In Convergence:  How Five Trends Will Reshape the Social Sector we described how demographic shifts, technological advances, networks that organize work in new ways, interest in civic engagement and volunteerism, and the blurring of sector boundaries would be changing the way that we come together to respond to and solve social problems.

If you have followed the emergence and spread of the Occupy Wall Street movement, you can see these trends at work – and it’s precisely the changes implied by the trends that have made this a difficult story for traditional media to cover.   How many times have you seen reports that this is a “leaderless movement?”  In a session on social change at the recent Independent Sector conference, a young woman expressed her frustration at this term, saying “The problem that people seem to have in understanding OWS is that it is, in fact, a leader-full movement.”  She makes a good point.   Those involved are sharing leadership, inviting others to engage in the movement, and they are using technology to communicate broadly and through open channels – but not necessarily the channels to which traditional media are accustomed (no one issues press releases announcing the next day’s events).

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I recently worked with Rusty Coats of Coats2Coats consulting.  He suggests a “Rule of Ten” for Twitter. He thinks that every ten tweets should follow a 3-3-3-1 rule, meaning a Twitter user posts 3 tweets about their own or their organization’s work and ideas, 3 are retweets of posts by others, 3 are URL or links of interest (e.g. an news article), and 1 is a humorous post.

Angela Maiers recommends a Twitter Engagement Formula of 70-20-10 which breaks down as:

• 70 percent of your tweets share resources — blog postings, articles, opinions and tools
• 20 percent of your tweets engage in conversations and connections
• 10 percent of your tweets “chirp,” or chat about yourself, your life and your thoughts

Does any of this math add up for your nonprofit organization?

Some bloggers question whether setting “rules” for social media misses the point.

Tell us what you think.