Thomson Reuters, my former employer, published this week its social media guidelines, rules that all its journalists should consider before Tweeting, blogging, uploading, or simply publishing, the news. The principles espoused – accuracy, objectivity, transparency – are hardly futuristic. They are values you’d hear in most any “Introduction to Journalism” course and well worth repeating in news rooms over and over again.

I was reminded of the Reuters social media code of conduct while talking to Keith Childs, a social media specialist at Opel, the German automaker owned by General Motors. He’d just returned from The Geneva Auto Show where he and two colleagues had embedded themselves as reporters, Tweeting, blogging, photographing and shooting video reports of everything they saw that looked newsworthy over a manic two days.

“I was a reporter,” Childs wrote on his blog. “Or, more accurately, I had to think like a reporter… Instead of re-purposing press material I was part of a team creating content. Writing text. Taking pictures.”

Reflecting on this experience, Childs and I discussed what he refers to as “the changing role of communicators,” or, what you might also call the need for companies to “find their voice.” (“Finding your voice” is a phrase journalism professors use a lot. Yes, I used it often when I taught an introductory journalism course a few years back.)

The company-as-news-outlet concept is not entirely new, nor is it revolutionary. General Motors, for one, introduced for car lovers a few years ago a series of blogs dedicated to its car brands at GMblogs. (There are now six blogs in the GMblogs garage; GM’s social network for Saturn users, ImSaturn, was recently pulled offline presaging the brand’s own demise). The editorial emphasis of GM blogs like Fastlane is akin to that of a glossy car magazine, minus any hint of breaking news, but they do have their loyal readers. Another lesser example comes from McDonald’s. It’s using its YouTube channel to detail its CSR and sustainability commitments, for which it’s attracted in the first two months a whopping 657 viewings. We’re not talking billions and billions served.

Companies unwillingness to break news of any kind on the corporate blogs, YouTube channels or Facebook fan pages make them all too often a secondary news source. Their obvious biases too don’t help. But that doesn’t mean brands cannot become a valuable source of specialized news. To boost their credibiltiy, they just need to think like journalists, as Childs says.

I asked Childs to share with me the lessons he took from the Geneva Auto Show that companies could apply for their own in-house editorial operations. Here’s what he says:

1) Don’t ever script what your in-house reporters should write. “I would have felt uncomfortable if I had a brief,” Childs says. The task was to show car enthusiasts on the Opel blog a behind-the-scenes look at what Opel was doing at the auto show. Childs is confident they achieved this and it’s because he and his editorial colleagues weren’t pressured by anybody within Opel to follow a certain news agenda.

2) Organize yourself like a mini news operation with specialized tasks. The trio divided up the tasks such as shooting and editing the video reportage; writing up interviews (and taking photos) for the blog; and someone stayed close to the computer to monitor the Twitter feed. “Everyone had Tweetdeck open, but you have to be sure just one person responds,” he instructs. “Sounds simple, but it takes coordinating.”

3) The publishing technology is still well ahead of the corporate mindset, and this imbalance poses a problem. “It takes very little time and money to launch a Posterous blog,” Childs says, referring to the publishing platform they chose. And of course there are plenty of people within an organization familiar with Twitter, YouTube and posting to Facebook, he adds. “It’s the cultural aspect within companies that is the only thing holding it back,” he says, adding, he thinks companies, particularly those in Europe, are on the eve of a tipping point where they begin to fully embrace in-house reporting. The upshot: deal with it, purists. More companies will be blogging the news that impacts their bottom line very soon if they aren’t already.

4) Read your blog, check your Twitter feed, monitor your YouTube videos regularly, Childs says. Otherwise, you’ll have no idea what your audience likes and dislikes. It’s not as obvious as you think. There are all kinds of assumptions that circulate through an organization about the public’s tastes, preferences and opinions. To be charitable, not all of these assumptions are correct, and certainly they do not add up to base a rigorous editorial strategy on. Where then to turn? Your readers.

