Abstract

User-Generated Content characterizes the interactions between company and customers. Comments and contributions provided by customers in social media platforms represent a relevant input for companies' marketing decisions. A firm cannot avoid this interaction with its customers within social media. Any firm is already part of spontaneous online conversations that cannot be managed by the company. Social media represent an opportunity for Small-Medium Enterprises, which can reach a wide audience of prospects with a small communication budget. This opportunity can be caught if the company is able to measure its communication strategy in a social media platform. The article presents a model to measure and analyze the interactions between a company and social media users. The model classifies the interaction according to some parameters, such as an index of intensity and quality of the discussion. Starting from these parameters, the management can draw some hints about the effectiveness of communication in a social media platform. To verify the mentioned model, it has been applied to the interactions of an entrepreneur in newsgroups and Facebook. The indexes allow to identify some critical points in the communication process and to have suggestions on how to improve it.