This survey by TEKGROUP International and Associate Professor Ken Payne of Western Kentucky University paints a clear picture of the current trends in news and information sharing through social media platforms. If you’ve already got a social media strategy for distributing your organization’s news and events information, or if you’re still in the development phase, this survey’s results can help you to refine and evaluate your plans.

The ultimate start-to-finish guide to Twitter for nonprofits. M + R Strategies describes the Twitter universe and supplies excellent advice on setting up and using your account. The Twitter community has its own laws of etiquette, and this guide will help you fit in. It outlines good manners, best practices, and desired traits. If you’re an advanced user, there’s a section with very clever tips for getting the maximum amount of attention for your organization. A slightly longer read, but entertaining and well worth your time.- Leah Sivieri, ReThink Media

A general introduction to the new media landscape from Fenton Communications—perhaps most useful for its guidelines on pre-strategizing research. It tells you how you can find and dissect the conversation surrounding your issues in new media, and suggests ways you can reach your target audiences online. It also provides a sparse overview of the new media outlets you should consider incorporating into your strategy—but other guides in our library have more thorough information in that regard.

Torrential streams of Twitter updates contain valuable information about public opinion and dialogue. There’s an emerging demand to sieve coherent messaging data from these Tweet streams. This piece written by limyh at Social Media Today covers 8 tools that will help you extract strategic information from Twitter, including: Twitalyzer, Micro Plaza, Twist, Twitturly, Tweetstats, Twitterfriends, Thummit Quickrate and Tweeteffect. - Leah Sivieri, ReThink Media

Quality: 5/5 Skill Level: Advanced