Why the 80/20 rule matters

You may have heard the concept of the 80/20 rule or the Pareto principle. It states that for many events, 80% of the effects come from the 20% of causes. But what is 80/20 rule when it comes to social media and why is it important?

In social media, the 80/20 rule states that 80% leads are generated by 20% marketing effort. This rule is applicable generally in marketing. Engaging your audience on social media is a very tough job; there is no definite formula on this. The basic concept of the 80/20 rule is that; 80% you should post valuable, entertaining content while the other 20% is to promoting your products or services through posts with a strong call to action.

80% – Interact. Inspire. Educate. Entertain. Connect.

This should be on the 80% of your time. Make all your posts about your audience and building that relationship. People rely on social media primarily to be entertained, if you’re not doing that then you’re not having a conversation with your target audience. Audiences always like interesting and educative content, they react to these type of posts and also have time to share this with their followers. So 80% of your social posts should be appealing and interesting, funny and informative.

Your posts should be of course shareable and have quality content. These posts can include articles, videos, photos, questions, interesting facts, news and many more.. This content should provoke your audience interest and engagement and your audience should feel the connection to your brand.

And remember – you don’t have to create all of this content yourself, you can curate it by sourcing content from others and sharing it with your social media community.

But we know that engaging your audience is also a difficult task so let me give you tips on how you can get the 80% educational content.

• check what kind of posts people are reacting to
• check what your competitors are sharing on their social media accounts
• highlight those which is “must read” and don’t just simply share content
• prioritise visual content, like images and especially video

Just remember that 80% of your posts should be in engaging your audience and not merely talking about your business.

20% – Promote

In the remaining 20%, the content should be about your brand or business. Every bit of information regarding your products, services, offers and all other information should be listed. When you promote your products or services, just make sure that your audience can benefit also from it. You can do this by promoting discount or special offers and you can also remind them about what an excellent experience they have by purchasing from you.

Tips to creating promotional content (20%)

• develop a persuasive call to action
• link back to your website
• include information that benefits your customers: special offers discounts, promos, etc

Having a persuasive call to action is very important because this leads to the growth of your target audience, and is more likely to generate traffic to your website. This is because it will inspire your audience to know more about your product or brand and they will tend to dig deeper.

There is really no universal formula to successfully building a social media presence for your brand and keeping your audience engaged to it. However, in most instances, it is ok to use the 80/20 rule as a guide to ensure that your followers would be interested and will keep coming back for more.