I know, I've been writing about Huba and McConnells 1% rule in the past, but every thime I see them blogging about it, I go "oooh" and "aaah". The reason for my enthousiasm is is that the 1%-rule is a simple, yet powerfull KPI for convincing clients into marketing2.0 campaigns. A small recapitulation:

"The 1% Rule postulates: About one percent of the total number of visitors to an online democratized forum will create create content for"

According to McConnell and Huba, this rule applies to video sharing site Youtube, the Wikipedia encyclopedia, photo sharing community Flickr and Yahoo Groups, and they are looking for more examples to underpin this rule for their upcoming book called "citizen marketers".

They had a fascinating post on the subject today called "Understanding the 1% rule: Motivations". The patch with 1% in the middle appears to be worn by motorgangs.

As a patch, it’s pretty simple: A diamond shape surrounded by a blue border, with "1%" embroidered in the middle. It's worn over the heart by members of motorcycle clubs that celebrate their outlaw status from mainstream motorcycle society. They call themselves the "One Percenters."

  There's a great story behind the reason why they wear this patch by heart. It's a symbol that stands for being an outlaw to traditional bureaucratical culture. And the 1% are proud of it. And that's exactly what the 1% do for the brands they are advocates for on the web. They are proud of what they do. They do it precisely because they are not like 99% of all others. Now imagine you're a brand with 60.000 regular customers (this can apply to a club, a political party, a teen magazine). When applying the 1% rule, it would mean that at least 600 of your clients/members would want to create content for you. And this content would be of great value for the 59.400 other members and for the brand. 1% suddenly makes a big difference.