Research Tips

Monitoring User-Generated Content

Monitoring user-generated content (often referred to as “Web 2.0” applications), such as blogs and online product reviews and ratings, can be a great way to get insights into how people perceive your product or service. Applying some traditional research techniques to such content can also help you put what you learn into the appropriate context, and avoid putting too much or too little weight on particular comments, ratings, etc.

For example, comments in multiple blogs can be coded to identify common themes, and statistical techniques such as chi-square tests and analysis of variance can be used to determine whether particular types of people are disproportionately likely to make particular comments or to rate your product or service more positively or negatively than others. Also, findings from analysis of user-generated content can be compared to results from customer surveys to determine whether the opinions of bloggers and people who post reviews online are representative of your overall customer base.