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