I have read a lot of books over the last year that aimed to be the "go to" source for understanding and taking advantage of Social Media. Finally, one stands out. 'The New Community Rules' by Tamar Weinberg - 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 started 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 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.