New Media
New media is best understood as a group of new kinds of online media which share most or all of the following characteristics: Participation, Openness, Conversation, Community and Connectivity.
On a blog, a forum, a wiki, a podcast or a social network, users are communicating and interacting with each other, sharing their experiences with your brand, even though you like it or not.
Although companies were reserved at first, they finally realized that they need to get into the discussions and communicate directly to their consumers. The ones that do it with openness and with a good new media strategic plan, managed to transform the new media into a new channel for disseminating their key messages and targeting much better their consumers.
But in order to be efficient when it comes to new media you need a consultant who is part of the phenomenon and can easily adapt your messages to the dialogue of the social media tools. Otherwise, communicating traditionally with new media can be catastrophic.