80-20 Rule for Social Media Marketing
The 80/20 Principle from Richard Koch's book, "The 80/20 Principal- The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less." applied to social media content and marketing by BHMC.
Learn how we leverage the 80/20 law of Efficiency to engage your Social Media channels!
Pareto's Law otherwise know as the 80/20 rule, can be found in almost all of life. To offer you the simple explanation 20% of actions, result in 80% of the gross effect. Or to apply it to business, 20% of customers provide 80% of the profits (in most case businesses). When you apply this to your personal life... 20% of your community get roughly 80% of your attention!
This analogy was inspired by Richard Koch's book, "The 80/20 Principle, The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less," a great read from my MBA course work at Presidio Graduate School in SF. At Brick House Media Co. we have found another innovative way to express the 80/20 rule, in regards to social media content sharing. Are you ready...
80% OF YOUR TIME OFFER INSPIRATION & EDUCATION IN YOUR MARKETING...
Be careful where you are putting your 20%... as it can be critical and often is overlooked!
20% OF THE TIME SELF-PROMOTE!
I know what you may be thinking... ARE YOU CRAZY!!! You may believe you should be telling people about YOU YOU YOU most of the time, right? Koch, I and many others now know this is dead wrong. Imagine we meet at a party, and you talk about YOU for the majority of the conversation... two things might happen. First, the other person (me) may leave or loose interest very quickly... unless you are famous or a celebrity (anomalies to the rule). Second, YOU will not get to learn much about ME.. we call this listening for the need! Great marketers will tell you this... you should be listening 80% and talking just 20%, when cultivating new relationships with clients or prospects. The reason for this is that you need to know what they are all about. How can you meet their needs if you never learn what they are into?
Image from Peter Shankman of Shankminds Conference
So... let's see how this can be implemented with online social content strategies and marketing. Share Others People's Content (aka OPC) about 80% of the time, but add your insight and reason for sharing it. Then 20% of the time, tell people about you... via images, blogs, videos and embed links to get them back to you. You should be branding your content always, meaning adding your @ or # to content hopefully driving them back you. We have created an image below to show what to put into the 80% body of a post, video or blog.
Now apply the 80-20 rule to a variety of content pieces you're sharing:
- Email newsletters - Spend 10% on you in the intro, and 10% at the exit of the post
- Company video - Introduce the company in the beginning of a video 10%, then pepper 10% into the body or exit, for what you can offer as a company or service. End with a call to action back to you.
- Blog post - As you are reading this post now, it is about 80% or more about educating you (the reader) and the top of the post has our company mention, so will our exit.
The one ball still hanging is your 10-20% that is all about you... this is the constant in your content! Video
The simple point is... if you help others 80% of the time via your content, and remind them who you are 20% of the time...they are likely to keep you top of mind! Ideally, they will come back you when their need arises, or at least refer you to others, that is the main sharing goal! It is not critical to exactly measure 80-20, but try it and see if the results work for you!
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To learn more about Richard Koch's work, click here and read his in-depth works.
Click here or the image above to link to Richard Koch's books on Amazon.