Review by Martin Reed:

Angela doesn’t promise you overnight success if you follow her advice. This proves her credibility. Indeed, she actually states that success will not happen overnight and that anything short of a long term commitment will yield mediocre results.

This book could easily have been a piece of propaganda arguing that all brands need an online community and that they offer nothing but huge benefits. Angela convinces you of the realities in this book, though. Besides repeatedly stating that communities take time to develop, she also covers some of the nastier sides of community building – abusive users. She’ll tell you over and over again just how much hard work community building is, and how you need to have personality, tact, an amazingly thick skin and a strong work ethic. I couldn’t agree more.

Here’s what I love about Angela’s book. It’s not just her advice and experience you are getting. During the writing process, Angela openly canvassed the opinions of others involved in community management. For example, in the chapter about how to accept and respond to criticism, Angela tells you what she does and then tells you what others do. The result is a book that is richer and more valuable.

Angela’s book isn’t full of theories, facts and figures. It’s not an academic work. It’s just full of advice, backed up with examples. Her experience shines through.

Angela knows that community managers work differently – they have their own opinions as to what works and their communities are unique. Angela doesn’t pretend that her book will make you an expert. She is honest – she simply tells you what has worked for her (and others) and offers you encouragement to go out and find what will work for your community.

Martin Reed

Community Builder

[...]

Review by Justin P. Fenwick:

Discovering the possibility in community and the work that it requires is a two fold approach not often taken. No wonder online communities fail. Angela Connor takes a look at both in her new book “18 Rules of Community Engagement: A Guide for Building Relationships and Connecting With Customers Online.” Instead of providing us a watered down pipe dream of community online, Angela takes you step by step through some of the work necessary to work towards growth and strength in your own community. It is both a humbling and exciting read; Angela expresses clearly the learning curve she is still on while managing a local online news community [...] of over 11,000 members. There is no ifs, ands, or buts about it, this work is new, unfinished, and never ending. “You can’t force community. You can build it, foster it, cultivate it, and shape it. You can nurture it, believe in it, and support the members who make it what it is on a daily basis. But you can’t force it” (pg. 7).

Reading though the book, I got a tangible sense of what I could do to manage an online community. I am reminded of the reality that this is real work that takes real time and without that – you have nothing. I appreciated Angela’s advocacy for both alignment with an organizations goals for having a community and some emphasis on advisory from the members themselves. Although I’d appreciate more on the latter. The most influential section was that on recognizing and respecting the culture of the community you manage. Culture, as she mentions, is something that is in some ways out of your hands. You have to take the time to learn and study the community creating itself in front of you and let that inform your work. Many lessons transfer offline, but not many examples in the book emphasize the opportunity that exists offline for further connection and development.

The structure of the book into short sections make it an easy read. Occasionally the stories skip around, like on page 76, “I recently found myself torn about whether or not to ban a longtime member who had been pushing the envelope and testing the limits for months…Once he began publicly mocking the rules and posting blogs challenging my authority, I had no choice. He later came back using one of several profiles he’d created which were apparently for the sole purpose of creating chaos.” We don’t hear how the situation was managed after that. Online communities, unlike physical ones, create a strong opportunity for anonymity and new identities. This stands as an issue unresolved.

This was a good read that left me with a new level of intuition afterward. This speaks to the approachable nature of the book. I didn’t feel an urge to take down notes like most books of this type but just read and absorb. As a offline community practitioner, its lessons serve well here too with a little bit of translation.

I’d recommend this book to anyone actively engaged in any online community setting either as a manager, designing, or as a top member looking to understand what they are working with. It’s where we will all find ourselves someday anyways, right? We all need a better understanding that for the first time in a long time, you have to deal with individual people. Angela helps us do that.

Great excerpt on the 90-9-1 principle (pg. 11):

1. If you want to increase quantity of activity in your community, it’s more effective to increase the total population who visit your site than to get current members to participate more (not that you shouldn’t do both, but the former will typically be more effective than the latter).

