveiling, Spring Creek Group set out to quantify the impact of this product launch. Here’s a play-by-play for how we set out about that task…

In our WOMMA presentation about social media monitoring tools we discuss several of the key tools that can be used to track sentiment. Most of these tools use automated sentiment tracking that are based on NLP (natural language processing) and tell you an absolute number of positively scored posts for a given topic, during a given timeframe for a given media type.  While it would be awesome to have a point and click solution for quantifying sentiment in the absolute, the social media measurement landscape has just not evolved to that place yet, and tools like Alterian SM2, Radian6, scout labs and Nielsen buzz metrics are all roughly similar in terms of the algorithm they use to calculate sentiment.

There was a recent blog post by web metrics guru  Marshall Sponder trumpeting the need for a common set of shared methodologies for measuring sentiment across measurement platforms and we could not agree more. However, until that time comes we at SCG are not happy to just sit on our hands. So what we find most-actionable is using this data in a directional sense to determine whether a product launch, event, marketing campaign or meme is gaining traction or increasing its velocity in a positive or negative sense. That is why we use indexes to identify whether a brand, product, individual or idea is increasing positive or negative sentiment or losing its share of influence or increasing its popularity or authority. Index scores are a great way to determine the optimal and measure change over time as it relates to the optimal.

Using the iPad as an example, we plotted the company’s two most-recent product launches against its share price and found an interesting inverse relationship between our online perception sentiment index¹ and share price. There’s not enough data to determine if this relationship is causal but if sentiment is taken as directional, the data might suggest we’ve witnessed a poor product launch as opposed to the launch of a poor product.

For this exercise we used the Alterian/Techrigy SM2 platform. We’d like to point out that the SM2 tool has a custom sentiment dictionary that you can add to and subtract from to highly configure your sentiment mix based on profile. Marshall Sponder forgot to note in his blog post, reviewing the quality of data derived from a common set of keywords and the scoring for sentiment that was applied out of the box. We understand he did this to compare out of the box tools, however as with most things the real values of a tool comes from how you implement the tool in conjunction with people and process.

By using a tool like Techrigy to gather sentimented content about your brand, product or competitors’ brands or products, and tracking that over time using a sentiment index score is one very actionable way that marketers could look at a product launch like the iPad and gain actionable insight into the impact that social media has or had on an event of this magnitude.

If you watched the latest launch or read any of the live streams, it seemed as though something was just a little off. If you didn’t, here’s a great three minute version on Gizmodo. There wasn’t that sort of child-like wonderment in the crowd and perhaps the iPad had seen a little too much hype in the days, weeks and months prior. There isn’t a shortage of negative-leaning articles on both the product and the launch itself, but what’s different is that even sites and publications that have traditionally drank the Apple Kool-Aid are making these statements.

When adding stock prices to the mix you run the risk of making assumptions that are based on forward-looking projections, but the overall story stays somewhat the same – people are trading based on their perception of company direction and product viability. Investors are thinking with their wallets, while Apple enthusiasts are thinking with their hearts in most cases, as Apple enthusiasts have proven a dedicated (and growing) fan base time and time again. At the last major MacBook announcement stock prices trended down while at the same time Mac fans were frothing at the mouth waiting for the updated line.

Likewise, how does iPad’s buzz compare to that of other recent news? Looks like Apple is taking full advantage of both rants and raves to drive buzz up, up, up and away…too bad that Wall Street is now getting smarter and not making business decision based solely on buzz…wait a minutes did we just say Wall Street is getting smarter?

The Final Word…

You get the final word on your blog, so we’re taking the final word on ours. If you feel like you just got a little peek behind the curtain at the great and powerful Oz, you kind of did. We’re not normally all about giving away our secrets, but the fact of the matter is that for too long now analytics and measurement professionals have been sitting back and creating these indexes based on spur-of-the-moment decisions and tired traditions – both equally detrimental – and that needs to change. We’re standing with Sponder and want to work toward standardized metrics and practices that can give brands and markets a clear picture of the social media landscape that’s forever expanding right in their own front yards. Consider this our flag in the ground. Feel free to discuss and, as always, leave a comment in the comment section and we’ll get back to you.