Natural Language Processing 

Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of artificial intelligence that helps computers
understand, interpret and manipulate human language. NLP draws from many disciplines,
including computer science and computational linguistics, in its pursuit to fill the gap between
human communication and computer understanding.

Natural Language Processing is among the hottest topic in the field of data science. Companies
are putting tons of money into research in this field. Everyone is trying to understand Natural
Language Processing and its applications to make a career around it.natural language processing
has evolved into something so powerful and impactful, which no one could have imagined. To
understand the power of natural language processing and its impact on our lives, we need to take
a look at its applications. Therefore, I have put together a list of the top 10 applications of natural
language processing.
Natural language processing (NLP) is one of the most promising avenues for social media data
processing. It is a scientific challenge to develop powerful methods and algorithms which extract
relevant information from a large volume of data coming from multiple sources and languages in
various formats or in free form.
Application area of Natural language processing for social media monitoring

Introduction
Social media is a phenomenon that has recently expanded throughout the world and quickly
attracted billions of users. This form of electronic communication through social networking
platforms allows users to generate its content and share it in various forms of information,
personal words, pictures, audio, and videos.

Therefore, social computing is formed as an emerging area of research and development that
includes a wide range of topics such as Web semantics, artificial intelligence, natural language
processing, network analysis, and Big Data analytics. Over the past few years, online social
networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, LinkedIn, Metacafe, Vimeo,
etc.) have revolutionized the way we communicate with individuals, groups, and communities,
and have altered everyday practices . The broad categories of social media platforms are:
content-sharing sites, forums, blogs, and microblogs.

On content sharing sites (such as Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare, Flickr, YouTube) people
exchange information, messages, photos, videos, or other types of content. On Web user forums
(such as StackOverflow, CNET forums, Apple Support) people post specialized information,
questions, or answers. Blogs (such as Gizmodo, Mashable, Boing Boing, and many more) allow
people to post messages and other content and to share information and opinions. Micro-blogs
(such as Twitter, Sina Weibo, Tumblr) are limited to short texts for sharing information and
opinions. The modalities of sharing content in order: posts; comments to posts; explicit or
implicit connections to build social networks (friend connections, followers, etc.);cross-posts and
user linking; social tagging; likes/favorites/starring/voting/rating/etc.; author information; and
linking to user profile features

Background
This research paper aims at clarifying social media monitoring from the perspective of
international companies. A systematic literature review was used to seek current insights on the
methods used, and so illuminate not only the benefits but also the difficulties attached to the
monitoring process. With the development of science and technology, social media have come to
exert great impact on commercial value. With high numbers of users, issues spread fast via social
media. This affects international corporations which, in order to maintain profitable
relationships, need to identify issues early and monitor and predict their growth. The concept
issue refers to how a topic is seen and discusse. Issues are social constructions and may be
perceived differently by different public groups. Company issues can be very diverse, and
include, for example, criticism of the social responsibility of a firm in the public debate. Early
prognosis of issue interaction could prevent financial or reputational losses.
Therefore, monitoring social media interaction has become vitally important for international
companies. Social media offer an interactive platform for dialogue between users, including
individuals and companies. Companies have different objectives for being active in social media,
which serves not only early identification of issues but also interaction with stakeholders.
In order to attract attention to the brand and accelerate the development of online trade,
international companies have adapted social corporate marketing and the use of media
marketing channels . Their attention has shifted from passive one-way communication on the
company’s home page to more vivid two-way corporate communication. As global and complex
platforms, social media exert a profound impact on international companies with businesses all
over the world, as acknowledged in corporate communications. The increasing activity in social
media also calls for methods to follow online consumer interaction regarding the brand.
Consequently, researchers have shown increasing interest in what is measured and how, when
monitoring and tracking interaction in social media. Monitoring includes listening, interpreting,
and taking action on what people are saying or otherwise conveying. Monitoring can be defined
as finding out what is expressed online, for example about a company’s products and services,
and should be a default social media function. Observing and evaluating interaction in social
media needs an open mind. The results of social media monitoring provide a ‘snapshot’ of a
discussion at a particular moment or show developments in a discussion over time. The term
‘tracking’ refers to following the development of a particular phenomenon that has been
identified in the course of the monitoring process. While the monitoring of social media
interaction has obvious advantages, it also incurs considerable costs. These factors provide the
rationale for this study, which aims at clarifying the methods of monitoring used, and their
benefits and challenges for international companies. A company can use the results of
monitoring to decide how to intervene in social media. To do this effectively requires good data.
This study focuses on what may facilitate or hinder the creation of such data

Problem identification

1) Irrelevant mentions in search

results
Two common issues reported by users are the amount of “noise” and the number of
duplicate mentions ending up in their search results. And then, as the cherry on top, users set
up a coverage alert and their inbox gets pummeled with irrelevant emails.If you’re
consistently getting media monitoring results that leave you scratching—or shaking—your
head, it’s time to take action.

