Allen Stenger said
This is a broad look at a wide range of social media from a viewpoint of their usefulness as a part of a marketing strategy. It is aimed at marketing people, not techies, and concentrates on the distinguishing characteristics of the different media while avoiding most of the mechanics of using them. The book is most valuable for its extensive coverage of all the social media.
The first four chapters explain the importance of social media marketing. They repeatedly make the defensive point that people will be saying bad things on these channels about you, your products, and your company, and you need to be there to respond even if you don't intend to push your products there. They also make the point that you need to focused on bringing value-added to you audience, and do the selling only incidentally. They further make the point that there is a conversation going on in these media, and to participate you have to give up on controlling the message and join the existing conversation. Despite the name, social media are primarily about information sharing and not about socializing.
The bulk of the book consists of high-level views of dozens of social media. The level of detail is uneven, and some of the finer details are wrong, but overall it does a good job of explaining and contrasting the different media. The media are evaluated from the viewpoints of their suitability for marketing, their demographics, their communication capabilities and limitations, and their friendliness or hostility to marketing. The numerous marketing examples and case studies are especially valuable.
The production quality of this first printing is OK, not great. There are a few formatting glitches, and some fuzzy charts that apparently did not get converted from color to black-and-white correctly. The few things that I thought were typos were actually copied faithfully from the social media being described. My favorite (p. 73) is from Prime Cuts Blog, which has a video purporting to teach you how to sharpen a knife using a wet stone. The index is very good; it would have been nice also to have an index or list of the case studies (they are indexed individually by company name). All the footnotes and Further Reading items are on the web, and all are given as bare URLs, with no description, summary, or commentary.
Daniel Scocco said
Social media is much broader than MySpace or Facebook, and Tamar is well aware of that. Throughout the book she coves pretty much all aspects of marketing on the social web.
On each chapter you will also find real examples that illustrate the concepts and give you ideas to implement on your own projects.
A must read if you are looking to understand the social media phenomenon.
Christy Pinheiro EA ABA said
ESSENTIAL reading for anyone trying to market online!
I consider this book essential reading for anyone trying to market anything online. The marketing world had changed completely, and even my marketing books that are just 5 years old already seem ridiculously outdated.
This book covers all the basics and even some new things that I know very little about (What the heck is DIGG IT?). Really, consider buying this before trying to market your products anywhere, especially since now a days it's almost impossible to market anything without an online platform.
I'm an author myself (I write accounting books) and almost all of my sales are either directly or indirectly generated on the web. A lot of the information in this book was new to me, and I consider myself to have a fair amount of internet savvy.
Just one note, though-- I think that people who are REALLY marketing pros; might think the book is a not advanced enough for them. But for the other 99% of us, I think this book has a lot of useful information to offer.
Recommended!
Christy Pinheiro the author of: *The Step-by-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit*
Frank Mitch said
Reviewer: Dave Roman, GCPCUG member
Chapter One - An Introduction to Social Media Marketing
This chapter introduces the concept of social media marketing and explains its role in today's online marketing initiatives. This chapter also covers some of the primary tools used for a social media marketing campaign. He briefly describes some of the more popular sites like Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Delicious, stumbleupon, facebook, myspace and linkedin.
Chapter Two - Goal Setting in a Social Environment
This chapter discusses the challenges and hurdles faced in social media marketing and also explains the various ways to leverage social media marketing to achieve specific goals.
Chapter Three - Achieving Social Media Mastery
He outlines tools for monitoring online chatter and what you can do to appease your audience.
Chapter Four - Participation is Marketing
This chapter explains how participation online is critical to success in social media marketing and presents case studies highlighting small and large businesses achieving success with this tactic.
Chapter Five - Using Blogs To Communicate, Influence and Learn from your Constituents
Describes the growth of blogs and explains how to set up a blog from scratch and how to make it friendly for social media communities.
Chapter Six - Microblogging Magic
He illustrates microblogging service Twitter and explains how to use the service. He also features successful case studies,
Chapter Seven - Getting Social
He discusses the primary 3 social networking sites and explains how you can use them appropriately for social media marketing gain.
Chapter Eight - Informing Your Public
Highlights knowledge exchange websites such as Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers and offers insights into how you can use these networks to establish thought leadership and expertise.
Chapter Nine - Leaving Your Mark
Presents the concept of social bookmarking sites and explains how to use these services.
Chapter Ten - Social News Brings You Page Views
The chapter explains the benefits of content creation for social news sites and outlines the steps you can take to write great content for, and to become a successful contributor to those sites.
Chapter Eleven - New media Tactics
.covers the services that allow you to promote your photographs and videos and explains how you can become a rock star podcaster or videoblogger.
Chapter Twelve - Sealing The Deal
This last chapter explains the best approach for a successful social media marketing strategy, especially once you're armed with the information presented in the preceding chapters.
This is a great book for the novice or the expert. Lots of good information and links to social sites and tools. It also contains an etiquette handbook. It's worth every penny
Robert L. Stinnett said
In "New Community Rules" the author has created a handbook that is not only an excellent read, but also an excellent primer for any organization or enterpreneur trying to answer the question, "So what can this social media stuff do for me?"
In a methodical approach, covering all the bases of social media as it exists today, the author will walk you through the various aspects of social media marketing and how to use each of them to strengthen your company or brand. She teaches you the do's and don'ts of the social mediasphere -- and as many marketing folks know, the don'ts are probably one of the most valuable lessons you can ever learn. For example, don't use social media to try and push your products on people who haven't engaged with you -- it simply will not work.
The book itself was written for folks who probably haven't had much experience in the social media sphere. It not only walks you through the various offerings out there (from Facebook to Flickr; from Digg to Twitter) but also how each one of them is used -- and who uses them. It's important to note, and the author does a good job of this, that not every social media site is meant for every type of person or brand. Just like a focus group, you have to find the right environment for your social media efforts.
Anyone who is involved in marketing will find this book invaluable. The only drawback to it is that references to sites and such are very much based on what we know now, in 2009, to be true. No doubt in a few years the sites will have changed, but the principles behind social media marketing and interacting with your customers will still be the same.
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