In my book, SocialCorp, I identify what I think are the Six Valuable Attributes that make social media a powerful tool in a corporate communications. These are:

• Authenticity – Social media lets the real voices of real people come through, allowing an intimacy never achieved before in corporate communications.

• Transparency – There are two kinds of transparency in corporate social media. The first is traditional financial transparency, the ability for shareholders and regulators to see how well a company is performing financially. The second definition, closely related, is that through company blogs, communities and other vehicles, the rest of a company’s inner workings can also be made visible to the public.

• Immediacy – Immediacy is the ability of companies, bloggers, journalists and members of the public to communicate, and to engage in online conversations at unprecedented speed. A blog post can be written, formatted and published in minutes. Twitter updates happen in the blink of an eye. Live video is now within reach of anyone with a handicam, or even a cell phone with a video camera.

• Participation – Once the domain of company authorized communicators, a useful, current definition of corporate communications recognizes that anyone can participate in the conversation, whether on the company’s blog, independent forums, personal blogs, Twitter, Slashdot, or any of a thousand places online.

• Connectedness – Through a multitude of mechanisms for sharing information, social media allows millions of connections to take place, amplifying the impact of company communications. RSS feeds allow information posted in one place to be instantly displayed in thousand of other places. Social bookmarking sites like Digg allow users to easily share stories with others.

• Accountability – While one of the characteristics of the Internet is supposedly anonymity, and this is true in some cases, people who use social media are more accountable than they might realize. Many companies, and their PR and marketing agencies, have tried to “game the system” through unethical practices like astroturfing, the practice of falsifying grassroots support for a product, company, service or point of view by having paid company representatives leave anonymous comments. Over and over again, these companies are caught and publicly vilified. Seemingly anonymous postings leave a trail of IP addresses and other clues that are detected and publicized by vigilant users.

In a recent blog post, Rob Whetzel of Rottman Creative, talked about his experience easing into participation as he learned each social network and social media tool.

Do you agree that these attributes are important? Which are the most important? What would you add?