2) Missed media mentions

Nothing is more frustrating than when crucial media mentions are not captured in your
results. A missed mention could equal you overlooking an early sign of a crisis, a crucial
competitor update, or an important placement your brand or client received that you would
have wanted to highlight. While some users will turn to Google or social channels to fill in the
gaps, this is hardly ideal. It creates extra work and means that your media coverage will be
dispersed across tools, which is not ideal for reporting purposes.
3) Disorganized saved coverage
Once you’ve set up your searches and begun to sift through coverage, it can feel like you’ve just
walked into an episode of Hoarders. The amount of media mentions can be overwhelming,
especially if you’re searching for a lot of keywords or across many media types. Scrolling
through a seemingly endless list of articles begs the question, “How do I organize all of this,
synthesize the data, and communicate its value to my stakeholders?”. It can seem even more
complicated when you also want to report on your coverage from multiple angles, like if you
want to report on all your brand’s individual products as well as its product lines.
4) Difficulty reporting
Public relations (PR) is the set of techniques and strategies related to managing how
information about an individual or company is disseminated to the public, and especially
the media.
PR measurement is increasingly becoming more and more essential.
Unfortunately, some media monitoring tools haven’t kept up with the demand for
flexible reporting. Online reviewers often mention that their tool is cumbersome to
use and difficult to set up. Throw in the fact that many reports aren’t easily
customized and it’s understandable why this is a top challenge for PR practitioners.
Sometimes PR professionals are so limited by the reporting features in their media
monitoring tool that they turn to spreadsheet tools like Excel to accomplish their
goals, which takes extra time and effort.

