At the very least the medium offers you an insight into how people view your organisation and is a valuable research and feedback tool but when fully embraced the various technologies offer tools and solutions to overcome some of the biggest communication challenges that affect and afflict your organisation.

If you are not committed to engaging with the world through this powerful new medium you risk getting left behind as the old communication tools lose their relevance and effectiveness. If your means of communication is out-of-date, your organization can easily be viewed the same.

Social Media: The new communication landscape will give you an invaluable understanding of:

• The major players in the social media landscape;
• The underpinning technologies of blogs, podcasts, vidcasts and wikis;
• The geographic, demographic and psychographic differences that exist within all of these communities;
• The distinct rules of behaviour expected of visitors, and particularly, commercial organisations;
• How to engage your social media audience and have them positively attend to your brand, product or service;
• How to utilise SMART (Social Media Aggregation and Republishing Tools©) to better manage your valuable time;
• How social media can inform internal cross-company communication, thought leadership, community brand-raising, digital reputation, crisis communications and team working;
• How to measure the impact of social media on your communications, reputation and—for those keen on CSR—triple-bottom line;
• How to sell communication innovations to senior management.

The report provides valuable information on the key applications available today in a straight forward, commercially relevant manner. Applications including Flickr, YouTube, Wordpress, Typepad, ooVoo, Libsyn, seesmic, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, MySpace, Meebo, Jaiku, Pownce, Second Life, there.com, Club Penguin, and Habbo Hotel, inter alia.

Case studies from organisations that are achieving success in this area are provided with lessons learned and clear advice on avoiding the many pitfalls. Further information is provided on future trends and tool development as well as a discussion as to where the new communication landscape is leading us. Finally the report takes a look at lessons to be learnt from both old technologies and old practices and analyses benefits to be gained from applying the relevant elements of old processes with the new technologies.

All of this is backed up with a useful glossary of Social Media terms and a list of additional resources you will find useful.