5) Transparency is key to any news forum that allows for public opinion. For example, GM has a very progressive reader response policy. It welcomes all comment, even critical, as long as it isn’t racist, sexist, xenophobic or an outright menacing threat. Opel adopted the same policy, Childs says.

So how does this stand up to Reuters’ social media guidelines? Accuracy? Check. Transparency? Check. Bias-free? Childs, for one, would say that too is key. See Point 1. Check.

…to impress the boss, a client or room-full of curious suits. Then you might want to look at this social media presentation from Stefano Principato posted to Slideshare earlier this week. It has a little of everything, including graphics that detail:

• the growth of social networks
• Twitter and Facebook usage patterns
• user profiles by social network, including age breakdowns
• consumption/sharing habits of all of the above.
• graphics on social networking usage in society, plus geographic breakdowns.

Think of it as a chart-of-the-day in 39 slides. Grazie, Stefano, for putting this together.

If you’re not familiar with the 90-9-1 explanation of online community engagement/participation, it goes something like this:

• 90 percent of those who enter an online community are your silent majority; they observe, but don’t participate. They are frequently referred to as “lurkers.”
• 9 percent participate, but only intermittently.
• and the remaining 1 percent are “heavy contributors.”

This concept has been put forth by a number of social media pundits, most recently by Jakob Nielsen who gives us this handy 90-9-1 pyramid.

To be sure, it’s a convenient shorthand to predict what kind of interaction you can reasonably expect from your community, whether it be employees participating in a closed-off wiki, or the Facebook fan page presided over by the marketing department. The problem is the model is overly simplistic and doesn’t quite explain why all too often you get dead air, zilch, crickets when you post something that you think is brilliant and provocative and, at other times, there’s a much more vibrant response from the community when you post something you think is, well, brilliant and provocative.

Partly because of this discrepancy, the 90-9-1 “rule” is under fire. Some say that a lurker is actually a participant, and that simply lumping them into the silent majority doesn’t accurately reflect the true community dynamics. Others see 90-9-1 as too charitable. It’s closer to 99-.9-.1, they say.

Truth is 90-9-1 serves a purpose if you regard it as not a rule, but as a guidepost, a  theory, a myth-busting theory at that. Secondly, whether it’s 1 percent or some fraction of 1 percent, the important concept to take away is that it’s a relatively small percentage of a community that will reliably contribute to community dialogue. This is a crucial initial assumption to make when trying to nurture a community so as to manage everyone’s expectations. Lastly, don’t underestimate the quiet 90-99 percent. They are still part of the community and they still demand timely, informative and relevant detail. You owe them this much as a steward of this community. In fact, they are the ones to concentrate on if you are to build a truly vibrant community. All too often they are forgotten. And that’s the point when the community dynamic most often falls apart.

Here’s a fresh new presentation, hot off the Slideshare presses, by LaSandra Brill, a senior manager on Cisco’s Global Social Media team.

It documents the company’s embrace of social media participation, whether it is active and why it believes social media engagement is vital for the growth of its business.

In what’s being hailed a sports broadcasting “first,” tomorrow Google will begin live streaming all 60 Indian Premier League matches for the 2010 season on YouTube. You can imagine the massive expense for Google to stream these matches to cricket fans around the world.

Well, it’s picked up some sponsors do defray some of the costs as Brylcreem and Lebara Mobile have signed on. They get a masthead on the home page and sponsorship credits across YouTube, New Media Age reports.

As this has never been done before, it’s hard to know how many cricket fans will tune in to watch the matches live (or, nearly live… there is some chatter that the games could run a few minutes delayed), but, judging from the comments section on YouTube, there’s already some impressive buzz, particularly for Chennai supporters.

Spring is just around the corner so brace yourself for a new slew of auto social media driving trips all geared to give real people a chance to put [insert your auto brand model here] through its paces and blog about it.

This year, if Chevrolet’s lead is anything to go by, the social media hook to these trips will be guided by Twitter. The automakers is giving nine teams, each starting in different parts of the U.S., a Chevy Equinox to navigate their way to Austin Texas for the SXSW festival (sponsored by Chevy) in its See The USA in a Chevrolet challenge (itself a hark back to a 1950’s Dinah Shore commercial for Chevy.)

