The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinburg Reviewed by Kimberly Carpenter

I chose this book for a couple of different reasons. First, I really wanted to know what all the hub-bub was about and thought I might be able to incorporate some of this into my work environment. Second, my group is presenting Twitter and I had no idea what Twitter was about or why everyone was talking about it. I had tweeted once in my life, thought it was stupid and never tweeted since. So I admitted to myself that I really needed to know more before I made hasty decisions and gave up tweeting forever.

The book really is a general handbook or guidebook that takes you though the detailed basics of how to get started, figuring out your goals, choosing the right social media to support those goals. Weinberg goes into much detail about some of the major forms of social media available to you, including blogging, microblogging (tweeting), Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, human contribution sites such as Wikipedia and social news sites. You get a good idea of what each is about and how to behave properly so that you are not ousted by the others. Closing the book by pulling it all together.

In general, I thought this book was great for someone like me that really has no idea what it's all about, however it is probably not detailed enough for most students in this class. If you already have an idea of which social marketing tools you would like to use or are already using them, this book may be too general. This book gives you a good overview and you finish knowing a good bit about a lot of different social media sites.

This is the first book Tamar Weinberg has published, has been in the industry for about 15 years. She current works at Mashable, a social media news website and consults on the side. She participates in many social communities and has many online publications. I felt she was a credible source and I also believe that in her consulting career she probably has answered a lot of basic questions and that may be where the very basic nature of the book stems from. I would recommend it for someone like me who has tweeted once in their life and uses Facebook only to share pictures with family and friends. It will give you a good idea if it’s something you would like to pursue, the time and costs involved and the benefits.