2. If you want to increase the quality of activity in your community, focus your efforts on that 1% who contribute the most.

3. If you want to find out what the total reach is of your community, be sure to count the 90% or so who are spectators as well as the 10% who are posting.

I love how the structure of an online environment helps bubble down some of the essentials of any community. I will carry these three in my back pocket as solutions: (1) Add people (2) Cultivate your best (3) Keep track of those impacted by or are on the sidelines of the community.

justin fenwick

[...]

creative community consultant

Review by Robert L. Stinnett:

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.

Review by Angus Parker:

I have read a lot of books over the last year that aimed to be the “go to” source for understanding Social Media. Finally, one stands out. ‘The New Community Rules’ by Tamar Weinberg – probably the single most important book to read this year if you are involved in marketing your organization or cause on the web.

Practical, readable and accessible to those just getting starting out in this area, ‘The New Community Rules’ is sure to become the social media “bible”. It starts off with a brief introduction to what social media is, follows with how to set goals, gets into the specifics of what to do, and finishes off with how to measure your results. Tools touched on include: blogs, microblogging, social networks, social bookmarking, social news, Q&A websites, photography, video, and podcasting. At the end, there is a nice ‘Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook’ that spells out the dos and dont’s of using some of the more popular social media sites.

Some points specifically stood out for me. First, Tamar makes it clear that you need to pick and choose which tools to focus on based on your goals and target community – something strangely absent from many other social media books. Then she goes further by spotlighting niche sites that cater to specific audiences, making the point that you can get a lot more exposure with a lot less effort if you use them. WiserEarth, for example, would fit into that category. Second, she goes into a lot of details on what she calls ‘Informational Social Networks’ like Wikipedia, Mahalo Answers, and Yahoo Answers which get a lot of traffic and can generate significant ongoing referrals. Finally, since I’ve never really been able to understand StumbleUpon, a social bookmarking service that we use to great effect at WiserEarth, it was a revelation to read the description in the book.

Besides this book, I recommend a number of other social media “must reads” for non-profits and activists:

* We Are Media – a community effort lead by Beth Kanter and NTEN to put together an online curriculum for nonprofits using social media. Since its a wiki and frequently updated it won’t be obsolete like a book!

* Mobilizing Generation 2.0 by Ben Rigby – a nice summary of social media tools with specifically tailored strategies for the activist / nonprofit community.

* Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky – an oldy (in social media terms) but a goodie, this book is filled with great stories that illustrate the power of social media. Its a helpful frame for starting you web 2.0 exploration.

Review by Jeffrey M. Osier-Mixon:

Anne is a technical writer who has done a considerable amount of work with FLOSS Manuals in documenting the OLPC laptop, and is obviously well-versed in both open-source documentation and social media. The book is designed to give technical writers and other information developers an overview of the tools and techniques available now for documenting products and communicating with end-users through social media and other non-traditional methods.

As a technical writer and community manager, I am exactly the target market for this book, so it is no wonder that I think it is an excellent resource that is long overdue. What surprised me was the depth with which she covered her subjects, the extensive yet highly selective quality of references in the book, and the sheer number of strategies that I hadn’t yet encountered even as a professional in this area.

The most important point Anne makes in the book is that documentation as we know it is changing dramatically. Practically all of the basic tenets of technical documentation are in question. Users depend far more often on advice from random strangers via mailing lists, community forums, and search engines than they do on the technical documentation that comes with the product. I have seen this to be true even for highly technical concepts and tools. This is not news to anyone who has ever used Google to find the answer to a technical question rather than looking in the docs, but it was fascinating to see that phenomenon addressed in such a way that my opinions of it were actually changed. Like many technical writers, I have a lingering fear that I will someday be obsolete and that my job of communicating technical issues to users of technology will be taken over by amateurs in ad-hoc communities. Anne gently reminds us that it is the quantity of information that is skyrocketing, not the quality, and that our jobs as technical communicators are more important than ever in making that information “findable”, even if that means abandoning what we traditionally think of as documentation. What I took away from this aspect of the book was the overwhelming necessity to make human connections, even in technical documentation, an idea that resonates strongly with my own role as a community builder. Chapter 3 spells it out best as “Defining a Writer’s Role with the Social Web”.