To spice up the journey (and make good social media theater) the teams will complete a set of missions posed to them by followers on Twitter.

Using Twitter as a treasure hunt challenge tool isn’t exactly new. Scotch maker Whyte & Mackay ran a similar competition back in 2008. Thankfully Chevy isn’t stopping there but is embracing the whole SXSW cool tech thing by trialing three new social/mobile services.

The first involves sticking QR codes on its new Volt, Camaro and Cruze display vehicles at the festival (punters who scan the codes on their smart phones will access a microsite detailing the vehicle specs),  The company also is offering its iReveal app for smartphones that will offer 3-D views of the new models and is Chpartnering with mobile geolocation service Gowalla to provide promotions and free rides in the new Equinox for SWSW attendees.

While some might dismiss this as Chevy embracing geekery just for the sake of causing buzz at SXSW it’s actually in keeping with a long-established automotive industry acknowledgment of the way drivers and passengers embrace new technology that has spurred car makers to innovate and incorporate social and mobile technology into new product design. As GM’s Director of Global Communications and Technology, Chris Barger, describes the experimentation: “Imagine using Quick Response Codes to download the price and options for a vehicle on a dealer lot right to your cell phone. Or, imagine using augmented reality to virtually preview different colors of the Camaro in your own driveway. We are just scratching the surface of what’s possible with mobile technologies and social media applications.”

That’s the latest scary assessment of Twitter usage metrics, courtesy of Web security firm Barracuda Networks. The security specialist says they looked at Twitter’s 19 million accounts and determined nearly four out of five (or, 79 percent) Twitter users to be inactive, or, in Barracuda Network’s terms, they are not “true Twitter users.”

Who exactly is a “true Twitter user” then? In one of the more rigorous definitions of true Twitter usage out there, Barracuda says an active or “True” Twitter user has:

• at least 10 followers
• follows at least 10 people
• and had tweeted at least 10 times.

Pretty fair definition. No?

By this measure, that comes out to 21 percent, or just under 4 million active Twitter users. The report is pretty alarmist about the other 15 million dodgy Twitter accounts, typical for a sky-is-falling online security firm. For example, it claims that since October “one in eight [new] accounts created was deemed to be malicious, suspicious or otherwise misused and subsequently suspended.”

To be sure, Barracuda Network’s findings don’t necessarily jibe with other “State of the Twitterverse” reports out there. Going back a bit further in time, for example, Hubspot found that by the end of 2008 35 percent of Twitter users had 10 or fewer followers, and 9 percent followed nobody at all. Not great, but a far cry from the 4-out-of-5-are-zombies stat.

There are all kinds of explanations for the relatively high inactive user figures on Twitter. It’s true Twitter has gone through a rapid growth faze, then decline. It’s entirely plausible Twitter is populated by a lot of newbies still unsure how and what to Tweet. In any event, Twitter itself should better define its user base. The soon-to-launch Twitter advertising platform hinges on it.

UPDATE: This assessment of Twitter already has its detractors. One of the more interesting contrarian views out there comes from Jakob Nielsen who gives us the 90-9-1 rule to explain Twitter usage, neatly summed up in this graphic.

How to build a online community that is more than just the sum of its numbers?

That’s the quandary facing so many companies and brands as they try and make sense of what value or benefit they can take from the 200,000 Facebook fans or half a million Twitter followers who have clicked a button of support.

So it was with the aim of gaining some enlightenment on community and movement building that I attended the third annual Alliance for Youth Movement (AYM) Summit, currently being held in London.

AYM describes itself as a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting, connecting, and supporting digital activists from around the world. The London summit gathered together some of the smartest digital activists and movement builders promoting peace and democracy from the Middle East to Colombia and beyond. And its keynote speaker was Joe Rospars, the digital campaign brain behind the Barack Obama presidential campaign and founder of Blue State Digital.

