Got a great sale coming up? Shoot out a Facebook post about it… Closed for the day? Shoot out a post about that too. Customer do or say something that is share worthy? Go for it… But remember, all the posting you are doing can end up overwhelming the feeds of your fans! Tons of businesses today lose sight of the true interests of their “adoring” public. They get caught up in posting
tons of updates about the business, whether it’s about sales, price updates, new products or services, new team members, etc. While it is good to share this sort of info, many current, past, and potential future clients are on the networks to be social rather than being sold goods or services. This is where the 80/20 rule comes into play.
The 80/20 rule has been around for quite some time having its humble beginnings steeped in economics from the beginning. Italian philosopher, sociologist, and mathematician Vilfredo Pareto first identified what is also call the Pareto Principle in 1906 when he found that a full 80% of the land was owned by only 20% of the population. This principle was found to hold true in many other parts of the world as well. Dr. Joseph Juran, found that this rough formula also applied to quality management with 80% of complaints and issues being tied to only 20% of defects. Through the years the 80/20 principle or rule has trickled down into many different aspects of business. Today it has been applied to social posting.
What Does The 80/20 Rule Mean To MY Business?
To be quite blunt, when applying it to your business, 80% should be all about your client. What interests them? What problems might they be facing? Any news about your particular industry that they may find interesting? This content should be centered around topics that they may want to share with others. The 20% then becomes your self-promotion or advertisement centered content. It is still important to get the word out about your business, but without doing so in an overbearing manner. While you may be centered on all things business related you can be sure that your clients are not. By overshooting the 20% portion on a regular basis, you will quickly find your fans alienated or worse. They could become hostile even leaving tons of negative feedback that you will then have to work that much harder to counter.
How does this break down post wise though? Easy. Four posts of interest to every one post of business-centric information. Now, to throw a wrench in those works…
The 80/20 rule is not set in stone!
That’s right – your particular business may NOT benefit from the 80/20 rule. Maybe your audience absolutely LOVES your product or brand and wants to hear MORE about it. Maybe you are a lawyer or doc in which case your audience may want LESS info about you and more about topics in your industry that they may find useful. The takeaway here is that you need to experiment TO AN EXTENT. Don’t change up to a huge extent or on an exceedingly regular basis, but DO try out different percentages. Doing so will help you to find whether the 80/20 rule is a hard and fast or if it is more of a passing suggestion as far as your social media posting is concerned.