The blogging has been light, admittedly, the past week or two because I’ve been working on this.

Yes, another report from the Edge – this time on user-generated content and a few Web 2.0 tools. Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo Inc. conducted a study for the Newspaper Association of America that looked at several types of UGC through the eyes of consumers in five U.S. markets: Atlanta, Denver, Milwaukee, Norfolk, and Tampa.

The study looks at current UGC and Web 2.0 tool usage in those markets, and – more importantly – identifies they type of UGC of most interest to consumers and the enhancements that will have the most impact on driving usage.

Unfortunately, featuring these UGC and Web 2.0 tools (and the enhancements that drive usage) aren’t enough. It’s the opposite of “If you build it, they will come.”  This study found that if you build it and your site visitors don’t know about it, then they’re not going to use it.

With every type of UGC and with every Web 2.0 tool in this study, there was one central conclusion: Awareness of UGC features on a newspaper’s Web site has a definite, positive impact on future intent to use those features. This underscores the importance of involving the marketing department – and anyone who touches house ads, promos, photo captions, the newspaper site home page or any other bit of the site – in an awareness and outreach campaign.

The study is available at www.naa.org/ugcopportunities.

P.S.  Next week, I’ll be excerpting from the opinion pieces we asked a few media gurus to write in connection with our report on UGC. We asked these people to write a page or two about where they believe the opportunities are for newspapers with UGC.

P.P.S.  Tomorrow’s Online Publishing Update will be here on the Digital Edge blog.