5) Unable to access own

searches
Unbelievably, there are still some media monitoring tools that do not allow users
to set up their own searches. This can be frustrating for those who are unable to
update their searches quickly or often enough since an account manager must
perform all the changes.
Not only is this an impediment to productivity, it’s frustrating to users who must
wait to get insights on emerging topics.
Proposed solution
The solution
Reducing irrelevant mentions usually happens by going back to the drawing board.
Look at the searches you’ve already set up and review their filters.
Here are some things to consider when reviewing your search structures:
 Recreate an existing search as a new search. Add the filters one by one,
starting broad then narrowing in. From there you can add negative keywords
to your search to suppress the wrong type of mentions from being included.
For example, if you’re running a search for the technology company Apple,
you will likely need to suppress types of apples like “Golden Delicious”,
“Granny Smith” and “Fuji”.
 If your search returns an overwhelming number of mentions, consider how
and where it can be broken up into a series of smaller, more specific
searches. For example, if you’ve created a search for industry news you
could separate it into one for regulatory updates and another for emerging
industry trends.
 Be sure to put quotes around phrases that should be kept together. For
example, if you’re searching for ice cream, you’ll want to spell it out as “ice
cream” so that you’re not getting mentions with only the word “ice” or
“cream” included.
 Take a close look at all filters available in your tool. There are some which
are less obvious to new users, like searching only keywords in the headline
or enabling case sensitivity for abbreviated words. For example, a search for
“IDA” could end up returning a lot of irrelevant results if case sensitivity were
not turned on.
 Some media monitoring tools will have an expert mode feature, which
allows for new options, such as more creative use of keyword groups and
proximity searches. Check out our How to Build the Ultimate Search
String article if you need to brush up on Boolean logic required for advanced
searching.
2 The solution
Missed mentions are best addressed in the buying or renewal stage. Make sure
you’re asking questions of your vendor and getting accurate information about the
capabilities of the tool you’re using or are interested in.
Not all platforms are created equal and you’ll want to make sure yours has a good
reputation for giving a complete view of coverage.
However, if you’re not ready or able to switch media monitoring tools, there are
many tactics you can employ to make sure you get the complete picture.
 TV and radio mentions are more commonly missed than print or online news
articles. Transcript sources for TV (closed captioning) and radio (“voice to
text” software) are never perfect, and you may find that brands, names, and
places relevant to you are misspelled. A good example is Ikea often shows as
“Eye Kia” in transcripts. We recommend becoming familiar with these
misspellings and using them as keywords in your searches.
 Missed mentions can often be overcome by double checking your search
logic. If you recreate a search you’ve made in the past and layer on one filter
at a time to analyze the results, you may notice filters that can be adjusted to
ensure more essential mentions come through.
 Be careful when applying geographic filters, especially for social and online
content as geography is not well defined by the platforms/outlets
themselves. You may end up cutting out important mentions if you limit
geography too much.
 Consider if there may be scenarios where your brand’s logo appears but it’s
not mentioned by name. For example, if your brand is an airline, your logo
may appear on planes pictured in online news images about the aviation,
transportation or tourism industry. To get a full view of your coverage we
recommend including an image monitoring search.
 Are you catching both singular and plural mentions of your keywords? If
you’re not, use an asterisk to capture all variations. For example, if you’re
looking for any articles that mention either “bee” or “bees” you can write the
keyword as bee* to include both variations in your results.
 If your provider has a find related concepts option when building your search,
take advantage of it. This feature will examine the keywords you’ve already
added and suggest related topics you might have overlooked
3 The solution
Being inundated with media coverage can be stressful. Luckily, it’s one of the
easier media monitoring challenges to address.
Here are some pointers:
 Be specific with your searches. You will still need some general search topics,
but you can also save yourself a lot of time by creating a series of very
specific searches. For example, if you work for a bakery that sells three
distinct types of baked goods you can have a separate search for “cakes”,
“pies”, and “muffins” as well as a general search. Once you have specific
searches, some tools will allow you to tag the coverage automatically to
organize it into separate reports.
 If your media monitoring tool allows you to apply multiple tags to each
media mention, do it! Going back to the bakery example, you can have tags
for flavors in addition to type of baked good. For example, you can choose to
tag things with the types of ingredients being used like “blueberry” or
“carrot”. This way you can report on the media coverage across cakes, pies,
and muffins, but also items with blueberries or carrots. This will enable you
to report on your bakery overall, but also uncover specific and meaningful
insights.
 Some media monitoring tools allow you to save your coverage into folders,
thus organizing mentions into distinct coverage topics. This can be very
helpful for in-house communications teams at large organizations and
agencies working with multiple brands.
 Having a series of specific searches and a system for tagging your media
coverage makes it possible to have well-organized media briefs. Depending
on the tool you use, you may be able to pull in all recent mentions with a
certain tag into a media brief or a section of a media brief.
4 The solution
If you’re in the advantageous position of researching media monitoring vendors,
it’s extremely helpful to have an in-depth demonstration of reporting capabilities
before signing on. Be sure to ask about how you can customize reports for your
own needs and how easy it is to share them.
On the other hand, if you’re unable to switch vendors, here are a couple of tips for
making the most of reporting in your current tool:
The way you set up searches and how you organize mentions can really play into
how you report on coverage. If you only have a few broad topics, it can severely
limit your reporting function. Review the tips in the last section to learn more
about organizing your mentions.
5 The solution
Like with most issues, being unable to access your own searches is easily solved by
having an upfront conversation with the media monitoring vendor before signing
on. Some vendors may try to downplay this aspect and the inconveniences it
causes users, so be sure to get a clear answer on whether you will be in control of
your own searches.
Aside from leaving feedback with your provider that this process is inconvenient,
there may not be much more to do other than switching vendors.
Regardless of which media monitoring tool you’re using, the company should have
a supportive team willing and ready to help you address and overcome any of the
challenges discussed in this article. If you didn’t catch something in the buying
process, it’s worth bringing up to them now and seeing what can be done. If they
really appreciate your business, they’ll do what they can to keep you happy. But if
you’re not getting the level of customer support you need, it might be time to
consider switching tools. We recommend setting a reminder for yourself to review
other media monitoring tools before renewing your current agreement.
CONCLUSION
Social media will always be a key factor in communication both in personal lives
and the business world. It impacts our lives in so many ways and helps businesses
be able to function properly and efficiently. This is all depending on how you
choose to present yourself or your business online. It can have positive or negative
effects on potential and current customers, present and future employees and
partners, and brandawareness. We also talked about our recommendations we
thought were best when using social media in the workplace. They consisted of:
incorporating the right social media sites for a business, setting targets and
measuring the performance of the role that social media plays, and also monitoring
the use of business related social media versus unrelated social media at the
workplace. Overall, internet sites such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram,
and others give businesses a cheaper and fasterway to reach consumers, market
their company or products, look at present or future employees, get product or
service feedback, and build relationships

Reference
http://natural languge processing social media montering