The book catalogs the available tools and strategies from several different viewpoints based on documentation strategy—in other words, use cases—rather than simply providing an annotated list. Anne specifically points to references and in-the-trenches stories that underscore her points in a very effective way. The subject that brought me the most “aha!” moments was that of wikis. I use wikis on a daily basis, but there were certain aspects of them that I had overlooked. There were so many interesting references in all sections that I felt compelled to stop reading the book and follow them, which is not a criticism of the writing but rather of the sheer amount of information out there. The consistent, confident, professional tone kept me riveted to the book, but I am now going back over every page and following links.

I highly recommend this book to both technical communicators and those involved in social media and community. My copy is going straight to my boss’ desk.

Review by Craig Haiss:

When I heard this book was in production, I was excited. Anyone who writes documentation for a living has likely been asking the questions it addresses, and has wondered what roles will be available to technical writers as Web 2.0 becomes more pervasive and community-generated documents become widely available.

The author does a great job of getting readers up to speed on the technologies that are shaping the documentation industry. This initial material may be review for some, but you can always skip past it if you don’t see any Web 2.0 tools that are unfamiliar. Next, the author demonstrates her experience and knowledge by asking exactly the questions writers need to consider when stepping into community-generated documentation. What roles can the writer play in such communities? How can a writer get involved in a community and provide authority without threatening the openness and non-corporate feel? How can writers assess whether their community efforts are having a positive impact?

Gentle provides insightful answers and detailed suggestions based on her experiences with FLOSS Manuals, corporate blogging, and other Web 2.0 endeavors. The tips she provides in the latter sections of the book are golden, and I plan on re-reading them a few times and sharing the ideas with others in my field.

As the barriers between writers and consumers fall and transparency becomes increasingly vital to the success of products, this book provides the guidance writers need to be successful. I consider it an investment in my career, and will highly recommend it to others.

Review by Jeff Lippincott:

I liked this book very much. I read the author’s first book on this subject back in July, 2007. And now he has a second great book out on the subject. It includes the following 16 chapters:

1. Making the case

2. Making choices

3. Ear to the ground

4. Courting online influencers

5. Corporate soapboxes

6. Customer conversations

7. The social network gorillas

8. Niche innovations

9. Learning from conversations

10. Basics of social media content

11. Picking your spot

12. Telling stories with words and images

13. Engagement through interaction

14. Promote thyself

15. Measuring results

16. Celebrating change

The book was very easy to read. It is full of great content. And it is very well researched. I found each of the chapters to be packed full of cites to Web sites that are critical players in the social media marketing realm of things. And I’ve read quite a few books on this subject. I can tell you this book is not simple fluff or something merely written in order to capitalize on the current popularity of the subject matter.

There are real world examples cited throughout the text. And I found them to be very good additions to the points being made in the main body of the book’s content. So the numerous cites to Web sites and the inclusion of real world examples makes this book a goldmine of information for anyone hungry to learn about social media marketing. I had one problem with the book – its organization. When I completed it and sat down to write this review I said to myself: “There are 16 chapters in this book. How can they be broken down into three or four “parts?” I had hoped it would be easy for me to eyeball the parts. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. Below is how I think the book probably should have been organized to be a little more easily digestible. 5 stars!

[I] WHY PRACTICE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?

1. Making the case

14. Promote thyself

8. Niche innovations

[II] HOW DOES SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING WORK?

