Should You Ignore the 80/20 Rule on Social Media?

If you have a business page on social media, you have no doubt heard of the 80/20 Rule.  This is a quick rule of thumb which serves as a guideline as to how much on your social media time you should spent promoting your brand or product.  And sorry no – the 80% is not for product promotion.  According to this rule, we should only spend 20% of our time on social media on this.

This may seem to many like a missed opportunity.  If only one in five of your posts promotes your business, what are you doing for the rest of the time?

Like all rules, I believe this one too was meant to be broken… although not entirely. 

The 80/20 Rule reminds us of the true purpose of social media – being social.  You can’t simply put out content that promotes your brand without doing any of the other things we would naturally do on our personal social media pages.

Here are some other things you should ensure you are doing on social media:

Engage in Conversations

Ask questions to your clients and followers.  The questions can – and perhaps should – be relevant to your field.  A skincare brand could ask about favourite tricks to beat dry skin in winter, or what percentage of the time women really clean their skin before bed.  A hardware store might ask what tool is missing from followers’ sheds.  Not only is this good market research, if you gets customers to engage with you, half the marketing battle is won.

Make sure you respond to posts and comments on your page as well.  As a social media manager, much of my time is spent doing this.  I ensure all queries have timely answers, and I acknowledge nice comments that are made about the brands I work for.   If someone has gone out of their way to say how good your product is, acknowledge it.  Even ask them for more feedback – “I’m so glad you loved the product!  What did you like best about it?”

Post Content that People Want to Read

The “big sell” often doesn’t work for car salesman, so why would it always work for you? 

If you post content that is useful, content that answers questions or is funny and engaging, people will share it, and in doing so, they share YOU. 

You will notice many company blogs don’t exclusively talk about their products and services – but they do talk about their field.  I wont always try and sell you my services (even if I think they are pretty good and will really help you build your business!), but I do try to share information about blogs and social media that is relevant to the kinds of people who might be interested in this kind of service.

Share Content in Your Field

There is a lot of amazing content out there, and part of demonstrating your knowledge in the field is to share it.

Sharing – and better yet, showing appreciation for – good content makes you look knowledgeable and friendly.  You know what is and isn’t good in your field.  Twitter is a particularly good platform for this – see how much content I share on my twitter account that isn’t from me – but from other terrific thinkers in social media (check me out @blogsource).

In short, I don’t know how I feel about this 80/20 rule.  But I do know it provides some food for thought. If the focus is on being social, you can’t just sell yourself.  You have to engage and be engaging.  Try implementing some of the ideas above for the next fortnight and let me know what changes your experience on your social media pages.  Looking forward to your comments below!