Word Clouds

What are word Clouds?

Word Clouds are used for visual representation of a text document. They are very popular because they help us easily spot the most frequently occurring words. The more frequent the word is used, the larger and bolder it is displayed.

Here are two examples of a word cloud, one of the BJP Manifesto and the other of the Congress Manifesto 2014. Let’s analyze them…

A quick glance at the word cloud gives us an idea of what BJP’s top focus was — Technology and Education whereas Congress’ focus was Women Empowerment.

Find out how Jigsaw students used Text Mining to Analyze 2014 Election Manifestos

Why use word clouds?

1. They are easy to understand: Word clouds are more visually appealing than tables of data and hence easier to understand.
2. Easy to Share!

Suppose you wanted to share with your boss, the top product reviews that were driving the Sales of your company, all you need to do is send him a word cloud by Email ! 🙂
It is not fortuitous that they are increasingly used for collecting qualitative data, as well as for communicating results.

3. Have word clouds in the shape of your choice:

Now tools like Wordle, Tagxedo and Tag Crowd make it easy for you to actually shape word clouds into an image that reflects your topic. This makes your message more impactful.

4. Most important of all, they are very easy to create .You can use open source tools like R, Python to create them and even if you are not a coder, you have a lot of free word cloud generators.

List of Free Word Cloud Generators:

• Wordle
• Tagxedo
• Word Sift
• Make Word Mosaic
• Word It Out
• Tag Crowd

Where are they most often used?

• Marketing: Make a word cloud from all the customer reviews of a product. Helps you target profitable customers.
• Quantitative Researchers: For communicating qualitative data.
• Twitter: Scan Twitter tweets and make a word cloud to discover the most-tweeted terms and topics. Share this on other social media profiles.
• Non-profits: As an affordable method to collect and share sentiment on social media sites.
• Politicians and journalists – Word Clouds to share the latest political trends!
• Word clouds can also be used to evaluate your brand identity, optimize blogs and marketing content for search engines, and research your competitor’s SEO strategy.

The list is endless and scope immense, so go on get started… get creative with word clouds!