The 80/20 rule is simple… 80% of your content should be to inform, educate and entertain your audience, whilst the other 20% should directly promote your products/services. Now you might be thinking, hang on here, shouldn’t the aim always be to promote my products/services? It can be tempting to do this to increase sales as much as possible, however this is not what social media is all about.

People go on social media to be inspired, learn something new and connect with others. According to the Digital Report 2021, here are the top 10 reasons why people go on social media:
Stay up to date with news and current events, 36.5%
Find funny or entertaining content, 35%
Fill up spare time, 34.4%
Stay in touch with what my friends are doing, 33%
Share photos or videos with others, 27.9%
Research products to buy, 27.5%
General networking with other people, 26.8%
Because a lot of my friends are on them, 25.1%
Share my opinion, 23.4%
Meet new people, 21.3%
Here you can see ‘research products to buy’ is number 6 on the list, so not the primary reason for using social media. The top two reasons are to be educated, learn something new and be inspired. Knowledge is power and people may have more faith in your business and products/services if you provide them with information rather than a hard sell all the time.
But it’s not all about trying to teach people things, as funny light-hearted content is a key component of social media too. For some, social media is an escape; a place for them to forget their daily life stresses and just have some fun and laugh. Because we all need a little bit of humour in our lives.
So next time you’re implementing or realigning your marketing strategy, just stop for a second and think, does this obey the 80/20 rule?
Stuck on what content to produce for the 80% of the time? Here’s some useful social media post examples:
How to’s and hacks
Tips and tricks
Industry news
Quotes, inspirational and motivational sayings
Live talks and Q&A’s
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