Who is talking? An ontology-based opinion leader identification framework for word-of-mouth marketing in online social blogs

Online social blogs have gained popularity recently. They provide an effective channel for word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing to promote products or service. In WoM marketing, an opinion leader, who is normally more interconnected and has a higher social standing, can deliver product information, provide recommendations, give personal comments, and supplement professional knowledge that help companies to promote their products. Many theories have been put forward about social networks, but few address the issue of opinion leader identification. This study proposes a framework to identify opinion leaders using the information retrieved from blog content, authors, readers, and their relationships, which we call BARR for short. We first build ontology for a marketing product and then collect parameters from BARR to identify "hot topics" related to the product. These hot topics are then associated with information disseminators, or opinion leaders. Marketers can use BARR to track blogs written by opinion leaders and identify their opinions to form effective marketing strategies. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.