Of course in some ways I had sent myself on a bit of a fool’s errand. After all no-one would argue that online fans of Coca-Cola would be as passionate about that brand as peace activists would be for halting the Middle East conflict, (would they?) And while every marketing manager has been demanding that agencies capture the “Obama effect” since Rospars’ digital grassroots campaign swept Obama into the White House, few believe that any company could ever tap into the passion for change and then network and enable it with the efficiency of the ‘08 campaign.

Yet spending an afternoon listening to smart young digitally savvy people compare notes on the best practice of building digital networks the challenges these NGOs face are not dissimilar to the dilemma faced by most of Fortune 500 companies that are attempting to build a genuine social media relationship with their customers and employees.

Central to that dilemma are two key issues: First, how to employ the new social tools so that community can better connect and build together. Second, how to measure the success of a movement beyond counting the numbers.

Rospars highlighted how technology and data mining needs to be employed in subtle and social manner if it is to motivate and mobilize. He highlighted how the Obama campaign had been able, through grassroots community data gathering, to take a hyperlocal approach to voter registration by giving activists accurate data on Obama supporters in their neighborhoods who could be asked to vote. And he stressed how treating voters as real people not names on a list was the first, respectful, stage of running an email or text campaign. How many direct marketers could benefit from taking that advice?

Then there was what we might call the million member question: Is there a best practice guide to building an online movement asked Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net during one session titled “Turning Social Networks into Real Community.” He and other participants of course realize the massive potential of mobilizing through social networks yet they bemoaned how social media has exacerbated so-called slacktivism (where it’s easy to support a good cause by becoming a Facebook fan and then do nothing tangible to follow through that commitment).

For big brands, harnessing social networks offer similar tantalizing, mobilizing rewards in terms of learning from customer experiences and opinions, yet social media and brand managers across the land ask themselves the same questions as Banks as they evaluate what those Facebook fan stats really mean. At least the brands can run competitions and give away free stuff in a way to build “customer loyalty”. Though if your best way of winning “friends” is to keep giving them gifts them maybe they’re not as loyal as you’d hope them to be!

The truth is that, whether it be in business or social change, everyone is experimenting with how best to build upon social capital and no-one yet has all the answers. But as these two seemingly polarized and often antagonistic sectors seek to navigate a disruptive media landscape that puts human interaction to the fore, the methods and strategy they use to attract new customers and build social movements may end up being very similar.

Social Media Influence speaker Antony Mayfield has a new book out titled Me & My Web Shadow.

You can pre-order it on Amazon but if you can’t wait that long to take a peak inside here’s a presentation that Antony gave recently on the book.

Mobile phone carriers aren’t exactly popular with their customers these days. Billing disputes, service gripes and the like triggered a chart-topping 37,477 registered complaints in the U.S. last year, America’s Better Business Bureau reports, making the industry the most contentious of all yet again.

But the image of the uncaring and unresponsive mobile operator is not exactly reality, as Vodafone UK is trying to signal. Yes, Vodafone UK is in hot water this week with its union for announcing new job cuts, but, Vodafone says, its part of a larger re-shuffle to eliminate back-office positions in favor of creating more customer-facing positions.

One area Vodafone has rapidly expanded in recent months is its Twitter feed, a hyperactive customer service outreach arm that fires out messages round-the-clock to customers in need. Desperate Vodafone UK customers routinely Tweet to @VodafoneUK their problems with wonky Wifi and dodgy dongles and, from the looks of it, Vodafone UK is pretty quick with a response.

It should be noted that this open stream of distress Tweets, numbering in the thousands, doesn’t put the company’s sometimes flaky technology in the best light. But it does show the company is using the latest technology to be responsive, cutting down, no doubt, on recurring calls to its help line for problems afflicting groups of customers. And, the quick response is truly appreciated. As Twitter user @Closter79 Tweets this morning:

@VodafoneUK hi, rebooted it last night and it kicked in!excellent thanks! my house has a really poor signal without it hence the myther! TY