10. Basics of social media content

12. Telling stories with words and images

5. Corporate soapboxes

4. Courting online influencers

6. Customer conversations

13. Engagement through interaction

3. Ear to the ground

9. Learning from conversations

16. Celebrating change

15. Measuring results

[III] SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING OPTIONS

2. Making choices

11. Picking your spot

7. The social network gorillas

Review by Brad Shorr:

This is a comprehensive overview of social media marketing, with enough detail to make it useful for marketing practitioners, yet not having so much detail as to confuse or overwhelm. It’s an excellent starting point for small business owners and leaders, corporate executives, traditional media marketers and advertisers, SEO and SEM service providers, and public relations specialists.

Using case studies, bios of power users, and drawing on his own experience as a tech sector journalist, Gillin makes a strong case for why – and how – social media works. He explains social networking etiquette, which tools to use and for what purpose, how to develop online relationships that support corporate objectives, how to effectively write, promote, and engage on the social Web, and significantly, how to measure results of social media activity. I found his detailed advice on podcasting, video, and image (photo) creation especially helpful, since there’s comparatively little written on these topics.

If you are trying to figure out what all the fuss is about blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, this book is for you. If you’re ready to launch your own social media program, this book will tell you how. Gillin gets into the nitty gritty, explaining such things as how bookmarking sites work, how to use YouTube for business, how to promote your blog, why blogs improve search engine visibility, and why talking to customers increases customer loyalty, attracts business, and accelerates new product/service development.

Like all books on social media, it’s best to read this one now. A year from now, a good bit of the information is likely to be out of date, as Gillin himself points out.

In his closing chapter, Gillin points out that the social Web is not just for marketers. Employees at every level in a business will be directly engaging customers online – it’s already happening. And already, customers are talking about companies on Twitter, Facebook, and the like, whether companies participate in the conversations or not. Gillin’s conclusion – social media is not a fad, it’s a permanent sea change in how business communication takes place. Nobody in management can afford to be in the dark about these developments, which is why I think “Secrets” is a genuinely important book.

Review by Robert L. Stinnett:

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.

Review by Angus Parker:

I have read a lot of books over the last year that aimed to be the “go to” source for understanding Social Media. Finally, one stands out. ‘The New Community Rules’ by Tamar Weinberg – probably the single most important book to read this year if you are involved in marketing your organization or cause on the web.

Practical, readable and accessible to those just getting starting out in this area, ‘The New Community Rules’ is sure to become the social media “bible”. It starts off with a brief introduction to what social media is, follows with how to set goals, gets into the specifics of what to do, and finishes off with how to measure your results. Tools touched on include: blogs, microblogging, social networks, social bookmarking, social news, Q&A websites, photography, video, and podcasting. At the end, there is a nice ‘Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook’ that spells out the dos and dont’s of using some of the more popular social media sites.

Some points specifically stood out for me. First, Tamar makes it clear that you need to pick and choose which tools to focus on based on your goals and target community – something strangely absent from many other social media books. Then she goes further by spotlighting niche sites that cater to specific audiences, making the point that you can get a lot more exposure with a lot less effort if you use them. WiserEarth, for example, would fit into that category. Second, she goes into a lot of details on what she calls ‘Informational Social Networks’ like Wikipedia, Mahalo Answers, and Yahoo Answers which get a lot of traffic and can generate significant ongoing referrals. Finally, since I’ve never really been able to understand StumbleUpon, a social bookmarking service that we use to great effect at WiserEarth, it was a revelation to read the description in the book.

Besides this book, I recommend a number of other social media “must reads” for non-profits and activists:

* We Are Media – a community effort lead by Beth Kanter and NTEN to put together an online curriculum for nonprofits using social media. Since its a wiki and frequently updated it won’t be obsolete like a book!

* Mobilizing Generation 2.0 by Ben Rigby – a nice summary of social media tools with specifically tailored strategies for the activist / nonprofit community.

* Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky – an oldy (in social media terms) but a goodie, this book is filled with great stories that illustrate the power of social media. Its a helpful frame for starting you web 2.0 exploration.