With our objectives in hand (Case Study) we can start creating searches in Nexalogy that will help us answer our research questions. For this tutorial we will focus on searching Google Blogs and Twitter. While it is more complicated than this, Google Blogs generally contain more in-depth discussion that is the product of some reflection and Twitter tends to contain more immediate responses to issues as they happen. Before attempting any social media research analysis, it’s also important to understand how the target population you are researching is using social media (See our first Lesson of doing social media research). Once you’ve carefully considered your target and source you’re ready to start searching.
Our first step in the search process is to determine the largest element of a topic so that we can get a sense of how big the conversation is and a high level view of what people are saying. Usually the largest element is fairly obvious, but if not you will have to experiment and modify your search(es) iteratively.
You create a new project from the home screen by clicking the “Create A New Project” button.
Give the project a name and choose the source. In Nexalogy, each project is limited to one source (to search another source you can create another project).
We’re going to start with a Google Blog search in English.
Click create and you’re ready to start searching Google Blogs.
You’re now ready to start: Analyzing and Reporting