We’re still knee deep in research for a non-profit client… I’m using these posts to sort of document pointers (if not the process). I’ve broken our issue based research up into the following buckets:
News, Press Release Sites- Topix for news, tagging press releases through news search engines. For PR Newswire, try searching like this: [“keyword here”] source:pr_newswire__press_release_ . I believe that I picked this tip up from ResearchBuzz.
RSS Directories- like NewsIsFree.
Blog Directories
[tagging] services like Furl.
Research
Non profits and influence
While doing research for a non-profit client we found this interesting short read by Chris Wolz, over at Forum One. Chris compares the online presence of 2 public policy organizations. He uses metrics and tools like Alexa and Google to track online exposure. Chris is smart enough to also track how well known (at least online) key contacts in the organizations are. He also measures and uses website content as a metric.
Before I forget, I thought that I’d list a few of the tools we’re using to track an organization’s influence on the conversation and an issue:
Flickr– includes interesting, homegrown pictures from volunteers.
Wikipedia– has an overview by an influencer. Tracking this ‘thought leader’ has led to additional sightings.
del.icio.us– this seems to work well if the topic (or issue) has broad appeal.
Blogpulse, IceRocket, and other usual suspects & blooging serivces.
Kebberfegg — Keyword Based RSS Feed Generator that makes RSS (and especiallyOPML) easy- this is part of ResearchBuzz!